 Hello everyone. It is our pleasure to welcome you in the auditorium of Modem today. We've been giving you some end-outs that have some quotes from the talk for today to for you to follow more and to, yeah, at the end of some questions and be a bit aware about what we have been, we will talk about. My name is Patricia Covey. I'm one of the members of the collective beyond the post soviets. With my colleagues here, Julia, fish, Sasha pevac, kissing shaft, Viola, that I can see on the screen, but more also online, we are very happy to welcome at Annus. And first of all, on the behalf of the collective, I would like to thank the thanks to team of modem Luxembourg and personally Bettina Steinbrugge, Michelle Cotton, Joel Valabrega, Clementine probich and Lina John with whom I'm sharing the floor for this introduction. And for their invitation and supports in developing these programs, which is entitled Colonialism in camouflage in the frame of the radio disaster series. So we are here today for the open lecture of the series, Colonialism camouflage and the subalterns, who speaks politics and the resistance under Russian rule by Dr. Annus. Very happy, we are very happy to and delight that you accept our invitation to take part in the series. And your colleague of the groups will join online. We are happy to see you here. But beyond the post Soviets, we are a collective that emerged in 2021 as a non hierarchical collective, bringing together people from these different backgrounds, individual territory and also perspective. We are artists, curators, researchers, thinkers, writers, but also witnesses. We're going to answer around a number of charities, values, stories, emotions or questions. Let me mention some of them. How do we relate to this cultural and geographical regions that are central eastern, that are in central, central Eastern Europe, the Baltic states to Caucasus and Central Asia. What we perceive outside and by whom they are presented are such terms as post soviets and post soviet space to the valid. How do we produce knowledge collectively and effectively, and why is it situated in relation to postcolonial studies and the colonial approach. In light with these questions or a collective spread around the geographical Europe reading sessions are contagion screening. They are individual stories, memories and emotions. And with every sessions that we that we hold. We engage with the local context and support locally grounded knowledge production. And decisions are moments of global and learning the idea rooted in global imperialism. I'm just handing the mic to Lynn to give you an introduction and dance to our member of the collective for the lecture. My name is Patricia and thank you Julia, Sasha and all the members of beyond the post soviet and welcome to everybody joining us here in real life and on zoom. Just a reminder for people with us on zoom that this event is being recorded. Please do turn off your cameras and your mics to ensure a smooth flowing of the event. I want to introduce quickly what the radio disaster series is. So this is a public program that was launched last year and the first edition tackle the ecological crisis. For the second edition titled the radio disaster series colonialism and camouflage. I'm myself, my colleagues, Joel Valabrega, Clementine, probably. We were very happy to work with beyond the post soviet. The second edition will be devoted to the colonial thinking and how it can be used to critically reflect on and resist the insidious of imperialist and colonialist rhetoric and practices across Europe and in post colonial territories. So today we're launching the first chapter, which focuses on post soviet territories, or what was been what had been referred to previously as post soviet territories as Patricia mentioned. And I think it's important also to remind everybody that mudams invitation to beyond the post soviet emerged in response to the military offense offensive that Russia shunned on Ukraine earlier this year in February. I thought it was an important and urgent issue to tackle. So this is the launch of the first chapter, but do stay tuned for the second chapter which will unfold over the first half of 2023 and that will expand on the issues we'll talk about today, while also focusing on the long lasting consequences of Western European colonialism. So I'll leave the floor to be on the post soviet and Dr. Annas. Yeah, thank you everybody for being here. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you, Patricia. Hello everyone. I'm really a fish part of the collective beyond the post soviet. And yes, indeed, the program colonialism is in common flash is one of the results of our long term research that we conducted together collectively. And it reflects on the form of Imperial violence and occupation in central Israel, Europe in the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Today, the military aggression of Russia what lean already mentioned against Ukraine is a symptomatic result of ongoing imperial colonial strategies and mindset that have been pervading the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian federation for centuries. And with the series of events that start today and will unfold in mudam, we invite audiences in Luxembourg and communities to take a closer look at the broader issues of colonialism and coloniality from the perspective of Eastern Europe. By bringing these topics and themes in the center of Europe. We also ask if colonialism possesses nationality and whether it's contained with territories and national borders. How can we come together to resist it. And through this program, we are also helping to discern how imperial colonial thinking survives throughout time on different territories, and in a large variety of forms in culture, language, education, memory