About the Research Centre for East European Studies
The Research Centre for East European Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa – FSO) is an independent research institute attached to the University of Bremen. It is funded jointly by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs and the State of Bremen. Founded during the Cold War in 1982, the FSO today combines two goals: the (re)examination of societies and cultures in the Eastern Bloc and the analysis of the transformation and contemporary developments in the successor states.
The Centre's current interdisciplinary research focuses on the general question of to what extent the legacy of state-directed socialism and Soviet hegemony has influenced present developments and shaped the countries and societies of Eastern and Central Eastern Europe. The themes of dissent and consensus, power and opposition are investigated in the different conditions prevailing during the period of authoritarian rule and hegemony and the era of post-socialist transformation.
The Research Centre's work is divided into four areas:
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archive,
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academic research,
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analytical digests of current events and
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exhibitions.
History of the Research Centre
The Research Centre for East European Studies was founded in 1982 under Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Eichwede as a repository for Samizdat (underground literature) documents from Eastern Europe. Its task was and still is to collect materials documenting alternative thinking and social movements in Eastern Europe, to analyse them and place them in the historical, social and political context of East European structures and developments, and to publish the results of research carried out using them.
During the years of the Eastern Bloc, sensorship and repression, the Research Centre acted as a depository of cultural memory for dissenters and members of the opposition in Eastern Europe. Documents from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the GDR arrived in Bremen via various routes. In this was, the Research Centre came to be a place of refuge for dissidents and their work in spite of the Iron Curtain. As a result, during the 1980s, the Research Centre concentrated on manifestations of independent artistic acivity and intellectual creativity in the underground. It looked for the unofficial currents and dissenting thought behind the facade of official politics that gave a view into the internal workings of these societies.
The political and social upheaval in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s represented a turning point for the Research Centre. The amount of material collected by the archive rocketed following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR in 1989 and 1991. Documents that had been smuggled to Bremen illegally or semi-legally could now be transported officially. In the 1990s, the archive grew rapidly. Today, Bremen and its growing archive structure continue to offer a suitable home for materials documenting the activity of alternative groups and individuals.
Moreover, the Centre's research activity increasingly centred on the process of transition in Eastern and Central Europe. Its historians, political scientists and literary scholars concentrated less on economic processes, which are often the subject of research on transition, and more on the historical traditions and cultural continuties that exerted an influence after 1989 and 1991 and laid the foundation for the transformation in politics, economics, society and culture.
Sponsors
The Research Centre is a public-law foundation supported by the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It initially received financial backing from the Volkswagen Foundation, but in 1986/7 the Research Centre entered the joint funding programme of the Standing Conference of Culture Ministers. As an institution "at" the University of Bremen, the Research Centre is closely connected to the university via the person of the director, who also holds a chair at the University of Bremen, and through regular consultation and cooperation.
Please note, that more detailed information about us and our projects is only available in the German version. |
