Webinar on ethno-political conflicts in Russia

18th November 2020

The Working Group for Social Sciences under the Finnish-Russian Commission for Scientific and Technological Cooperation (funded by the Academy of Finland) and Tampere University organised a webinar on ethno-political conflicts in Russia. Contemporary Russia has to deal with the legacy of Soviet state by reconfiguring inter-ethnic relations. This process opens a Pandora’s box of inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts. The search for solutions is complicated by numerous other social problems – inequality, inadequate institutions and international tensions. Will Russia be able to cope with these problems and what options look realistic in the contemporary situation? The team members of the GULAGECHOES project attended the webinar.

Webinar On the resilience of the Vory

13th November 2020

This webinar was organised between the Gulagechoes team and the research group headed by Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology, the University of Oxford, UK. Federico is a leading expert on the Russian mafia and author of several books and many articles dealing with the Vory-v-Zakone (the Russian mafia) including two monographs – The Russian Mafia (OUP, 2001) and Mafias on the Move (PUP, 2011) and his most recent Mafia Life. The seminar arose because of a recent article about the Russian Vory that Federico and Jakub Lonsky, University of Liverpool, had published about the resilience of the Russian Vory-v-Zakony who are strongly associated with the Soviet and Russian prison system. The webinar lasted two hours with both sides agreeing to continue cooperation in the future.