politics, economy, historical narratives, and so on. We invite you all to for reflection, reflection, introspection and action. And now I hand over the word to Sasha. Thank you, Julia. And thank you, Patricia and lean for presenting the program a few more words about the title and the current lecture that the lecture that we're going to have today. So the program borrows its title from the book. It's called the Soviet postcolonial studies, a view from the Western Borderlands, and its author at an us, who we have the chance to have today is a literary scholar and writer at you are associate professor with talent university in Estonia, and you regularly teach at the University of Slavic and Eastern European languages and cultures in Ohio State University in the US. Your recent books include Soviet postcolonial studies, which was already mentioned, and also coloniality nationality postcolonial view on Baltic countries under Soviet rule, both were published by Routledge in 2018. You are interested in Soviet and post Soviet Baltic cultures postcolonial studies environmental studies and phenomenology of everyday life. You are also a fiction writer, and you published several novels and books for children. Your last academic book, Soviet postcolonial studies has been an essential source and support for the activities of our group. Is it also resonates with our approach to individual and collective stories, artistic practices and fiction, seen as legitimate and valuable sources of knowledge. In this book, you propose a view on the Soviet colonial project and occupation from the perspective all of the Baltic countries, and notably Estonia, when you grew up. The expression colonialism in camouflage appears there as a reference to a disguised, many faced colonial project inflicted by the Soviet Union inside and outside of its borders. In the frame of one continent and accompanied by anti-colonial and anti-capitalist rhetoric, it never explicitly acknowledged its own colonial nature. Therefore, a critical eye is required when it comes to disclosing these strategies. Thank you, Sasha. And now we just leave the floor to F and I will just remind you that people that are online if they can switch off their camera during the talk. And also that at the end we will have a Q&A that's the audience online and offline can take part in. Thank you. Hello, everyone. And thank you Muldan Museum and the collective beyond the post-Soviet for this invitation. I'm very honored to give this talk here today and I'm very much regret that I cannot be there in person. But hopefully we'll have an occasion to see and meet and talk in person some other time. Let's start to the map of the Soviet Union just to refresh all of our memories about first of all the vastness of the Russian part of it. So I have to remind you right away that actually within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics there were many other nationalities that were living there. It needs to be smaller ones, so it's not just like all hegemony Russia there. And you can see on the northern, north-western part there is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania quite small and then we go down to Belarussia, Ukraine and the other Soviet states that are part of the Soviet Union. So I start surprise, surprise with Stalin. But let me actually first go over some very basic terms here so that we are all in the same page, that's colonialism, how do you understand it? And let me just remind you, there's no one standard for colonialism. We very often encounter this attitude like well according to this classical model, you know this particular area doesn't fit in. We should understand colonialism as a phenomenon that has a very many different forms. One of them is continental colonialism. And here I provide the definition by Dietmar Schercovitz. Again, it's possible to define what's colonialism, what's continental colonialism in many different ways. But here's Dietmar. Continental colonialism is a process and outcome of territorial expansion, land-based economic underdevelopment and central periphery dependency upon a land. And he also proposes and he looks comparatively for example on Russian Empire, Chinese Empire and some others. And he proposes that in a nutshell, one can say that Maritime Empire is a more driven by economic and continental empires by political interests. And I guess this is something we can think about. And then the same statement that we already heard in the introduction, but let me just repeat it over once more, colonialism can well be in camouflage. So Soviet colonialism was a product of the era of late colonialism. The Soviet regime never publicly articulated its strategies as explicitly colonial, because at that time it wasn't fashionable anymore. To be a colonial empire was not something that you could brag about as it was the case in the 19th century. And so in the Soviet case you really had to have a critical eye to see the colonialist features under the what we can call communist camouflage under this talk of friendship of nations and all this. So let's now get to my part one of my talk. I drink to the health of the most outstanding nation. And these are the words by Stalin. And you can guess what is the most outstanding nation here for Stalin. And yes, correct. This is of course the Russian nation. Stalin proposed a victory toast. After the end of the world war two, or as Russian would say it, great patriotic war. And Stalin proposed toast on May 24, 1945, at the victory banquet organized in honor of Red Army commanders. And you see this is how the major newspaper Bravda talked about this banquet the next day. And there are these different commanders you see in the image here. And so this is the final toast of the long celebratory evening. And here's