Alumni

Lyudmila Huseynova is a resident of the temporarily occupied Novoazovsk region of Donetsk region where she worked as a safety engineer at a local poultry farm. At the time of her arrest, she had spent the past five years caring for orphans and semi-orphans from the temporarily occupied village of Primorske. She was detained on October 9, 2019 for volunteering, espousing a pro-Ukrainian position (a blue-yellow flag hung over her house in Novoazovsk for a long time), and for her social media activity. Lyudmila was initially detained in the Izolyatsia prison, where she was severely tortured. She was later transferred to a pre-trial detention center in Donetsk and charged with “espionage.” During the three years of Ludmila Huseinova’s imprisonment, the local “courts” never delivered the so-called sentence.
Anna Olsen is a senior combat medic of the chemical and biological protection company of the 36th separate brigade of marines. She, along with her siblings and stepsisters, was at the Ilyich factory in Mariupol. She was captured and spent six months in captivityat Olenivka, undergoing physical and psychological torture, and held with over 3 dozen others in a cell designed for just six individuals.
Tetiana Katrychenko is a journalist, coordinator of Ukrainian NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), and author of the 2019 report Prisoners of War and Civilian Hostages of Donbass. Since the beginning of the armed conflict, her journalistic focus has been on covering the topic of illegally detained persons in eastern Ukraine. Katrychenko later shifted from journalism work to conducting advocacy campaigns in support of detainees’ families and subsequently joined the MIHR’s team. Since February 2020, Katrychenko has been a member of the Commission launched by the Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories in Ukraine, which deals with issues related to the recognition of persons deprived of liberty as a result of armed aggression against Ukraine. Katrychenko manages the Female Face of Donbass Hostages project: she compiles lists of hostages held by representatives of illegal armed groups in Donbas, maintains contact with relatives of hostages, and interviews ex-hostages after their release. She also provides advice to relatives of newly detained persons, as well as to the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies dealing with the issue.

In the past few years there has been a revived interest in how international Communism affected politics and society in the Balkan region during the Cold War. Most importantly, new research has convincingly shown that Soviet control was not uniform in the region and that the cracks that appeared on the surface of the Soviet bloc merit investigation as they expose significant differences at the societal, political, and cultural level. Can we speak of Balkan Communism as a distinct analytical category or is it more pertinent to deal with communism in the region based solely upon its national framework and characteristics? This panel of scholars aims to present to the public new findings on this topic while exploring the residue of that era in collective memory and public history.
10.00 – 11.30: First panel
Elidor Mëhilli, City University of New York
Balkan Communism as a Lesson in Geopolitics
Nikos Marantzidis, University of Macedonia
Stillborn Balkanism: the Comintern, the Balkan Communist Federation and Greek Communism during the interwar

Theodora Dragostinova, Ohio State University
“As Much Balkan as Communist”: Perspectives on Balkan Communism during the Late Cold War

13.30 – 15.00: Second panel
Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland
Balkan Communism as National Stalinism: Reflections on the Romanian Experiment

Emily Greble, Vanderbilt University
Contested Communisms: Myths, Practices, and Experiences of Communism in Yugoslavia

Stefan Gužvica, University of Belgrade
Sickle Without Hammer: a Balkan Perspective on Communism from the Comintern to the Cominform

15.30 – 17.00: Plenary session and concluding remarks (discussant: John Iatrides, Southern Connecticut University)

The presentation will provide a brief overview of the history of former Yugoslavia and focus on its violent break-up, especially on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will discuss the refugee experience and importance of family relationships, ethnic and religious identities, as well as the issues around returning home and rebuilding their community in Banja Luka.

Jasmina Besirevic Regan is the Associate Dean for Graduate Education at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a faculty member in the Departments of Sociology and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. Her academic training is in the sociology of genocide and her teaching and research interests include ethnic conflict, identity, nationalism, human rights, and refugee resettlement. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale having also earned the Master’s degree there. Her dissertation on ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka focuses on the emergence of a Bosnian Muslim refugee community.

Dr. Besirevic Regan has presented papers on the sociology of genocide at a number of professional meetings, and has been invited to speak at international conferences both at Yale and abroad. Before joining the Graduate School academic affairs team, she served as the Dean of Trumbull College, one of fourteen residential colleges at Yale, for twelve years.

The European Studies Council of the Yale MacMillan Center and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale present
“From Frontlines to Frontpages: Conversation with Valerie Hopkins”
Moderated by Marci Shore, Professor of History, Yale University
Lunch at 12:30pm ET, talk at 1:00pm ET
Location: Luce Hall, Rm 202
Part of the European & Russian Studies Community Lunch Seminars
Valerie Hopkins is an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering the Russo-Ukrainian war, as well as internal transformation of Russian society amidst war of aggression.
Ms. Hopkins will discuss how Ukrainian and Russian societies function during times of war, as well as how journalists manage to do their jobs in the midst of authoritarian regimes and hostilities, in a conversation with Professor Marcy Shore.
Ms. Hopkins began her journalistic career in Bosnia and Herzegovina at a local news outlet reporting on war crimes trials. She covered the Balkans and eastern Europe for a decade, most recently for the Financial Times, before moving to Moscow to join The New York Times. She is a 2022 recipient of Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence and the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) Distinguished Fellow Award.
Ms. Hopkins completed her master’s degree at Columbia Journalism School, where she won a scholarship named for Anne O’Hare McCormick, a New York Times journalist who in 1937 became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence. At Columbia, her investigation into female war criminals won one of the school’s top awards
In 2022 Valerie Hopkins won the Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence for providing crucial updates and insights into the war in Ukraine and life under Russian occupation.
”From a sharp live update on developments on the battlefield to a revealing look at what it felt like in Moscow as men disappeared during Putin’s draft, Valerie has shown remarkable courage, empathy and insight in her reporting,” said Phil Pan, International editor of NYT.
This event is held under Chatham House Rule. Participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The purpose of the rule is to encourage open discussion since anything said is “off the record”.

This director’s talk and advanced screening of the upcoming film “If These Walls Could Sing,” from Disney Original Documentary, gives exclusive access to the most famous and longest-running studio in the world, Abbey Road Studios. In this personal film of memory and discovery, director Mary McCartney guides us through nine decades to tell the stories of some of the studio’s most iconic recordings — and the people who made them happen. Discussion moderated by Rachel Fine, executive director of Yale Schwarzman Center.