Internalizing the Impact of Exile: Migration Experience, Liberation, and Identity Change

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Defeat is the trope of every exile. Both the voyagers themselves and also their hosting nations often perceive emigration as a lot which is ultimately reserved for unfortunates. The painful identity shift that every exile generation undergoes is not only an exercise of trying to “fit in,” but also an experience of crafting one’s personality anew, and how deep the latter runs is an evolving question. This panel will attempt to discuss the exiles’ stories from that angle: how did the exiles from Russia and Eastern Europe and those adjacent to them perceive themselves? What role did this identity shift play in their biographies? Was their “carry-on” identity split, robustly unchanging, or completely redone as a result? In the end, did they win their pyrrhic freedom, or become even more unfree due to their new status abroad?
With panel participants from four continents, all with migration experiences, we will cover the full breadth of the Slavic diaspora. With two women on the panel, we intend to provide a gendered account and analysis. Utilizing a number of transnational examples, this panel will try to search for answers as to whether it was possible for exiles to recut themselves from a new cloth, and whether emigration in its adversity can provide liberation.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Mie Nakachi, Hokusei Gakuen U (Japan)

Papers

• The Fate of the China Russians: Exclusion, Agency, Divided Redemption - David Wolff, Hokkaido U (Japan)

• Nuclear Baseball: Colonel Boris T. Pash - Oleg Beyda, U of Melbourne (Australia)

• Tracing the Post-War Fates of Soviet Collaborators in Australia - Aleksandra Riabichenko, U of Melbourne (Australia)

Discussant

• Akihiro Iwashita, Hokkaido U (Japan)