Stalin's toast. Comrades, permit me to propose one more last toast. I would like to propose a toast to the health of our Soviet people and in the first place the Russian people. I drink in the first place to the health of the Russian people because of it is the most outstanding nation of all the nations which make up the Soviet Union. I propose a toast to the Russian people, not only because it is the leading people, but also because it's clear mind stable character and patients. And here's an example of this speech or toast, which was quite short, was then reproduced in all different major newspapers all over the Soviet Union. So this is the Estonian version. You have a talk about first about some description about the reception and who participated, who said what, and then a special, special, you know, a drift is given to Stalin's toast. And let's not move forward here. But so let me just point out, Stalin's speech, herizing Russians as the greatest, as the greatest nation in the US, offers a superb starting point for investigating Soviet colonialism. As we see, Stalin uses the occasion of the victory banquet to certify the position of the Russian nation. He declares that Russian people are essentially more worthy than other nations. Sorry. Hello. Yes. So you can hear me. Let's try again. So we were just looking in the middle of the map you see here these territories that were annexed by the Soviet Union during the World War II. You can see parts of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and then parts of Poland now being about Belarus and then Ukraine, extending to the west and then Moldavia and SSR added. And of course the Kaliningrad overlasted this wet slice of land under Lithuania. Interesting. But now my screen, I cannot move my slides. Let me start the slide sharing again. Yeah. Now let me try just to start the slideshow over again. I can't share this particular slide. Yeah, that's weird. I can't. How do you see it? You still see right now my slides on the left side running through, right? Yes, right. Yeah, it does not allow me to start the slideshow for some reason anymore from the beginning. Maybe if you try and click from beginning maybe. You know where the button where it starts. Maybe go from count slide. Yes, I click it but it does not do anything. Maybe restart office maybe. That might work. Yeah, let's do this. So sorry about this. It seems like the temporality of this talk has been changed quite dramatically. Now I opened it again. All right. But it still doesn't know the slides. Oh, okay. Now it's started. So we left ourselves finishing with Stalin's toast and I want to draw a parallel here between Stalin's idea of the great Russian nation and general Kipling's poem from the 1899, which is an emblematic example of colonial discourse, colonial enlightenment discourse. So let's read this one. Take up the white man's burden in patience to abide to seek another's profit and work another's gain. Take up the white man's burden, the savage wars of peace, feel full the mouth of famine and beat the sickness case. And if we look at, okay, let me just add another example from the Stalin era. So what we see in white man's burden poem is this idea that the white man comes to help and is some kind of a superior creature who comes to other countries and helps these other countries to become almost as good as he, but not quite. And you see another similar rhetoric then around this great Russian nation discourse. Another fact or another story that's being elaborated around Stalin's quote is this idea exactly that the Russians were so great because they helped all the other nations of the USSR to overcome their long misery and their state of backwardness. In carrying out its Leninist, Stalinist nationalities policies, and this is an article also from 1945. Aside from here, the Russian nation extended its brotherly hand to the formerly backward nations of our land in order to realize their economic and cultural ascent. And then interestingly, this rhetoric of basically what we can call colonial enlightenment discourse in the Soviet era in the 1930s was connected with the Russian Empire from the 19th century and from earlier times. And a good example here is that famous Russian writer Alexander Sergei Bushkin, his monument that was erected already in 1880s. But in 1937, the original inscription is planted by the stanza from Bushkin's poem Exegimenomentum. And this particular poem then is like openly imperialist we could call it. So Bushkin imagines how his fame is appreciated all over the Russian Empire. Rumor of my fame will sweep across the great rust and my name will resound in every language that they speak. The proud grandson of the Slavs, the Fin, the still savage Tungus and the friend of the sceptical monk. And David Brandenberger, a historian has commented, and let me cite David Brandenberger here, that such a paternalistic colonialist vision of the Romanov Empire of an imperial expansive western Fin, southern nomads and small peoples of the north, particularly culturally by the Russian people, but such a vision could come to be considered compatible with Soviet ideology speaks volumes about Russia's centric tenor of the times. Nevertheless, these lines became an official mantra of source during the last years of the Soviet of the 1930s decade in particular. So to move forward here then actually let's just stop here for a short while. So what David Brandenberger points out is also that this characterization of Russians as great nation turned out to be sticky. And Brandenberger's work looks at the Russian popular culture in the 1930s and 1940s, and sees how this idea takes hold. And he follows, for example, journalistic materials there for example, transcripts of school classrooms, lesson plans and all these places you can see