International Conference
Crises in the Post-Soviet Space: The Case of Ukraine

Explanations for the current crisis in Ukraine have mostly disregarded contemporary history. Similar to other former members of the Soviet Union, the country has been faced with profound challenges since 1991; the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence formed the initial framework for an extensive political and economic transition, accompanied by a contested nation-building process, the establishment of democratic institutions and the implementation of a capitalist system.

The conference seeks to examine the ongoing crisis in the context of these developments. It intends to provide a more substantial understanding of recent events and to consider the severe repercussions on a European and global scale. Over the course of the protests in the heart of Kiev between November 2013 and February 2014, the crisis not only gained in significance on the national level, leading to the overthrow of the government and domestic political unrest, but eventually evolved into a geopolitical conflict that has reintroduced, on an international level, patterns of thinking long believed to have been overcome.

The conference will open with a keynote speech mapping the terrain of the three sessions on Saturday. The first panel will take a historical perspective, scrutinizing the effects of the dissolution of the Soviet Union as well as of Ukraine’s independence. A subsequent second panel focuses on the country’s economic transition since 1991 – examining its path from a planned economy towards capitalism – and will look at respective socio-economic changes. In a final panel, participants will turn to the present and the international dimension. In order to grasp the complexity, the current events in Ukraine will be discussed from a variety of perspectives by observers from both within and beyond the academic community.

The conference brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers from political science, history, and economy, as well as practitioners from international organizations and the media. It is organised by the Department for Political Science at the University of Vienna in co-operation with the Interdisciplinary Research Platform “Wiener Osteuropaforum” and the Research Centre for Eurasian Studies at the University of Vienna’s Department of Legal Philosophy, Law of Religion and Culture.