Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge

The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires after the First World War resulted in the emergence of a number of independent states between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas. Shared economic and security concerns of these new countries inspired ideas about a common geopolitical block in the area before the Second World War. Such a geopolitical block had also been conceived by the region’s powerful neighbours as a means of dominating it (e.g., Germany’s Mitteleuropa or France’s Little Entente). From within the region, one of the most powerful impulses for the region’s consolidation and independence from external powers came from Poland as a neo-Jagiellonian federation proposed by Józef Pilsudski.

While the early twentieth century concepts, deeply rooted in geopolitics, had remained frozen in the period of Soviet dominance, they re-emerged at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the context of a revival of democracy and European integration. The latter factor in particular facilitated the creation of the Central European Free Trade Agreement, as well as the Visegrad Group. These initiatives illustrated both joint efforts in the name of a “return to Europe” as well as competing visions and paths to realise it. Since 2004, the EU enlargement and Russia’s aggressive politics has led to a series of new initiatives, aimed at giving the region a stronger voice in EU and NATO as well as improving its economic and security network. Today, the Russo-Ukrainian war seems to lay foundations for the region’s enhanced common identity.
The symposium will bring together the leading researchers including:
Dr Donatas Kupčiūnas (University of Cambridge)
Dr Przemyslaw Biskup (PISM)
Dr Stanley Bill (University of Cambridge)
Mrs Kinga Dudzińska-Raś (PISM)
Professor Bartłomiej Zdaniuk (University of Warsaw)