Author: Eileen Kunkler

The Tumult that COVID-19 Has Made in Our Daily Lives, continued

In continuation of our first post documenting the changes that COVID-19 is making in the lives of people across the globe, this week we are publishing a secondary post of three more responses from Budapest, Tbilisi, and Rome.

–Emma Pratt, Tbilisi, Georgia

I have been staying at home since before the government restrictions were passed, so I don’t have any photos of my own, but I highly recommend these photos of deserted Tbilisi from Open Caucasus Media: First Night Under Curfew and the contrast they present to the photos circulating on social media of packed churches. My neighborhood definitely sounds quieter than it did before: fewer fireworks and more dogs barking.

–Jessie Labov, Budapest, Hungary

This is me shopping on March 12, one of the last days before the official lock-down. I was unfortunate enough to be handed a sign from the cashier to put on my cart stating that I was the last one in my lane, and spent the next 45 minutes explaining to everyone who wanted to get behind me in line that the lane was closed. As the line next to me got longer and longer, up to 30-40 carts, it got pretty ugly. One guy tried to bribe me 30 USD to let him in front of me.

Busy grocery stores

Jessie Labov in line at a grocery store in Budapest

–Jesse Smeal, Rome, Italy

Daily life has changed dramatically. No more going out and meeting friends and family. Basically, any resemblance of a once vibrant social life has disappeared. Long lines and wait times at the supermarket and pharmacies are the social activity of the day.

<<Stay tuned for our next post on Monday, May 4 on what our participants have been up to under quarantine to pass the time!

The Tumult that COVID-19 Has Made in Our Daily Lives

The Tumult that COVID-19 Has Made in Our Daily Lives

Launching our blog post series “Notes from the Field”, we start our exploration of the havoc that the virus has caused on our daily lives by documenting the changes in routine and environments in which we live. We asked our participants to reflect on and share an example and/or photo of how COVID-19 has changed daily life in the city and country in which they are living.

–Eric Bednarski, Warsaw, Poland

It is now mandatory for everyone in Poland who goes out in public to wear a face mask, a completely surreal sight. Until now I would say only about one third to half of the people you’d see on the street would have on a mask. Now, it is everyone.

–Adela Muchova, Prague, Czechia      

The quarantine rules and obligation to wear facemasks anywhere in public is the most visual representation and reminder of the changes people in the Czech Republic are facing now. More out of sight, daily life changed dramatically when people had to start working from home and home-schooling overnight.

People wearing face masks

Adela Muchova and family in Prague

–Conrad Rinto, Budapest, Hungary

Below is a picture of the popular Budapest tourist destination, the Houses of Parliament. On a beautiful spring day, Parliament with its adjoining square, Kossuth Ter, would be brimming with tourists. Due to the COVID-19, the Budapest tourism industry has evaporated.  In addition to the missing tourists and vendors, the Hungarian Honor Guard no longer perform their ceremonial flag display in front of Parliament.”

Large building on an empty square

<<Check back tomorrow morning for set two of responses, with entries from Budapest, Tbilisi, and Rome!

About the authors

Our participants—friends, alumni, and affiliates of CSEES and Ohio State who are living across Eastern and Southern Europe and in the Caucasus— in the Notes from the Field blog series are:

Eric Bednarski, a documentary filmmaker who lives in Warsaw, was due to screen his film Warsaw: A City Divided at the Wexner Center for the Arts on April 5th. As a result of the pandemic, the screening had to be cancelled. There are tentative plans to reschedule a screening of this fascinating documentary sometime in November.

Jessie Labov is a resident of Budapest, Hungary. She is a Resident Fellow of the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University, as well as the Director of Academic and Institutional Development at McDaniel College Budapest. Prior to moving to Budapest, Jessie was a professor of Slavic and East European languages and cultures at Ohio State.

