Anastasia Ryabchuk (Gerda Henkel Fellow, Oct ’22 – Feb ’23) will talk about her research at CAS:

International Development and Vulnerability in the Frontline Communities of the Donbas

on 27 October, 2022 (Thursday) at 16:30 h.

Moderated by Bogdana Paskaleva.

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Abstract:

Post-Soviet deindustrialization and the economic collapse of the 1990s led to a decline of the significance of the Donbas coal-mining region both economically and symbolically, while the start of Russian war in Ukraine in 2014 aggravated this sense of isolation and fragmentation. The combined effects of these two forms of violence led to technocratic governance, in part, promoted and encouraged by the international humanitarian organizations that entered the region after 2014. If the war and neoliberalism narrowed horizons for good life, fragmented technocratic governance limited horizons for political engagement. It also ignored and neglected the potential strengths of inherited socialist state infrastructure that could offer a safety net and a point of reference for citizens’ engagement with the world and with each other.