Why studying Eastern European history is so political

Sevastopol in the Crimea in May 1944, the war is over. This photo has the title: "Life goes on". Akg-Images / Voller Ernst / Chaldej

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has moved Eastern European history into the spotlight. Yet the field has long been shaped by political trends. An analysis by Eastern Europe historian Fabian Baumann.

Just a few years ago, telling people in Switzerland that I am an Eastern Europe historian barely raised an eyebrow. Today, the reaction is very different. Most people show great interest and almost immediately steer the conversation towards the war in Ukraine. Even more than three years on, this war continues to dominate the media, with historians of Eastern Europe regularly contributing to the debate.

And yet, many people are still surprised that this seemingly exotic field even exists. Eastern European history stands out in the university landscape of the German-speaking world because, as a geographically defined subdiscipline, it has its own chairs and institutes. Western, Southern and Northern European history are also studied and taught, but they are hardly ever institutionalised. Eastern Europe’s special status has deep historical roots: more than any other field, it has been, and continues to be, directly shaped by current events.

A political look to the East

The roots of Eastern European history as an academic discipline go back more than 100 years. Since the 19^th century, universities have traditionally researched Slavic languages and cultures, often with a historical focus. In Switzerland, Elsa Mahler made her mark in this field when she became the first woman to be appointed professor at the University of Basel in 1938.

Meanwhile, in the 20^th century, various German and Austrian historians established themselves as experts on Russia and Eastern Europe. Some were particularly keen to act as mediators between Germany and Russia. Others, however, embraced German nationalist ideas, pursued a racially charged Ostforschung (studying the east) and promoted the historically untenable claim that Germans had always dominated Eastern Europe as “bearers of culture” over supposedly “inferior” Slavs.

Hence, it is not surprising that many Eastern European historians in Germany were entangled with National Socialism. After the Second World War additional chairs in Eastern European history were established at universities across the country. Yet German nationalist ideas continued to exert influence, albeit now often under the banner of anti-communism.

At the same time, the Swiss Eastern Europe Library was founded in Bern, initially a private project by anti-communist Cold Warriors. Today it is one of Switzerland’s key resources for Eastern European research.

In the US, Eastern European studies in the years following 1945 were framed as “enemy research” and were guided by the mantra “Know your enemy!” Among the leading figures were many anti-communist emigrants from Eastern Europe, including the Polish-born Harvard professor Richard Pipes.

Together with some of his peers, Pipes established the so-called Totalitarian School, which primarily focused on the development of the Soviet system. While historians of this generation often displayed remarkable attention to detail and produced valuable studies, their assumption that the Soviet state exercised near-total control over its people proved somewhat limiting.

The end of studying the Soviet Union

This approach started to shift in the 1970s when younger historians, often leaning politically left, gained increasing access to Soviet archives. The Australian researcher Sheila Fitzpatrick became a leading figure of this “revisionist” generation. Her social historical studies demonstrated that Stalinism, despite its extreme violence, also served as a vehicle for social advancement among certain population groups.

The revisionist approach developed during the era of détente, a period of easing tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. As relations improved, it made sense to emphasise historically that the people of the Soviet Union were not merely faceless subjects, but politically capable actors.

At the same time, the willingness to look beyond the Russian core of the Soviet Union grew with perestroika. A key pioneer was the Swiss historian Andreas Kappeler, who lectured in Cologne from 1982 and later in Vienna.

Kappeler initially focused on the small Turkic- and Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples of the Volga region before he published his groundbreaking study, Russia as a Multiethnic Empire, in 1992. Within the field, he instilled an awareness that both the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union were just as multiethnic as the colonial empires of Western Europe.

Leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev at a meeting with workers of the K. Marx collective farm in Uzbekistan in 1988. Ria Novosti

Kappeler was also among the first to recognise – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – the importance of studying the history of Ukraine, now the largest country by area in Europe. Together with his doctoral students, he laid the foundation for a broad-based, German-language research on Ukraine that started to take shape after 2014.

Despite politically driven funding cuts – after all, the interest in Russia as geopolitical enemy faded – the 1990s and 2000s were, in many ways, an era of new beginnings for Eastern European history. Western historians suddenly gained access to the archives of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, while historians from the former communist states were, in turn, faced with Western ideas and perspectives.

Diversification of a field

Some former communist (court) historians seamlessly retrained themselves to write nationalist chronicles by simply flipping their ideologically shaped narratives. But all in all, the mutual opening of East and West produced a wealth of excellent studies. Even in Russia, the intellectual debate seemed to be moving towards democratisation.

During these years, many Western researchers focused on the history of civil society and public sphere. In hindsight, some of them may have been too optimistic in their assessment of how reformable the Russian state really was.

However, the period of optimism in Eastern Europe, and with it in Eastern European history, came to an end when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Shortly afterwards, the German historian of Eastern Europe Karl Schlögel called for a reorientation of the field, though not without a healthy dose of self-criticism. He advocated less focus on Russia and more attention to the countries that had historically suffered under Russian imperialism.

In the following years, new initiatives also emerged in Switzerland with a particular focus on Ukrainian history, such as the “Ukrainian Research in Switzerland” programmeExternal link at the University of Basel. German-speaking universities are also increasingly offering courses in Ukrainian.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, historians of Eastern Europe have been debating their work with even greater intensity. While few dispute that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is criminal, there is disagreement over the direction the field should take. And the long-standing question remains: is Eastern European history still too Russian-centric despite the opening in recent decades? After all, many studies have relied primarily on Russian state archives and Russian-language sources.

Historians such as Botakoz Kassymbekova at the University of Zurich and Franziska Davies at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, are calling for a postcolonial shift in the field; a shift that scrutinises Russian and Soviet imperialism just as critically as Western imperialism, while giving greater weight to the perspectives of the peoples who used to be dominated.

Like any historical account, Eastern European history is also inherently political and particularly influenced by current political debates. Yet, the relationship between politics and scholarship is complex. In reality, developments within a field usually depend on many factors: access to archives, geopolitical conflicts, and the formative experiences of individual generations of researchers. Given the ongoing political and military conflicts in the region, discussions among historians of Eastern Europe are likely to remain vigorous.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl. Adapted from German by Billi Bierling/ts