Presentations by the MCC Fellows at the Melikian Center about the courses addressing issues of Eastern Europe and Eurasia that they have developed during their 2024-2025 fellowship at ASU.

When evidence of war crimes committed between 1998 and 1999 is discovered across sites in war-torn Serbia—including a truck filled with bodies at the bottom of the Danube and mass graves in suburban Belgrade—film director Ognjen Glavonić begins a years-long examination of the unexamined and exploration of the inexplicable. 

The Bolshevik takeover of Russia created an alternative Russia in exile that never laid down its arms. For two decades, expelled White Russians sought ways to retaliate against the Soviet Union and return home. Their irreconcilability was galvanized by a superstructure, the dominant military organization, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS).

Throughout history, dictators have constructed secret police agencies to neutralize rivals and enforce social order. But the same agencies can become disloyal and threatening. This book explores how eight communist regimes in Cold War Europe confronted this dilemma. 

During NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Vlada, a truck driver, is hired to undertake a treacherous path across his war-torn country and deliver mysterious cargo. On a journey where friend and foe prove indistinguishable, Vlada comes to realize the horrifying ramifications of his mission.

Scholars present papers on aspects of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian languages, literatures, linguistics, cultures, and history. 

In both Germany and Poland—primary locations of the Holocaust—the legacy of antisemitism remains a major obstacle to reconciliation with the past. How does antisemitism typically manifest in these countries? 

The identity of modern Macedonia has been shaped by many forces over the centuries, including over the dynamic past 125 years. The hundreds of postcards featuring Skopje, produced locally and abroad, provide a diachronic, image-to-image telling of the city’s history by insiders and outsiders. 

A discussion about disinformation and the role it is playing in Eastern Europe and how Eastern Europe is portrayed, featuring current fellows and an alum of the Hubert H. Humphrey program for communications and journalism.

Against the backdrop of the (meta)physical landscape of collective disaster, a new generation of Ukrainians aspires to imagine the future.

Anika Binnendijk, a professor at ASU, focuses on national security decision making, European defense, gray zone challenges, national resilience, and emerging defense technologies such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and human-machine teaming.

Celebrate the cultures of Ukrainian and Persian students at the CLI.