CRRC, ARISC and American Councils are pleased to announce the 1st talk of the Spring 2023 Tbilisi Works-in-Progress series!
This week’s WiP session will take place in hybrid format in-person at CRRC Georgia and virtually via this Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/…/tZYvd…
“Ending the 20th Century: From Sarajevo to Eastern Ukraine”
Hans Gutbrod, Ilia State University
Date: 8 February 2023, at 18:30 Tbilisi time
The political 20th century lasted 100 years, was 20 days too long, and 14 years late. That is a conclusion we can derive from Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine in February 2022, which has cast recent decades in a new light, too. In this way of looking at history, the political 20th century ends with a Russian-backed militia crew shooting down the Malaysian MH-17 airplane on the afternoon of July 17, 2014, killing 298 people.
A century that begins with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, ends over the skies of Ukraine, 1200 months later. The two moments frame the century’s story, from the rudimentary cabriolet driving through the fringes of Austria’s ailing empire to the high-tech Boeing over a country that Russia cannot let go.
The present moment is a powerful illustration that, as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel put it, the owl of Minerva flies at dusk — the true significance of major events can only be understood in retrospective. Telling the larger story matters at a time when democracies no longer are on a holiday from history in which they do not need a common understanding of what they are up against.
In this talk, Hans will present a paper which he currently is developing, and in which he also explores why in turbulent times, we need recourse to history to get a sense of a reality fundamentally at odds with our own.
(Photo by CODA story)
Hans Gutbrod is an Associate Professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
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In observation of the spirit of the Chatham House Rule, the talks will not be recorded and we courteously request that the other participants refrain from recording and/or distributing recordings as well. The opinions expressed in WiP talks are those of the speakers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC, ARISC or of American Councils.
WiP is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place office of CRRC at Liziko Kavtaradze St. 1 and online. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.