BLOOD OF OTHERS Book Talks

At the biennial Forum on European Culture in Amsterdam -- with the theme 'Art against the Tyrants' -- Rory Finnin discusses the tumultuous history of Crimea and argues why returning the Black Sea peninsula to Ukrainian control is the only path to a sustainable peace.

The Forum on European Culture is organised by De Balie in collaboration with DutchCulture. Since its inception in 2016, the Forum has served as a platform for artists, thinkers, and cultural practitioners from around the world to engage in dialogue about Europe's cultural identity and future. 

Russia is an expansionist land empire, and Crimea is one of its most prized colonies. Like the rest of Ukraine, the Black Sea peninsula has long been an object of imperial desire. It has served as an exotic showcase of Russian and Soviet power; it has been presented as a Shangri-La of mountainous coasts and warm water beaches. But behind Crimea’s postcard image lie much deeper and darker realities of demography, history and geography that Russia has anxiously tried to conceal and erase for centuries. One of them is the Crimea of the Crimean Tatars, who are recognized as an indigenous people of Ukraine. In the George Shevelov Memorial Lecture in Ukrainian Studies at Columbia University, Rory Finnin discussed the literature and culture of this Crimea hidden from our view, paying special attention to key Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian writers determined to open our eyes.

The modern Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar alliance has succeeded in overcoming narratives of historical antagonism by excavating and promoting a 'practical past' of solidarity in their stead. In a keynote to the conference 'Crimea and the Black Sea: Colonialism, Occupation, and Possibilities for Reintegration' at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Rory Finnin explored these visions of alliance and cooperation in works of literature and film and analysed their strategic setting in the seventeenth century, before the arrival of Russian colonial power.

In the 2024 Laura Shannon Prize Lecture, Finnin joined the Nanovic Institute at the University of Notre Dame to explain the profound significance of Crimea and share untold stories of local resistance to Russian colonialism, past and present. Through literary and archival sources, he shed light on the remarkable history and culture of Crimea’s indigenous Sunni Muslim people, the Crimean Tatars. His lecture argued that Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar relations are a key to understanding contemporary Ukraine and its vibrant civic national identity, which may be the most powerful force defending liberal democracy today. Watch the lecture here.

To mark 80 years since Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars, Nuffield College at the University of Oxford hosted a talk by Rory Finnin in conversation with Dr Tamar Koplatadze, Associate Professor in Postsocialist Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford.

In this unique multimedial event organised by Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education, Rory Finnin offered a history of resistance in Crimea and sat down with Mustafa Dzhemilev -- legendary Crimean Tatar leader and Hero of Ukraine -- to discuss non-violent resistance, fear, and the urgency of defeating Russia's escalating aggression.

In this special event, organised by the Sorbonne and the Ukrainian Institute (Kyiv), Rory Finnin joined extraordinary poet Halyna Kruk in the Amphithéâtre Richelieu and cast Crimea as the 'original sin' of Russian military aggression and dispelled myths about the peninsula that seek to conceal centuries of Russian settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing.

In this public lecture, organised by the Fund of the President of Ukraine for the Support of Education, Science and Sport in collaboration with the Ukrainian Catholic University, Rory Finnin discussed the importance of Crimea and a 'Black Sea orientation' for the study of Ukraine and advocates for the growth of Crimean Tatar Studies in Ukraine and around the globe.

Blood of Others is featured as Book of the Day on the New Books Network. In this podcast Rory Finnin has a wide-ranging conversation with host Dr Matthew Pauly about the origins of the book and about the ways it confronts the colonial politics at the heart of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

At the conference 'Decolonization in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe' in Tutzing, Germany, Rory Finnin brings insights from Blood of Others to a wide-ranging discussion about the deoccupation of Crimea with human rights activist and civil society leader Alim Aliev. 

At the Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Rory Finnin discusses Blood of Others with a panel of leading scholars in New York.

In this book talk at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London (UCL SSEES), Rory Finnin confronts the legacy of Russian and Soviet settler colonialism in Crimea and discusses the need for what historian Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi called 'a Black Sea orientation' in the field of Ukrainian Studies. Through examples of poetry and film, he also explores the idea of Crimea in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar cultures after 2014. 

In a book launch co-organised by the European Parliament Liaison Office in the United Kingdom and the Ukrainian Institute London, Rory Finnin discusses Blood of Others with writer James Meek and confronts the phenomenon of Russian and Soviet settler colonialism, which he calls “a defining historical and political phenomenon too often swept under the academic rug and ignored in political discourse.”

Alongside Cambridge colleagues Anna Berman and Stanley Bill, Rory Finnin discusses Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity at Trinity College, Cambridge. 

An interview about Ukraine, Crimea, settler colonialism, and Blood of Others with Ludovico Zanette (in English from 1:54)

Part of the Summer School in Memory and Conflict Studies organised by the Kyiv School of Economics.

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Organized by the Chair of Entangled History of Ukraine at Europa-Universität Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder).

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