Ann Merrill, a translator and tour leader with CHERNOBYL TOUR® Educational Programs, graduated from Ohio State with a BA in Russian and an MA in TESOL and has been living for some years in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Kathryn Metz is a former outreach coordinator for the Center for Slavic and East European Studies (CSEES). She holds an MA in Human Rights from Central European University and she has carried out extensive field work in the Balkans supporting refugees and migrants.

Adela Muchova is PhD Candidate at the University of Vienna who currently is residing in Prague, Czech Republic. She works as a project manager for European Platform, an educational NGO focused on European themes.

Emma Pratt is a 2011 graduate of the CSEES MA program in Slavic and East European studies. A long-time resident of Tbilisi, Georgia, she currently works as lecturer at the International School of Economics.

Conrad Rinto is a 2017 graduate of the CSEES MA program in Slavic and East European studies. Since fall 2019, Conrad has been based in Budapest, Hungary as the Ohio National Guard Liaison in the U.S. Embassy there as part of the Ohio National Guard’s state partnership program.

Lyudmila Skryabina, who holds a PhD in history and ethnography, lives in Moscow and works with the film production company OKAPI and as a consultant for the ethnographic museum Tom River Cliff-Drawings in Kemerovo, Siberia.

Tatiana Shchytssova is a professor at and director of the Center for Research of Intersubjectivity and Interpersonal Communication at the European Humanities University and is also president of The International Association for the Humanities (IAH). She currently lives in Vilnius, Lithuania. The IAH 2020 International Congress was originally scheduled to take place in June and is now being rescheduled for early October.

Jesse Smeal, a 2003 graduate of John Cabot University in Rome, has a BA in International Affairs as well as an MA from St. John’s University in International Relations. He owns and operates two American-style restaurants called Homebaked–Grandma’s Kitchen, both located in Rome, Italy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Announcing Notes from the Field Blog Series

In response to the international COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Slavic and East European Studies is running a series of blog posts featuring insights from affiliates throughout the Eastern European and Eurasian region about this current crisis. We hope that these posts will help to enlighten our readers about the perspective of those from outside the U.S. towards the pandemic, as well as highlighting commonalities!

Please note that we have edited slightly the responses that we have collected.

Posts will be published weekly on Mondays, with a secondary publication on Tuesdays if we have multiple sets of responses for a week’s featured topic. Check back often, subscribe to updates, and/or subscribe to our weekly email newsletter for reminders about publications!

Photo caption: Beloved Russian chocolate bar Alënka has been transformed into “udalënka”, or “social distancing”, amidst a thriving COVID-19 pandemic meme culture.

Summer language programs and FLAS in a time of uncertainty

By Eileen Kunkler, CSEES assistant director

Peterhof Palace, Russia

As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, plans for summer 2020 for many have been upended. In the past few weeks, most of us have had to make radical changes to our personal and professional lives, including cancelling study abroad and travel plans for the foreseeable future, learning how to teach or take classes online, and caring for children, loved ones, and pets while working from home. In point of fact, this article was written from the comfort of the author’s home with her trusty dog by her side, instead of in the pet-free confines of Enarson Classroom Building, and most of you reading this will presumably be doing something similar from your own home offices. And the situation does not seem likely to change within the next couple of months. Recent university restrictions prohibit travel for most of the summer, study abroad programs have been cancelled, and almost all colleges and universities have decided to keep teaching online for the summer until there is more clarity about the pandemic and its duration.

Park Pobedy, Moscow, Russia

From the student perspective, summer semester, or quarter for those of us from an earlier vintage, was the chance to study abroad, to visit a foreign country or continent, to explore the world and young adulthood with a degree of independence and unfettered by family or typical routines and obligations. This is not to say that studying abroad is frivolous or without academic rigor. Summer programs are appealing exactly because they combine both, the chance to experience something different, as well as plunging into research or learning about language, history, art, culture, etc. in depth and hands-on. For language students in particular, summer programs offer the opportunity to study a foreign language intensively and usually in an immersive setting, whether abroad or at one of the many U.S.-based language workshops. These summer intensive programs give students the opportunity to make significant progress in the development of their language skills, typically studying the equivalent of two semesters of language courses over the period of six to ten weeks.