that that this topic is is developed in different ways. And at the same time what we also see is that this ideology didn't only flourish during the Stalin era, which of course was the best time for it, but it also was sustained later. And here's an example from ways later times. So this is a material gathered in post-Soviet Latvia, and Kevin Platt had made interviews here, and he summarizes his interview findings. And I quote Kevin Platt here, a common explanation and legitimization of the Russian presence in the area revolves around the work of cultural and social construction that Russians are thought to have carried out in building Latvian society industry and such others. Discussions of Latvian educational policies which impose education in Latvian and Russian children are most often coached in terms of the relative inferiority of Latvian civilization by comparison with Russian civilization, which processes universally recognized worldwide significance. So, and we see similar material, we find it also in other post-Soviet non-Russian states where Russian minorities still have this feeling, not of course all of them, and this particular material is called 10 years ago, but still this lingering feeling and certainly more in the Russia proper that well, we are this great nation who have always been, you know, helping other nations, not colonizing them. And David Brandenburg also points out to the other side of this idea for Russian nation. It was the orientalization of non-Russian peoples, which Brandenburg calls Stalinist Orientalism. So once Russian ethnicity was identified as historical people, it's suggested that the other non-Russian peoples like the similar pedigree. Not only the political and military innovators seen as uniformly Russian, but Russians came to exemplify progress in the cultural sphere as well with non-Russian epitomizing only traditionalism. Non-Russians were collectively cast as if frozen in time, forever clad in furs and exotic bread modern textile and surrounded with obsolete tools and field implements. Only Russian culture struts forward in time into the Soviet period. Yes, I think this map is such a wonderful example of that. You see all the Soviet nations in their national costumes which were born 100 years ago or even more in a more distant future. So you get this idea that this is how you characterize peoples. What's interesting here, this map, this is from 1969, this comes from National Geographic. So actually also Western opposition to Soviet rule, they also took over the same cliches of non-Russian nationalities. So just to conclude this part one of this talk, to point out the main points again, colonialism uses a civilizing discourse. And we have to understand that this effort to civilize another culture in another geographical area is a colonial effort, accompanied as it is by privileging of a civilizing colonial power and by disregard for local interests. And the colonial attitude entails unresponsive or a derogatory attitude towards local cultures and local ethnicities. And it proceeds from a sense of cultural difference and cultural superiority supported by a colonial power structure. And so I would now like to just very briefly touch upon the topic of education. How did education help to consolidate these colonial ideas? And then we move on to specific examples from the cultural sphere and also talk about how Sabatern finds a voice and can speak. So education and just to start out here, this is a kind of a common understanding in postcolonial studies. And here it comes from one of the major canonic textbooks, the postcolonial studies reader. Education was a massive canon in the artillery of empire. The military metaphor can however seem inappropriate since unlike outright territorial aggression, educational effects in crumptious terms, education effects in crumptious terms and domination by consent. This domination by consent is achieved through what is taught to the colonized, how it is taught and the subsequent emplacement of the educated subject as a part of the continuing imperial apparatus. And of course the same this idea of domination by consent was something that Soviets understood very well. First of all, you take over media and that's the second thing you need is education. So, and here are some examples from Estonia in higher education after the Soviet annexation of 332 Brevor PhDs only 16 could continue academic work, while some of them could be rehabilitated maybe 10-15 years later. And those who worked in the Estonian Academy of Sciences, the academics, not a single one stayed in the previous position. And in the humanities by the end of the 1950s 95% of Brevor academic staff had lost the jobs. So we're talking care about huge, huge reorganizations, people losing the jobs. However, another side of this was also just talking about what do you need to teach at schools. And of course here you encounter the same great Russian nation discourse. And this is a fragment from the discussion about how to how to study history of the U.S. and how to teach it in school programs. And the focus here is you need to talk and you need to teach children about the greatness of Russian culture. So how Russian culture is of special importance and how all the fraternal Soviet republics need to cultivate love and respect towards the Russian nation. And thus the slogan we have to learn from the Russians equals back from all corners of the world was the claim that was made in education. And this rhetoric was tuned down after the Stalin era ended, but some remnants of that definitely remained and they remained in popular consciousness, which was an important part of that. But interestingly enough, you cannot really, you cannot really just hire all teachers and fire all teachers in different levels of education