ESAANZ invites you to this event, with presenter Professor Leslie Holmes, on revolutions in Belarus and other post-soviet nations.
In 1993, Charles Tilly published his analysis of European Revolutions 1492-1992. In that, he drew a useful distinction between revolutionary situations and revolutionary outcomes. Clearly, Belarus has in late-2020 been in a revolutionary situation. But will this turn into a revolutionary outcome, and thus overthrow the man often called ‘Europe’s last dictator’?
Do comparisons with so-called colour revolutions in Georgia (2003-4), Ukraine (2004-5; 2014), Kyrgyzstan (2005; 2010) and Armenia (2018) help us better to understand what is currently happening in Belarus? How do the events of 2020 in Belarus compare with the country’s own so-called ‘Jeans Revolution’ of 2006? And how should we interpret Russia’s role in recent Belarusian developments?
About the Presenter: Leslie Holmes has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne since 1988, and Professor Emeritus there since 2014. He also teaches annually at the Polish Academy of Sciences and China’s Renmin University, and sometimes at the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna; until 2016, he also taught annually at Europe’s oldest university (Bologna). In addition to almost 100 articles and book chapters, he has authored or edited 16 books – including Communism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press: 2009) – and his work has been published in 19 languages. Professor Holmes was President of the International Council for Central and East European Studies 2000-2005, and has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia since 1995.