Mikulov, Czech Republic

For decades, CSEES has been a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship granting institution, and the hundreds if not thousands of CSEES summer FLAS awards over the years have funded graduate, and more recently undergraduate, students to focus on language studies during the summer. Many readers may have at some point received a FLAS, whether from CSEES or another institution. FLAS alumni are spread throughout higher education institutions across the country, graduate programs, and government agencies, creating a lasting network that supports and advocates for the study of foreign languages in the U.S. If you have ever attended an area studies conference, you know that more than one introduction or conversation has been started by sharing a FLAS reminiscence.

Prague, Czech Republic

Despite COVID-19, CSEES’ summer 2020 FLAS program will continue, though in an admittedly abbreviated and drastically altered form. Understandably, many students are disappointed to not have the opportunity to study abroad or experience the camaraderie of studying with a cohort at a domestic program. But many programs are adapting to the current situation that we find ourselves in and are figuring out how to create good virtual, intensive programs for the summer. Additionally, the Department of Education has given FLAS programs temporary permission to award summer fellowships for online programs with case-by-case approval, a break from usual prohibitions against online learning. As a current language student myself, I must admit I started online coursework a few weeks ago with trepidation, but I quickly saw that with a good teacher and program, language learning can be effective online. Programs with long histories of providing quality, in-person instruction are making the leap to maintain what programming they can, and some such as the Critical Languages Institute are even offering a much-reduced tuition fee for many of their programs. Below are a few examples:

This is not meant as an exhaustive list, or to recommend certain programs over others. However, it is meant to say that there are still opportunities out there for language students that are FLAS eligible and ways to keep pursuing language and area studies even in a remote environment. Hopefully summer 2021 will see our world returning to normal. But in the interim, the CSEES FLAS program intends to keep supporting students’ language and area studies learning goals through new modalities, faithfully adhering to its mission.

Unexpected Thoughts from a Trip to Poland

A view across an open plaza, bordered by multicolored buildings and people standing

Old City, Warsaw

By Brenden Wood

My grandmother was a heritage speaker of Polish, and I had always admired her ability to speak in another language. When I came of college age, I wanted to pursue Polish, but I was not able to during my undergraduate career for a host of reasons, the foremost being that it just isn’t widely taught. So, when I arrived to OSU last year to start my M.A. at the Slavic Center, I jumped at the chance to finally study Polish. I had studied Russian at that point for four years, and I was excited to be able to start in on a new Slavic language. Unlike with Russian, however, I had no career goal or aspirations with the language. The language is simply something that I have wanted to learn for a long time, and I am excited to finally have the opportunity to thoroughly explore the language. Therefore, when I had the chance to travel to Poland this past December, I didn’t hesitate.

Weirdly, I had no personal expectations for the trip. My family came from southeastern Poland, by Zamosc, but we have retained no connection with family in the area. My great-grandfather did not leave on happy terms. I did not have any glorious or romantic ideas to reach back into a forgotten past, and hopefully pull something forward. I figured that I would enjoy the journey, and see where it took me.

I toured Warsaw and Krakow and I went on an excursion to Auschwitz. Writing about what is there does not do it justice, but suffice to say that I did not walk away any more distraught or calmly than when I arrived. I instead got an unsettling sensation that I was a witness, and I felt a sense of odd displacement. It wasn’t that they didn’t make a great impression on me, quite the opposite. I think that it was more that I didn’t have any idea how I would feel after seeing these places, ravaged as they all were by history. It was easy to imagine that seeing Auschwitz would give me a sense of closure or understanding, but instead it just left me with a pensive feeling, as if I had left with more questions than when I had arrived. However, these questions now are still not clear.