in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools. Where do you get this new card? So that was a huge problem. And the result was that you couldn't really absolutely write over the past, the memory, and knowledge survived. This kind of knowledge that was, you know, typically shared in, in the pre-service times. So, so schools, school system nevertheless also continue to disseminate dissent, many lost their jobs, but many actually stayed and, and, and school kids found ways to, to preserve their materials. And this is the story of the post-World War period. Things are different in these parts of the Soviet Union, which were annexed already after the revolution. So, so it's, it's kind of a story of the Western borderlands of the Soviet Union. So, let's go to the final section of our talk. So one turn who speaks. And here, this image comes from, from the cover of my book. And I like this image very much. It's funny, because I think it just gives us a very nice sense of the complexity of the era. So, then these sculptures, external sculptures, Ferdi Starname, Karibaldi Pommel and August Pommel. What are they doing? They are modeling a sculpture of Lenin to be erected in front of the Eastern Academy of Agriculture in Tartu. This is a pre-keven task. I mean, there are certain ways how you could, how you could present Lenin, you know, for, for your creative energy. It doesn't exactly offer very much. But at the same time, all these people also come with their pasts. Ferdi Starname has been, had been living in Paris in the 1930s. He participated in the Paris 1933 Salon de Tom exhibition. And so I think they do still carry a certain like ironic attitude or a sense of estrangement towards this particular project. So these figures, it seems to me, display that quite clearly. How this is a mismatch between this Lenin and then these figures around him, which just look like, especially the two in the left side, look like some kind of, you know, European intellectuals. As Gaiotri Spivak has a arguing in the colonial context, the subaltern cannot speak. According to Spivak, the subaltern position involves the inability to express opinion in a way that would carry its weight in society. In the distribution of collective space, the subaltern Spivak describes is destined to the sphere of silent invisibility. So this is always a question of negation. So definitely in the Soviet era, where you had already in the Western Borderlands, you had already reestablished intellectual traditions. There was constant effort to negotiate what's possible to speak, what's possible to do. And then, of course, occasionally the results were even perhaps sending to Coulac prisons or whatever, but people still try it. Let me show you a few examples now. This one is by Mara Wint from 1985. We see here a vision of the sea. There is a sea in the background and the seashore. So Eastern and cultural seashore had been very, very important as part of national identity. And now what you have in the Soviet era is a militarization of the seashore. You had to have special permits to enter certain areas. It was a question of what time where beaches open, those ones which were open, etc. So this image is about, basically it exemplifies this situation, but at the same time you can say, look, this is just an image. I mean, yeah, strange bitch. So whatever you can't really say, like, look, you cannot show such an image because it's not Soviet. There's another one. This is George fights with a dragon. So this is a, it's a story, a famous story, right? And George fights the dragon. What's the question? Of course you can illustrate such myths. But of course people were reading it as fight with the Soviet dragon. So you can see that the dragon, the Soviet rule has swallowed the fighter, but the fighter still continues fighting. And this is from 1979. And here's another one. Now from the field of literary creation. This is by Jan Koplinski, a poem that was published in 1967. And we can see that this is a, we can call it an anti-colonial critique and literature. So here's the poem then. We need to walk very quietly eyes and ground. You don't need to ask what are we looking for. A long time ago, our land became yours and our state fell down in shards into the big and empty world. Find what happens as you can, only don't ask us what we are hoping for. And of course this poem, and this is the beginning of the poem. This poem was widely read in reference to the annexation of independent Estonia by the Soviet Union. But later this poem identifies the ui of the poem, those who need to walk very quietly, the ui as Native Americans. Yet the reader is left with a clear historical reference point until that 19th line of poem. But there are readers, this poem touches towards Estonian subordinate political status, which is posed in unhappy contrast with their former independence. And it's truly a clear line between you, the newcomers, and us, the local ethnicities. And let's look at another image by a Lithuanian artist, and this is again, it's a spoon. So you cannot, you can say like what's political, what's what's political about an image of a spoon. But if you look at the Lithuanian National Gallery of Art website, we hear that Carolius, the author, wanted to point out the other repressive and thorny side of the public image of socialism. So you can just, these images, these poems etc are open to interpretation. So let's actually skip over some decades and look at the post-Soviet era. And let's look at, and this is our final example here. This is an example from Eugenia Kononenko, a Ukrainian author. And this is a novel that was published in 2012. This is now is a good example how there is an effort to find one's own voice and language after, after the era of colonialism or in the process of decolonization. So