European History Forum

Every year in Berlin, the Heinrich Boell Foundation organizes the European History Forum, which aims at offering historians, politicians, social scientists and civil society actors from Eastern, Central and Western Europe a space to critically think and reflect on Europe’s recent history. Here, we present academic articles prepared by the selected students and researchers in Armenian, Georgian and English languages. You can also read here the impressions of participants.

The 8th European History Forum was dedicated to the year of 1989 - 30 Years after 1989: Freedom from What? Freedom to do What? The Heinrich Boell Foundation Tbilisi Office initiated 1989: History Competition to select participants for the 8th European History Forum. Within the framework of the history competition, students, young researchers, historians and visual anthropologists had an opportunity to get small research grants and prepare academic articles about 1989 events and analyze the importance of 1989 for Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

1989: Protest Rallies and their Influence on Georgian History

The present paper provides an overview of developments preceding the protest rallies of 9 April 1989 in chronological order and their symbolic characteristics.

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1989: Change of Memory

The following paper aims to study and analyze the process of reconsideration of the past in 1988-90 in Soviet Georgia.

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8th European History Forum: 30 years after 1989: Freedom from What? Freedom to do What?

In 1989, a wave of revolutions swept the Eastern Bloc in Europe. The reform movement that ended communism in East Central Europe began in Poland. Solidarity, an anti-Communist trade union and social movement, had forced Poland’s Communist government to recognize it in the 1980s through a wave of strikes that gained international attention.

By Eviya Hovhannisyan

European History Forum: 30 Years after 1989

My research focused on the protest rallies that took place on April 9, 1989. Today in Georgia, on the 30th anniversary of the 9th of April, many associate this day with the restoration of Georgia’s independence. In fact, it is undeniable that the sequence of the events that transpired that day, coupled with all the other circumstances unfolding in 1989, created the preconditions for the restoration of Georgia’s independence.

By Katie Sartania

European History Forum report

By Levan Kapitanovi

Transformations of the Communist Party’s official newspaper “Soviet Armenia” in 1989

This paper discusses the structural and ideological transformations of the Communist party’s official newspaper Soviet Armenia and follows a case-study approach based on the oral history interview.

By Parandzem Paryan

Construction of a New Discourse on Russia in the Scope of Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict in the Samizdat

Read in Armenian

By Eviya Hovhannisyan

The 2017 European Historical Forum asks how various places throughout Europe (chiefly Eastern and Southeastern Europe) remember the epochal year of 1917, and what conclusions can be drawn from the dominant narratives for the current political and mental state of the region.

From Revolutionary Struggle to Social Emancipation

On 5 March 1917, at 11 o’clock in the morning, many members of the Caucasian workers’ movement and thousands of ordinary citizens gathered in Nadzaladevi’s Theatre Square. The revolutionaries had assembled in order to receive the latest reports of the events then unfolding in St Petersburg. The people were interested in hearing whether the February Revolution had achieved its goal.

By Levan Lortkipanidze

From International Revolution to a National State – The Case of Georgian Social Democracy (1917-1921)

In the twilight years of the 19th century, the Georgian people were faced with a number of challenges. Although the abolition of feudalism had liberated the peasantry, they had not been given land and their afflicted state remained the same. A number of freed peasants headed for the cities and filled the ranks of the proletariat, encountering “brute capitalism” in a place where basic labour rights were not regulated.

By Beka Kobakhidze