Conference: Unorthodox and Austro-Marxism in Eastern Europe and Beyond

The aim of the conference was to present current research, to deepen knowledge of Austro-Marxist and unorthodox Marxist thought in Eastern Europe from the early 1900s to the beginning of the Second World War, and to encourage further research on the subject.

The main idea behind the conference was to show the variety of unorthodox Marxist thought in broader Eastern Europe in the historical context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as between the two World Wars when unorthodox Marxism and Austromarxist influences took their diverse national shapes in connection to different political, economic and social developments in different Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. 

The conference covered the broadest spectre of unorthodox Marxist and Austro-Marxist theories and thinkers. The panels were not organised around the countries-centred model, nor on the strict thematical units model, but as the collaborative platform whose aim is to gather broader information about possible links for further research.

 

Austro-Marxism between the two world wars: the invention of a new kind of internationalism

Speaker:

  • Jean-Numa Ducange, Professor for Contemporary History at the Rouen-Normandie University, France

 

Worker control, industrial democracy and the transition to socialism in the Central European post-war debate: the specificity of Austro-Marxism

Speaker:

  • Mattia Gambilonghi, Researcher at the Fondazione Di Vittorio, Rome, Italy

 

Austro-Marxists and Social Democrats in West Balkans from fin-de-siecle until 1918

Speaker:

  • Dunja Larise, philosopher and political scientist, Vienna, Austria

 

From the freest country in the world. The Prague Spring as a joint Czech-Austrian phenomenon

Speakers:

  • Ondřej Holub, historian working at the Institute for Contemporary History of the CAS, Prague
  • Jiří Málek, Chairman of the Board of the Society for European Dialogue / Společnost pro evropský dialog (SPED), Prague; member of the transform! europe board