one of the common cultural trajectory stretching from the Tsarist era after the Soviet and post-Soviet years was the imposition of Russian language, especially since the late 19th century. But in some cases, including Ukraine and Lithuania significantly earlier. The short-lived flourishing of national cultures in the 1920s, during the era of decolonization from the Tsarist rule, was then followed by the brutal liquidation of Latin national elites in the 1930s. And subsequently then we heard how this colonial enlightenment discourse of great national nation developed in the 1930s. For Ukrainian post-colonial literature, the downgrading of Ukrainian language and culture over the colonial periods is of central significance. And Vitaly Chernetsky, one of the leading Ukrainian scholars writes that, and I quote him now, in a classic case of colonialist cultural policy, Ukrainian culture was continuously stigmatized in the Russian and Soviet empires as a minor subaltern culture of only local provincial interest. As in, for example, Kazakhstan and as in colonial context all over the world, the language of the imperial center, in this case Russian, became the means to make a career and to advance in society. The Russian language came to signify high-culture modernity organization, the Ukrainian culture and language in contrast came to be associated with backwardness and present life. So in many parts of the former Soviet Union, such processes of cultural othering and non-Russian languages and cultures became irreversible. For example, if you look at the smaller Finno-Ukrainian nations, which are still on the Soviet, sorry, not Soviet, but on the Russian colonial rule within the territory of the Russian Federation. So there's no way to save these cultures, it seems, because it's so clear that Russian is the language of education, the way to make a career and all that. However, with the collapse of the Soviet state, a particular reaction of significant impact unfolded across various parts of the Soviet of the former empire. In Ukraine, a re-evaluation of the Ukrainian language took place. People switched deliberately and collectively to conversing in Ukraine instead of in Russia. And Eugenia Kononenko's novel describes this process in detail. And I have many Ukrainian friends and they have described exactly similar kind of process and excitement that the company did. So this is now the description of the 1990s and actually also the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, how Ukrainian intellectuals and more and more the younger people who started to develop their intellectual interests. They spoke about everything in Ukrainian and at the time, and here's the main character of the novel, he felt that in Russian he would have been enabled to discover the new meanings which were coming to light. So Ukrainian becomes the language of communication for these young people. And the main character in the novel Yevhen was born in the Soviet era, grew up speaking Russian at home, yet experiences a change of language and the transformation of being even at the end of the 1980s. So Ukrainian became a language of communication for him, rather than the language of the classroom, of theatrical performances or of poetry, and that was great. In the Ukrainian world he truly began to feel an unexpected inner harmony and the will to live, which he hadn't known before. The novel presents the shift from Russian to Ukrainian as setting the stage for a fuller sense of existence. This changes by no means merely linguistic. It also brings about change in Yevhen's main character's social position, his creative self-expression, his relation to masculinity and his sense of self. As to the Ukrainian language in specific, it seemed to offer new possibilities lacking in Russian. So as we hear there in the last quote here, in the Ukrainian world, he, Yevhen truly began to feel a kind of inner harmony and a will to live, which he had never experienced before. As we see the colonial value hierarchy has overturned, Ukrainian now appears as a superior medium of self-expression, surpassing the possibilities of the colonial tongue. Kononenko's novel focuses on Yevhen's process of finding his voice, resolving the silence of the uncertain mismatch between words and beings. The novel does not, and I'm wrapping up here, the novel does not present re-crainization as an easy part for its protagonists. Instead, Kononenko is the oft-fitnessed logic of the T-colonial situation. Often enough initial excitement is followed by the sobering acknowledgement of complications and disappointments by ways of emigration, as well as by the new cultural achievements brought to life by subsequent generations. Most regrettably, as we have seen most recently in Ukraine, and now we have to turn from fiction to reality, the processes of decolonization can also be interrupted by a new wave of colonial warfare, new destructive deadly attacks on one's land culture, and then one's right to dwell in peace in one's own language. And thank you, this is Ireland here. Thank you so much. I don't know if you can clap on the Zoom, but I would love to, and I hope that audiences will join me, and I think that now we jump into discussion. I think the first question should come from Moodam audiences from Moodam Space, so Moodam, you need to unmute yourself. Patricia, we do not hear you. Okay. Oh, thank you. Yes, okay. Yes, today technology is just rebelling and trying. This is Sunday, I think it's more slow. But thank you. Thank you very much for this, for this kid lectures was being very important topic and I, I just wants to jump in also on the first, first thing that you said, also to mentions that I had the news during the talk that the Museum of Carson, and also of Ukraine has been actually taken over by the Russian