Programme Czernin Palais

Skilling’s Return to Prague:

The Work of H. Gordon Skilling in the Light of Contemporary Research

An International Conference, Czernin Palais, Prague

Monday, 28 May 2012

9.00–9.30 Registration

9.35–9.40 Opening words (Vilém Prečan) 

9.40–11.10

Panel 1 Chair: Mark Kramer

• Robert Johnson, Skilling under Scrutiny: The FBI, the INS, and the Education of an Activist

• Alex Pravda, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics in Perspective: Diversity, Pluralism and Policy Change in Soviet Russia

• Franklyn Griffiths: Recollections: Working with Gordon Skilling against the Totalitarian Model of Soviet Politics

• Timothy Colton, Gordon Skilling and the Evolution of Soviet and Russian Studies (to be distributed in written form)

• Discussion

11.10–11.30 

• Coffee break

11.30–13.00

Panel 2 Chair: Alex Pravda

• Oldřich Tůma, Crises of Communist Regimes: A Typology

• Mark Kramer, A Reassessment of Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution and the Legacy of the Prague Spring

• Jitka Vondrova, The Prague Spring, 1968: An Interrupted Revolution?

• Jacques Rupnik, H. Gordon Skilling: From Interrupted to Velvet Revolution

• Discussion

13.00–14.00: lunch

14.00–15.00

Panel 3 Chair: Jacques Rupnik

• Matěj Spurný, From Skilling to King: Scholarly Observations on Late-nineteenth-century Czech-German Relations

• Milan Hauner, Skilling’s ‘Lions or Foxes: Heroes or Lackeys?’: More Than Twenty Years After

• Samuel Abrahám, Gordon Skilling’s Views on Czech and Slovak Political Culture

15.00–15.20 

• Coffee break

15.20–16.20

General discussion to Panels 2 and 3

Chair: Alex Pravda and Jacques Rupnik

16.20-17.00

Panel 4 Chair: Oldřich Tůma

• Ivan Šedivý, Masaryk Studies and the Public Discourse after November 1989 (presented by Luboš Velekj)

• Discussion

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

9.00–10.30

Panel 5 Chair: Barbara Falk

• Jiří Koubek, H. G. Skilling and His Types of Authoritarian Regimes

• Radek Buben, From Theories of Totalitarianism to Rational Choice: The Development of the Study of Non-democratic Regimes in Comparative Political Science

• Martin Štefek, H. G. Skilling and the Behavioural Revolution

• Discussion

10.30–11.00

• Coffee break

11.00–12.30

Panel 6 Chair: Oldřich Tůma

• Barbara Falk: The Historiography of Dissent: The Legacy of H. Gordon Skilling

• Leonid Gibiansky, Post-Soviet Russian Historiography in Search of the Soviet Role in Establishing the Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe

• Svetlana Savranskaya, A Typology of Dissent in the USSR and Today’s Russia

• Discussion

12.30

• Conclusions Chair: Vilém Prečan

• Tom Blanton

• Closing words: Vilém Prečan

13.30 

• lunch

19.00 Museum Kampa

• Opening of the exhibition