A white, horse drawn carriage, with lighted Christmas tree in the background

Stary Rynek, Krakow

One particular event sticks out in my head as I attempt to come to terms with everything. I had the chance to sit down for a meal with relatives of a family friend who are natives of Poland, now living in the small town of Siedlec. As most know, Poland has had a difficult century in terms of political independence and stability. After being ravaged by the Third Reich in the 1940’s, Poland fell behind the Iron Curtain, and was subjected in many ways to the authority of the Soviet Union. Sparing everyone the well-known history lesson here, I’ll just say that as a result of this political situation, learning Russian became mandatory, which is what brings me back to my curious dinner in Siedlec.

My host and hostess both spoke broken English, but each commanded a decent vocabulary and passive understanding of the language. My host spoke excellent Russian, while my hostess had a better command of English. Naturally, they both spoke Polish pretty well. My command of English is that of a native, and my abilities in Russian, although by no means native, are not paltry. My Polish is definitely more primitive, but I can communicate and understand. What ensued over dinner was a conversation in a mixture of three languages, a conversation which conveyed to me sadness, anger, fear, but, above all, great pride. My hosts love their country dearly, and are proud of all that has happened there. What was odd for me, was that I understood the events we discussed not as a student of Poland, but as somebody who has long studied Russia and the Soviet Union. When at a loss for a word, my host and I would revert to Russia to clarify a word, while I would revert to English with my hostess. It was a bit disconcerting to use Russian at the table, as it clearly made everyone a bit uncomfortable. My hostess did not retain her knowledge of the language, and it clearly had been something that she had not made a point to remember. My host, who used Russian at work, had been forced by the nature of his profession to retain a technical command of the language. However, it clearly made him too uncomfortable to have to rely on Russian with me when we were all at a loss for words.

Probably the most interesting takeaway from this pleasant dinner was when we discussed how things had changed in Krakow. They told me that prior to the 1990s, Krakow had fallen into disrepair. They were not specific as to why the city was allowed to literally crumble, but it was clear that it was the result of a lack of funding and motivation under the communist regime.  The answers are clear: feeling trapped by communism, the Poles were more focused on survival than maintaining the city and allowing the communists to enjoy the beauty and pride of Krakow. What was a bit perplexing was that the people of Krakow, who so clearly loved their city, allowed it decline to the point of shame leading up the 1990s, but immediately began to rejuvenate the city once Poland was once more democratic. The people of Warsaw had leapt to repair Warsaw after the war, even though they were at that time falling under the yoke of communist rule. This perhaps seems as if I am running circles around something with a clear answer, but I still pause and think. The anger toward the communists and the Soviet Union was tangible from the conversation, but so too was the pride at how Krakow has been revived. What is unclear to me is how this pride was maintained as a beacon and hope for all those years, but now seems to render itself both positively and negatively. It is positive in that they revived a beautiful city rich in history and culture, but negative in that this beauty is now viewed as a reminder of vindication for decades of being wronged. That is at least how it is seems to a humble foreigner.

A poster with writing in Polish with a skull at the top and a red star with a hammer and sickle in it

A 1940s Anti-Soviet poster

I am still mulling over a lot of what I saw and discussed with people when I was there, but I nevertheless keep returning to that unsettling sensation I got while there. As I said, I felt a witness in a distant way to everything that has happened there. I see the logic and reasoning behind the fear, anger, and sadness. I also understand the pride. Being a student of post-Soviet space, I understand the importance of historical memory, and the difficulty that it poses to each individual. It was odd to be connected to Poland by blood, albeit distantly, but to understand it better through the lens of the Russian language and post-Soviet politics and memory. It was a very interesting trip, and I look forward to return.

Learning Russian at a U.S. Based Summer Language Program

By Steven Kenworthy, MA student in Slavic and East European studies and public policy

My name is Steven Kenworthy and I’m a grad student striving to complete a dual master’s degree in two years. Being in a unique situation where I would need to achieve 4 years of Russian knowledge within this 24-month window, I knew that my summers would be spent in immersive language programs. As much as I would love to have spent both in Eastern Europe, I knew that it was an unlikely option with a wife and two pets back in Columbus.

