Invitation to the conference ‘Russkiy Mir: Historical Genealogies, Geocultural Meanings, Strategic Goals, and Possible Boundaries of the Russian World Concept’

Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences
Warsaw 26–27 September 2025

Conference: ‘Russkiy Mir: Historical Genealogies, Geocultural Meanings, Strategic Goals,
and Possible Boundaries of the Russian World Concept’

P R O G R A M M E / P R O G R A M

DAY I / DZIEŃ I
Friday 26 September, Institute of History, Warsaw, Lelewel Hall

9.45–10.00 WELCOME / POWITANIE

Maciej Janowski (Director of the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy
of Sciences / Dyrektor Instytutu Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk)

Andrzej Nowak (Chief of the Project / Kierownik projektu)

10.00–12.20 PANEL 1: Ideological and Geopolitical Contexts / Konteksty ideologiczne i geopolityczne

Chair / moderator: Mykola Riabchuk (Inst. of Political and Nationalities’ Studies, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

Pål Kolstø (Univ. of Oslo, em.) – Secular versus Religious: Are There Two Different Versions of ‘Russkiy Mir’?

Yoko Aoshima (Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Sapporo) & Julie Fedor (Univ. of Melbourne) – Putin’s “Anti-Decolonial Turn”: New Historical Fronts in Russia’s War against Ukraine [ZOOM]

Jan Holzer (Brno Univ.) – The Russkiy Mir Concept and the Role of Central Europe in it (if Any)

Oleksandr Avramchuk (Catholic Univ. of Lublin) – The RUSSKIY MIRage. America and the Blurred Lines of Russia’s Legitimate Interests

12.20–12.50 Coffee break / przerwa na kawę

Parallel panels / Panele równoczesne

12.50–14.30 PANEL 2 (Lelewel Hall): Historical Antecedents / Historyczne antecedencje

Chair / moderator: Łukasz Dryblak (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Henryk Litwin (Warsaw Univ.) – Truce of Andrusovo (1667) – to the Russkiy Mir through the kitchen entrance

Michael Hjälm (Sankt Ignatios College, Sweden) – The Prelude to Russkiy Mir: Mogilianskii and the Ethnographers in Kyiv

Adam Danilczyk (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences) – Catherine the Great and her Vison of the ‘Russkiy Mir’

12.50–14.30 PANEL 3 (Kościuszko Room): Means and Ways: Between Soft Power and “Special Operation” / Sposoby i środki: między „soft power” i „operacją specjalną”

Chair / moderator: Oleksandr Avramchuk (Catholic Univ. of Lublin)

Michał Wawrzonek (Ignatianum Univ., Kraków) – Russkiy Mir: From the Concept of Soft Power to the Ideology of Ruscism

Geza Gecse (Ludovika Univ., Budapest) – The Novo-Rossiya Plan and Putin’s “Special Operation” until December 2024 with a Special Focus (/or Based) on Russian Speaking Social Media Resources

Hanuš Nykl (Charles Univ., Prague) – Russia Abroad or Russkiy Mir?

14.30–15.30 Lunch break / przerwa na lunch

15.30–18.00 PANEL 4 (Lelewel Hall): Books and “Holy Books” of the Russian World / Książki i „święte księgi” Ruskiego Miru

Chair / moderator: Andrzej Nowak (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Jagiellonian Univ.)

Mark Bassin (Södertörn Univ., Stockholm) – How Eurasian is the Russian World?

Włodzimierz Marciniak (Warsaw Univ., em.) – Humanistic Technology of the Revenge: Literary Antecedents of the New Russia Concept

David Brandenberger (Univ. of Richmond) – “The Foundations of Russian Statehood” – an Analysis of the New “Civilizationism” Curriculum in Russia’s Higher Educational Institutions

Michał Wojnowski (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences: History of Russian Imperialism Project) “Holy Warriors of the Russian World”. The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian Federation Secret Services and Military Operations against the NATO Members and Ukraine

18.00–19.30 Dinner / obiad

DAY II / DZIEŃ II
Saturday 27 September, Institute of History, Warsaw, Lelewel Hall

9.40–12.00 PANEL 5: Genealogies and Mental Maps of the Russian World / Genealogie i „mentalne mapy” Ruskiego Miru

Chair: Joanna Getka (Warsaw Univ.)

Darius Staliūnas (Inst. of Lithuanian History, Vilnius) – Lithuanians as Slavs in the Official
Discourse of Tsarist Russia [ZOOM]

Andrei Cușco (Ion Creangă State Pedagogical Univ., Chișinău, Imre Kertesz Kolleg, Jena) – The Frontiers of the ‘Russian World’ in the Romanian Context: ‘National Character’, Spatial Imagination, and Modern Geopolitics (1878–1940)

Łukasz Dryblak (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences) – From Arkady Stolypin to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Russkiy Mir in the Thought of the Russian Emigration

Hiroaki Kuromiya (Indiana University, em.) – The Russian World as Subversion in the Donbas

12.00–12.30 Coffee break / przerwa na kawę

12.30–14.10 Parallel panels / Panele równoczesne

PANEL 6 (Lelewel Hall): Between Europe and Asia: Russian World Goals and Rivals / Między Europa i Azją: cele i rywale Ruskiego Miru

Chair / moderator: Paweł Libera (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Zaur Gasimov (Turkish-German Univ., Istanbul) – Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the Focus
of Russkiy Mir [ZOOM]

Mikheil Bakhtadze (Tbilisi State Univ.) – Russkiy Mir and Georgia on the Threshold of the Twenty First Century

Vugar Imanbeyli (Marmara Univ.) – The Russkiy Mir and Türkiye [ZOOM]

PANEL 7 (Kościuszko Room): Imagined Communities and Real Wars of the Russian World / Wspólnoty wyobrażone i rzeczywiste wojny Ruskiego Miru

Chair / moderator: Jan Holzer (Brno Univ.)

Joanna Getka (Warsaw Univ.) – Imaginary Community. Historical, Geographical, and National Myths as the Ideological Basis of the ‘Russkiy Mir’

Serhii Shumylo (Inst. of History of Ukraine, Kyiv) – ‘Russian World’ of Moscow Patriarch Kirill as a Quasi-religious Ideology of War

Andrey Kordochkin (Göttingen Univ.) – ‘Russkiy Mir’ as a Religious Doctrine

14.10–15.10 Lunch break / przerwa na lunch

15.10–17.40 PANEL 8 (Lelewel Hall): Question Marks and Alternatives / Znaki zapytania i alternatywy

Chair / moderator: Zaur Gasimov (Turkish-German Univ., Istanbul)

Larysa Yakubova (Inst. of History of Ukraine, Kyiv) – Russism – the “Russian World” of Putin’s Metamodern

Antoine Arjakovsky (Collège des Bernardins, Paris) – How to Heal the Mythical Consciousness of Russian Imperialism (Schmemann, Solzhenitsyn, Shevkunov)? The Proposals of Raoul Girardet, Giorgi Fedotov, and Vladimir Voinovich

David Lewis (Univ. of Exeter) – “Civilisational Indifference”: Boris Mezhuev’s Neo-isolationism and Russian Foreign Policy [ZOOM]

Mikhail Suslov (Univ. of Copenhagen) – Is the “Russian World” Still Relevant? Tracing Ideological Change in Putin’s Russia

Closing remarks: Andrzej Nowak (Inst. of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Jagiellonian Univ.)