Myths of Historical Territories: Maps and Cartographic Discourses in the Post-Soviet Space

Dr Sergey Rumyansev, Georg Arnhold Visiting Research Professor at the GEI from Azerbaijan, is co-director of the South Caucasus Open School (Tbilisi, Georgia) and one of the founders of the Centre for Independent Social Research (CISR) in Berlin. From 2003 until 2014, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences in Baku, Azerbaijan. His main areas of research include nationalism, diaspora and migration, conflict studies, and Soviet studies, with a focus on conflicts in the post-Soviet space. In his presentation he will focus on his research on the deconstruction of essentialist myths of historical territories.

According to Dr. Rumyansev, the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008 signified the second wave of territorial conflicts in the post-Soviet space. Answers to why such conflicts have emerged in the two decades following the collapse of the USSR, along with the reasons behind their broad public support, are to be found not only in the post-Soviet economy and the relations between the ex-Soviet republics, but in modern nationalist ideologies. Nationalist political discourses currently being constructed by post-Soviet elites are greatly influenced by interconnected primordial and essentialist conceptions of ethnic groups, ethnicity, and myths of historical territories that were established in the Soviet Union. Historical territories and essentialist cartographic discourses are constantly used by politicians, and are widely represented in the media and in history textbooks. They also play a key role in provoking and justifying conflicts in the post-Soviet space and are a means for each country to substantiate territorial claims against its neighbors.

Vortrag in englischer Sprache zu „Mythen historischer Territorien – Karten und kartographische Diskurse im postsowjetischen Raum“