Irina Marin joins the CUNY REEES Kruzhok to share new research on:

Vicious and Virtuous Circles in the Rural Economy of East European Borderlands at the End of the 19th, Beginning of the 20th Century

This work-in-progress paper provides a cross-border comparison between rural communities in the borderlands of Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia and the Balkan fringes of the Ottoman Empire. The aim is that of hammering out an explanatory framework that would account for disparities in modernization, innovation absorption and social agency, starting from factors such as the initial terms of peasant emancipation, legal framework, the edge given by historical privilege and, conversely, the long shadow of serfdom in the form of renewed dependence and neoserfdom.

Dr. Irina Marin is Assistant Professor in Political History at Utrecht University and specializes in Modern European History with particular emphasis on Central and Eastern European history. Her research so far has focused on the political and social dynamics of imperial borderlands, nationalism and identity politics as well as social violence. Her first book Contested Frontiers in the Balkans: Ottoman and Habsburg Rivalries in Eastern Europe was published with I. B. Tauris in 2012. Her second book Peasant Violence and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) received an honorable mention from the American Society for Romanian Studies (SRS) at their biennial book prize in 2019.

Register for this workshop via Zoom.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You will also receive a link to a paper to review a week in advance of the session.