Editor's Introduction

Abstract

The ongoing tragedy of Russia's war on Ukraine, already well into its second year, has sparked a fundamental reassessment in the field of Slavic Studies and calls for its decolonization. Long dominated by studies of Russia, the various disciplinary fields within Slavic Studies have engaged in numerous discussions and debates over the past year about how to decenter Slavic Studies, how to balance scholarship about the region, and how to recognize voices from the region that have been marginalized, ignored, and diminished. To this end, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburg, in partnership with the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and with the support of a long list of co-sponsors, organized a six-part virtual speakers series in Spring 2023 that brought together a diverse collection of professionals to discuss the need for and practical means to address the “outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it.”1 H-Russia, an H-Net online community, established a blog series on “Decolonizing Russian Studies” that has stimulated interesting conversations among scholars toward decentering Slavic Studies from multiple directions.2 The journal Russian History issued a call for contributions to address such problems in the study of Russian history, and the journal Kritika, in collaboration with the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, is planning a conference and special journal issue on “Eurasia Decentered” for 2024. Moreover, the major US-based professional organization for Slavic Studies, the Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies (ASEEES), has selected “Decolonization” as its 2023 conference theme, asking its members to engage in the “reassessment and transformation of Russo-centric relationships of power and hierarchy both in the region and in how we study it.”3 Such interest among scholars to begin to reimagine scholarship about the region reflects the profound impact that Russia's war on Ukraine has had, even far from the front lines.