Kolloquium

Since 2022, the academic field has witnessed the consolidation of a thesis advocating for the decolonization of knowledge regarding Eastern Europe and regions influenced by Russian colonial domination—an approach commonly referred to as the decolonization of Russian Studies or Post-Soviet Studies. While this proposition gained strong moral legitimacy, particularly in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it continues to face challenges in achieving broader conceptual and methodological recognition among scholars of the region. It is not consistently embraced as a coherent analytical framework for conducting research or for applying new methodological approaches to regional studies. This lecture will address key tensions and challenges inherent in the decolonization process, including potential risks in fields such as historical research, memory studies, and the social sciences more broadly. It will also offer an assessment of how the debate has evolved over the past four years. In doing so, the lecture will highlight the historical foundations of the problem, demonstrating how Western knowledge production during both the Cold War and the post-Cold War periods was shaped by Russian imperial and colonial perceptions, as well as ethnographic imaginaries of Belarus and Ukraine. Such forms of colonial knowledge were not merely transmitted to the West but were often internalized and institutionalized within Western academic frameworks. Finally, the lecture will examine whether this decolonial approach could become a working research paradigm in the near future. It will ask whether a decolonial lens can meaningfully transform existing structures of knowledge production about Eastern Europe and reshape the methodological and conceptual foundations of regional studies.

Anton Saifullayeu, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Intercultural Studies of Central and Eastern Europe, University of Warsaw, and Head of the Decolonial Research Initiative (ISIEŚW UW). Fellow at the University of Greifswald (2022). He has held visiting lectures at the College of Europe in Natolin and Maastricht University and conducted research and study visits at Harvard University (2024) and Princeton University (2022). His research interests include the cultural anthropology of Central and Eastern Europe, postcolonial and decolonial theory, the history and contemporary forms of Russian-Soviet colonialism, as well as political systems and the evolution of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe. Currently, his research focuses on Belarus’s relations with the countries of the so-called Global South, the production and distribution of knowledge about Belarus and Eastern Europe in the West, and Polish–Belarusian relations.