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URL:http://www.russianmix.com/events/viewevent/12257-toward-freedom-celebrating-central-and-eastern-european-independence/ 
DTSTART:20190502T120000
DTEND:20190502T170000
SUMMARY:Toward Freedom: Celebrating Central and Eastern European Independence
DESCRIPTION:The conference will explore the character of and differences in the political, social, economic, and cultural independence of Central and Eastern European countries during the interwar period, World War II, the Cold War, and post-1989 era.
This is a free event; however, registration is required to attend the keynote luncheon. Panel sessions are open to the public. You can register for either day or both, but must do so separately.
Featuring keynote remarks by:

Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War Studies program at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and consulting editor and translator of The Black Book of Communism.
Dr. Padraic Kenney, professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington, and author of 1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War’s Endand The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989.

For more information or questions about registration please contact the director of academic programs, Dr. Murray Bessette, at murray.bessette@victimsofcommunism.org or the senior research fellow in Polish Studies, Professor Wlodzimierz Batog, at wlodzimierz.batog@victimsofcommunism.org.
 
Program Schedule

May 2, 2019
11:00-12:00PM—Registration Opens
12:00-1:30PM—Keynote Luncheon, “Political Imprisonment in Communist Poland: a comparative perspective”

Dr. Padraic Kenney

1:45-3:13PM—Communism, Anticommunism, and Postcommunism

Dr. Delia Popescu
Amb. Martin Palous
Dr. Jonathan Pidluzny

3:30-5:00PM—Raising the Iron Curtain: Civil Society, Resistance, and the Struggle for Freedom

Ms. Daniela Ionescu
Dr. Christian Philip Peterson
Dr. Jakub Tyszkiewicz


May 3, 2019
9:00-10:30AM—The Kuklinski Museum Discussion Series: 30 Years After the Fall of Communism in Europe

Dr. Charles Lipson will moderate a discussion with former Polish Defense Minister and dissident hero Antoni Macierewicz; retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Tom Cosentino; and Reagan biographer Steven Hayward.

10:45-12:15PM—Everyday Life in an Unreal Reality: Communism in Poland

Dr. Dariusz Jarosz
Dr. Ewelina Szpak
Dr. Joanna Wojdon

12:30-2:00PM—Keynote Luncheon, “How the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe Disintegrated”

Mark Kramer

2:15-3:45PM—From Ideological Enforcement to Academic Freedom

Dr. Wlodzimierz Batog
Dr. Richard Farkas
Dr. Tomasz Kozlowski
Dr. A. James McAdams


About Dr. Padraic Kenney
Dr. Padraic Kenney is professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington. He is an expert on how groups of people and individuals without power manage, survive, resist, and protest in hostile environments with a particular emphasis on the dynamics of communist societies, especially Poland. Kenney is the author of many books and articles on the subjects of the experience of workers in early Communist Poland, on the gendered nature of anti-communist opposition, on social movements in the fall of communism in Central Europe, and on Eastern Europe’s road from communism. His most recent, Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World, looks at the subject from the mid-nineteenth century to Guantanamo Bay. At Polish Studies Centre at IU Kenney teaches on the experience of communism and political protest, Eastern European and Polish History and on the role of historical memory in contemporary politics.

About Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer is director of the Cold War Studies program at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities and was formerly an Academy Scholar in Harvard's Academy of International and Area Studies and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He is an expert on the history of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, and political and economic change in post-Communist Eastern Europe. Kramer is the author or editor of several books, has written nearly 200 articles on a variety of topics, and is editor of the Journal of Cold War Studies, which features peer-reviewed articles based on archival research in the former Communist world and in Western countries. He has worked extensively in newly opened archives in all the former Warsaw Pact countries and several Western countries. He has been a consultant for numerous government agencies and international organizations.
LOCATION:The Blackstone Hotel, 636 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60605
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