On top of that, we were down to a single income, which doesn’t exactly promote overseas study. I wasn’t aware as to whether or not I would receive a fellowship or scholarship for the summer, so I opted for the affordable route. I would enroll at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

Like any other course, I had heard mixed reviews from classmates on the “Indiana Experience”. Some said it was challenging, some easy, some said they loved it. I got a variety blend of the typical reactions. Me being an optimist, I assumed the best and took my positive hopes to Bloomington in late May.

Our nine-week course took off out of the gates, not speaking a dribble of English from day one. Mind you, this was Russian two. We were relatively new to the language and probably weren’t quite ready for this just yet. Okay, we were overwhelmed. Thankfully my class consisted of four other Buckeyes who beside me ground through the first couple of adjustment weeks.

I’d be lying if I said it was a smooth ride at the outset. It was uncomfortable. There were times when all five of us were completely lost. There were moments of defeat. There were days when we felt like we might never get caught up. But we did.

By week three or four, I felt more comfortable. I was beginning to understand everything the professors were saying and my Russian was coming along. It was finally slowing down for me. Not only were my language skills evolving, but rather quickly I might say. Of course, I’m still far from my goal of buttery-smooth fluency, but hey – you have to start somewhere.

To think that I struggled to say where I was from in the first days makes me laugh. To go from that hopeless state to being able to carry on basic conversations for upwards of 15 or 20 minutes is pretty remarkable. I’m nobody special either. My classmates achieved similar results and I think we were all pretty overwhelmed by the amount of content we’d absorbed in our brief time in Bloomington.

By the end of the semester I felt a sense of relief, accomplishment, surprise even. Through the discomfort of week one, to the finish line in week nine, I’d come quite far. Not only did I accumulate a year’s worth of Russian in just over two months, but I grew as a person as well. Sometimes we have to accept the lumps of discomfort to grow.

At Indiana, I not only got to learn a beautiful language, but I proved to myself that I can overcome my own doubt in the face of adversity.

Learning Russian in Kazakhstan

By Brenden Wood, MA student in Slavic and East European Studies

Bright blue lake between mountain peaks

Big Almaty Lake

When I told people that I was going to Kazakhstan this summer on a fellowship to study Russian, I got funny looks and funnier attempts at saying “Kazakhstan.” Most people would just take a gander at the spelling or think through the pronunciation, and instead ask why was I not going to Russia, since I was going to study Russian. I was never really sure how to respond. I had a hard time putting my finger on “why Kazakhstan to study Russian?”

Upon arriving, my question was soon answered by my host-mother, who said it was “because Kazakhs speak the best Russian.” I admit that I scoffed at this, and I’m sure that there are a few people north of Kazakhstan who would as well. Full of answers as always, she, with the help of her son, gave me a very interesting answer, one now that I do not dismiss as the mere words of a woman who is proud of her country.

Kazakhstan is a multilingual land. Generalization is never good, but I would hazard that almost all Kazakhs speak Kazakh and Russian, obviously with varying degrees of proficiency. That being said, Kazakhs typically spoke Kazakh with each other at home, although they often spoke on the streets in Kazakh as well. That isn’t to say that Kazakhs don’t speak Russian at home, but it seemed from my experience, along with what I gathered from others in my two months there, that most Kazakhs spoke Kazakh at home. However, there still remains a large population of ethnic Russians, and Kazakhs make up a relatively narrow majority in their own country, accounting for roughly 10 million of the 18 million citizens. Don’t forget the Soviet legacy either, where Russian was, and still is, the language of official and business communication. Knowledge of Russian, if you want mobility and opportunity, is essential, and is a bone of contention as Kazakhstan works to define itself in Central Asia and the post-Soviet space.

