Writing the History of Dissent: Voices and Blind Spots - Instytut Pileckiego

Panel Discussion with Dr. Benjamin Nathans and Dr. Franziska Davies as part of "The Making of Solidarity: A Conference on Eastern and Central European Dissidents".

Writing the History of Dissent: Voices and Blind Spots

Panel Discussion

Speakers: Benjamin Nathans and Franziska Davies
Moderator: Yeva Yakubovska

16.11, 18.30 | Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin

Registration: https://forms.gle/RSygcaXxKBwE6KRU8

How has the history of dissent in Eastern and Central Europe been written – and whose voices have been left out? The historical understanding of dissident movements has long been shaped by particular narratives, networks, and political perspectives. While certain intellectuals and prominent figures became internationally recognised as representatives of resistance to communist rule, other experiences and traditions of dissent remained at the margins of historical scholarship and public memory.

This panel explores the challenges of writing a more inclusive and nuanced history of dissent. How have established interpretations shaped our understanding of opposition under state socialism? Which voices, communities, and forms of resistance have been overlooked? And how can historians critically examine the categories and hierarchies through which the legacy of dissident movements has been constructed?

Bringing together perspectives from the history of the Soviet dissident movement and the history of Eastern and Central Europe, the discussion will reflect on the relationship between historical scholarship, collective memory, and the politics of remembrance. It will also consider what it means to recover overlooked histories without reproducing the exclusions of earlier narratives.

The panel is part of The Making of Solidarity: A Conference on Eastern and Central European Dissidents, which seeks to broaden the historical understanding of dissent beyond established canons and to foreground the diversity of intellectual and political resistance across the region.

About the speakers

Dr. Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His most recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the Pushkin House Book Prize, among other awards. His other publications include Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia and From Europe’s East to the Middle East: Israel’s Russian and Polish Lineages, co-edited with Kenneth Moss and Taro Tsurumi. He also contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and other periodicals.

Dr. Franziska Davies is an Eastern European historian and researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam. Her research focuses on the modern history of Ukraine, Poland, and Russia, with particular attention to imperial history, social movements, and the political transformations of Eastern and Central Europe. She previously worked at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where she completed her doctorate in 2016. Her publications include Ukraine in Europe: Dream and Trauma of a Nation (2023), an edited volume, and Eastern Europe's Open Wounds: Travels to the Memorial Sites of the Second World War (2022), co-authored with Katja Makhotina, which received the Bavarian Book Prize in the non-fiction category. Her current research examines the end of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Eastern Europe from a Polish-Ukrainian perspective, highlighting the role of social protest and democratic movements beyond the traditional Moscow-centred narratives of the period.

Yeva Yakubovska is a Berlin-based researcher and curator specialising in memory studies. She works at the Pilecki Institute Berlin, focusing on twentieth-century remembrance, and is currently completing an MA in Public History at Freie Universität Berlin. As a board member of Vitsche e.V., she develops civic and artistic projects addressing memory politics in Germany. Her work connects historical research, public engagement, and artistic practice, with a particular interest in how communities engage with and shape collective memory.