Martin Valkov (CAS Sofia): “Beyond Totalitarianism: Mass Internment, Concentration Camps and Forced Labor in Bulgaria in the 20th Century“
Abstract: My presentation will provide a general overview of civilian internment, concentration camps, and forced labor in Bulgaria during the 20th century. The presentation is based on my current project at the Centre for Advanced Study – Sofia and is designed as a longue durée study of extralegal detention in one country asking broader questions about the repressive potential of the modern state. It challenges the basic assumptions of Bulgarian historiography about the nature of these repressive practices and institutions as unique to only totalitarian dictatorships by offering a different perspective on their origins, development, and history in Bulgarian context. Informed by the recent global turn in the study of concentration camps it aims to integrate the Bulgarian case into the wider European and global perspective.
Edvin Pezo (IOS Regensburg): “The organization of power and rule in socialist Yugoslavia, 1944-1966. Institutional components and challenges under Aleksandar Ranković”
Abstract: The organization of power and rule is one of the most essential components of modern state and social policy. In states governed by communist parties, special importance was attached to this because of their claim to rule over all aspects of society. In my lecture I want to focus on a “transitional period” of Yugoslav political history associated with considerable and violent state intervention as with the infamous Yugoslav politician Aleksandar Ranković. During his political career Yugoslavia “rose” from the ruins of the Second World War under a rigid and Stalinist-influenced state leadership while small but decisive steps were taken for the subsequent liberalization of the country. Using a partly biographical approach, Ranković serves here as an approach to explore more closely contemporary circumstances, the (dys)functionality of existing institutional structures and aspects of personalized power/rule.
https://uni-regensburg.zoom.us/j/62411825548?pwd=Y2pFL3V0aWNEQko2eXphQ2VJMFdTQT09
(Meeting-ID: 624 1182 5548, Kenncode: 519637)