Rolling mountains with grass and trees with a bright blue sky and clouds

Medeu

Not following where they were going, my host brother clarified for me quite well here. He said that since Russian is the language of official communication, Kazakhs speak Russian almost exclusively in formal settings, meaning that they speak less colloquially, using Russian primarily only in circumstances that demand proper grammar. Therefore, your average Kazakh speaks Russian correctly and articulately, better, my host family thought, than your average Russian.

A lake bordered by mountain slopes

Lake Kolsay

This obviously is an opinion, but it nevertheless made me pause to think, and, I shall admit, that I don’t necessarily disagree. Granted I was only there for two months, living in Almaty, where official language is much more prevalent than in the countryside. They did not contend that Kazakhs produce better literature or art with the Russian language, and they spoke strictly from a communicative point of view: for a foreigner or a native speaker, Kazakhs are easier to understand. It was a thought provoking conversation, and one in which I am glad that I had the opportunity to engage. It made me think a little deeper about travelling to a country to study a foreign language that is a foreign language there, even though the people speak it as if it is their native tongue.

Delving into Dissertation Research: A PSI Summer Experience

*We are republishing this post from autumn 2017 on an older blog that CSEES maintained on its website.

Nikki Freeman is a PhD student at OSU in the Department of History.

Woman standing under a large red sign spelling "Warszawa"

Nikki Freeman in Warsaw, Poland

 

Receiving a research grant from the Polish Studies Initiative allowed me to spend six weeks in Poland conducting research for my dissertation, “A Time to Rebuild: The Education and Rehabilitation of Jewish Children in Postwar Germany and Poland, 1945 – 1953.” My research explores how the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee worked alongside the Central Committee of Jews in Poland on behalf of Jewish children to reconstruct Jewish life after the Holocaust. In Warsaw, I studied archival documents that detailed the creation of children’s homes, schools, and summer camps. I also gained access to important Polish-language secondary literature at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. In addition to conducting research for my dissertation, I took a short weekend trip to Gdańsk where I visited the brand new Museum of the Second World War. I am so excited to share these experiences with OSU students as I prepare to teach my own courses on the Holocaust and the Second World War. Thanks to the Polish Studies Initiative, I was given the opportunity to start research that is absolutely essential to my dissertation and in November, I plan to return to Poland for a longterm research trip.

A red brick building with large glass front.

POLIN Museum

A Summer in Warsaw at the Institute of Aviation

We are republishing this post from autumn 2017 on an older blog that CSEES maintained on its website.

By Jason Scheele

This summer I worked in at the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw, Poland. During my time at the Institute of Aviation, I worked on modeling the forces on a helicopter blade during flight using a series of computer programs called Computational Fluid Dynamics. The work I completed this summer granted me an in depth look at the programs used in the aerospace industry today. I also gained first-hand experience solving real-world problems from start to finish, which will benefit me for the rest of my career in aerospace engineering.

Luckily, I lived close to the center of Warsaw, only having to travel 20 minutes on the tram. Nearly every day after work, I traveled downtown to explore Warsaw and experience the Polish culture. I very quickly fell in love with the city of Warsaw because of its amazing public transportation system, cleanliness and of course the delicious traditional food that could be found all over the city. I found the Polish people to be extremely friendly and I was quite relived that nearly everyone spoke English, especially if they were under 30.

I also traveled to the Polish cities of Krakow and Lublin. I enjoyed the lively nature of Krakow and had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz. I believe that everyone should travel to Auschwitz once in their lifetime because the absolute magnitude of the death camp cannot be portrayed through any media, only by going there personally. Lublin, on a brighter note, was an amazing small town in the southeast of Poland and seemed to be a great place to raise a family or attend a university.

Outside of Poland, I also traveled to Amsterdam, Brussels, Prague, Budapest and Lviv, Ukraine.

I am extremely grateful to the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the Ohio State University and especially the Polish Studies Initiative for the amazing opportunities that it provided to me, traveling through Europe this summer truly gave me a much broader prospective of the world, all of the different cultures, languages, and individuals that live here. It was a truly amazing summer thanks to the PSI.