and that's all the works, which includes collection, a big collection of 17 and 18th century works has been brought to Crimea to a destination that is well until now unknown. And so this is a very facts that I would say open our discussion and open on what's what's today. I would just ask you about this comparisons with with Ukraine and also on general idea of colonizations that we see often in the history of Soviet dominations that we address the words sovietization. And then in the reverse process, the desovatization or the economy, the communizations that's one of the low from Ukraine has been one of the marker of this, this this load is this last years, but in your writings you name Soviet strategy as colonialism, and soviet colonialism. So why do you think it's it's important to use the term colonialism in relation to these territories. Yes, thank you for this question and this is something I get plenty from historians, because historians often enough, they have their, you know, set of terms and if you do not work with postcolonial theory, you just look at your particular research and you think like, okay, you know, Soviet rule does it was a Soviet, Sovietization obviously now we need to desovatize and they use this vocabulary. Well, I see, first of all, I would say there's plenty of very good work done with through this word of Sovietization I don't have to, I don't say that we need to just like completely discard all that work. If you look at particular sources and events you still get your facts right, right. However, why do I think that colonialism is an important turn to bring in there are many, many reasons for that. First of all, then it opens up the whole field of comparisons exactly. We can now see that the colonial discourse, colonial enlightenment discourse was quite widely used all over the world, this basic idea that we come to enlighten you and you should be thankful. And of course, then locals are not being asked if they want to be enlightened. But this is such a very common strategy, if we just call it Sovietization we do not understand that this is something that's been going on for centuries already. And another part, if we just talk about Sovietization, we do absolutely erase this, you know, different hierarchies of nationalities within the Soviet Union. You know that you can't talk about this discourse of this great Russian nation, just by the notions of Sovietization, because in a way this even goes against the idea of Sovietization. So, so yeah, I think, I think it's very important also to bring in colonial colonial vocabulary explicitly address Soviet rule and of course Russian rules during the Tsarist emperor before that as a colonial rule. And in this way we can see that different ethnicities were treated differently, and the whole meaning of the system was different for Russian speakers and for those who lived in non-Russian borderlands. But it's a very important question. Thank you very much. Thank you. Maybe we can address also our group beyond the post so many of us are here online, and we're sure that you have some questions to app, and then we will also open it to the audiences in to the audience and look some work. So you can raise your hand if you have. Yes. Hello everyone. Yes, it was really interesting. Thank you for also for your reaction and for this interesting lecture. Yes, my name is Faena Inusova. I'm also part of collective and I'm an artist from Uzbekistan and based in Germany. So, when we talk about colonization, I think it also was mentoring a kind of trap that the subaltern falls into. Because if post-colonial society today is oriented towards Western principles, it's place it to be frame of colonized subject. And as soon as it tries to return to its roots and use elements of maybe lost local culture, it can be also blamed for self-exertization. And speaking of this trap, maybe how do you see the work strategy of the representatives of this ethnic groups. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Indeed, the whole question of decolonization is such a such a very, very complex one. And if you look all over the world, it's been different difficult process and not very successful very often. So, one of the one of the strategies that that's often used there, Kajatris Bivak has this term, strategic essentialism. So, often enough, what we what we see in decolonial processes is indeed that using essentialized images of both of one's own culture and also the culture of colonizers. And this is dangerous because you just get into these very strict oppositions and all our culture, you know, it used to be glorious at one point back and then they they are all evil. And in a way, this is different difficult in this kind of a situation and in this mindset to find ways forward, because clearly the world is changing and you cannot you cannot just be stuck in some kind of images of the past. Also, if you do, there is a question how do you deal with that colonial past so that you just, you understand that the situation is also always hybrid. So, you shouldn't just like start, you know, killing all that sort of say collaborators but just understand how cultural mixes happen, how to deal with the colonial era past and that's very, very, very, very difficult. And to see that there are no easy solutions, we see all over the post Soviet real now, again, all this past has become, you know, a sign of danger because of Russian and new aggressions. So, this new fight with monuments so that there are monuments, you know, all seems often easy that let's just destroy everything. Let's just destroy everything that reminds us of that colonial past. However, you know, can we just destroy everything in its buildings, huge parts of cities being built you cannot you cannot you just have to address it, try to come to