Rediscovering Borderland Socialism

Rediscovering Borderland Socialism: A discussion with Eric Blanc, Wiktor Marzec, Maria Todorova and Risto Turunen

Socialist activists at the crossroads of Russian and Ottoman empires at the turn of the century built creatively radical mass movements whose ideas still resonate today. In many ways the margins were the political center: some of the world’s strongest socialist parties — from Finland, to Poland, to Bulgaria and beyond — were built in these borderland areas and their efforts played pivotal roles in the revolutionary conflagrations of the era. In this panel, leading scholars of borderland socialism come together to discuss their recently published books on these lost histories, how activists and parties at the imperial margins cross pollinated, and what we might learn from their strengths and limitations.

Panelists:

Maria Todorova, the author of The Lost World of Socialists at Europe’s Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s-1920s (2020) is Gutgsell Professor of History and Center of Advanced Study Professor Emerita. She teaches and researches the history of Eastern Europe, in particular the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire in the modern period.

Wiktor Marzec, the author of Rising Subjects: The 1905 Revolution and the Origins of Modern Polish Politics (2020), is an assistant professor and project leader in the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Currently, he runs a comparative project on political trajectories of the late tsarist borderlands.

Risto Turunen, the author of Shades of Red - Evolution of the Political Language of Finnish Socialism from the 19th Century until the Civil War of 1918 (2021), is a Postdoctoral Researcher specialising in data-intensive approaches to modern political languages. He was awarded his doctorate in History at Tampere University in 2021.

Eric Blanc, the author of Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1892-1917) (2021), is an incoming Assistant Professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching strikes, new workplace organizing, digital labor activism, and working-class politics.

Chair:

Adela Hîncu is an intellectual historian writing on Marxist social thought, feminism, and social sciences and policy in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. She is fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena and member of the LeftEast editorial collective. https://ceu.academia.edu/AdelaHincu