This seminar of The Dissident Library continued a thematic focus that started a year ago with a seminar on the emergence of the field of Soviet dissident studies in France. With Prof. Wolfgang Eichwede, founder of the Research Centre for East European Studies (FSO) at the University of Bremen and the archive on the history of samizdat and dissidence, we talked about the emergence of this field in West Germany. We discussed the impulses in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s that sparked a general interest in Soviet dissidence and brought forth the first studies on Soviet dissidence in Germany in the early 1970s, and talked about the influence of the policy of détente and Willy Brandt on the establishment of the FSO at the University of Bremen, and how the direction of research (publications, conferences, academic journals) was influenced by emigrants from the USSR and Russian-language publications in Germany.
Languages of the discussion: Russian with simultaneous translation into English.
The event is part of The Dissident Library, a series of online seminars discussing scientific publications on the Soviet dissident movement directed and organized by Olga Rosenblum.