terms with it, try to perhaps change its meaning articulated understand it, but the danger is the danger of essentialism is very clearly there and there's no easy way to it's just the politics often works through essentializing unfortunately so, which is something we should try to avoid but so I think what we need to do then is just lots of different voices and also go against these essentializing trends and artists have a such a huge role back right to point out ideas point out the differences and make sure that all these different voices in each era will get representation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Faena. I think that we have next question online from Katrina Botanova. Hello everyone works. Thank you very much for your very enlightening lecture I think it's extremely important to talk from different positions about the Soviet and Russian colony colonialism today. What I want to say is rather probably a comment maybe not so much a question but let's see maybe it can turn into a question and I asked it from position of. I'm a Ukrainian curator and writer and cultural critic who is based in Switzerland, since some years but especially since the beginning of this war I was and I am writing extensively on decolonization and about the Russian colonial discourses. A comment to your lecture or my bit issue with your lecture is the way you talk about the enlightenment of other people because you talk about the Russian enlightenment as if it's a goal. And maybe the issue is because you start the lecture with a Stalin and a Stalin era because of course your focus is Estonian Baltic States. But the colonialism did not start with Stalin, right it's not Soviet colonialism it's Russian colonialism and it started with the Russian Empire or actually you know if we really go back to history then probably we can stretch it and see that it started with the idea of being colonized by Mongols, and then this movement reversing back. And for me the problem with not having I mean you mentioned it in passing but basically not having this continuity of Russian colonialism, you know from the Russian Empire to the Soviet Empire is missing the part that the majority of other peoples in Russian Empire and in Soviet Empire was a part of the overall resourcification of, you know, natural resources and people because the search for resources was the reason for colonization in Siberia, and you know the East and Central Asia, and also the attitude towards the European parts of Russian Empire and then Soviet Empire as Ukraine for example. And this moment of you know resourcification I mean the economic background, which makes then this enlightenment of other peoples, a tool, but not the goal. And what it means also for situation today when you look at what is happening with the war in Ukraine and you see who is mostly dying there on the Russian side and those are like non Russian ethnic ethnicities, which is a part of resourcification of the people. So, then it means the story of, you know, subaltern a bit different and also the relation between different peoples and yet Russian and Soviet Empire a bit different. So maybe if you have tried to turn a comment to a question I mean how do you, how do you see that and how do you address this legacy, you know back to 1918 17th century. Thank you Catherine I think this is so I'm very glad that you that you brought out this larger context and I absolutely agree with you. I mean I, I took a Stalin's theme here today because I think it is just, and the discourse the question of enlightenment discourse, because I just see so many similarities with what's happening right now. How Putin frames his aggression his warfare. I mean he needs to develop this positive discourse for his own nation. I was focusing on this particular aspect of that of Soviet colonialism today, but actually two weeks ago I talked in Princeton about the economic colonialism during the Soviet era and this is obviously as yes very huge topic and very, very relevant. And you are certainly right that the roots of Soviet colonialism they go back to the tourist era to Russian Empire and I did suggest a little bit in this direction in this presentation but it wasn't my main focus here. And, and yes, I also agree that if you want to, you know, have like an absolute view of how colonialism works, you need to take into account many different ways first of all military part of it, just the fact that they come with weapons. They, the army takes over. So there's patrols is warfare. And this is a huge part right. And then there's a question of, of course, economy, expectation of resources. Then there's a question of strategic importance, for example, the extension of the Soviet Union and really during the Peter first times that the Russian Empire towards West towards Baltic Sea. It was considered as not so much a question of resources, but it was strategically important. And right now, Kaliningrad oblast, for example, is a very good example of that. It's just strategically it's so good for a Russian Federation to have its military in Kaliningrad. It would be difficult for them to, to make them to kill that one up. So yes, so you should, you should look all of these things in, in unison. And at the same time, you should always also keep in mind that pre, pre czarist, pre Soviet tradition, local traditions, how, and how they differed in different parts of the Soviet Union. So the picture altogether is very, very complex. So I'm glad that you brought out some of these nuances. Yes. Anything else I should. And of course, the recertification is a good word to use. And I think it's, yeah, I absolutely agree with this. And, and so my answer is yes. Thank you. Any question here. There is one question. Thank you very much for your lecture. I would like to recall the thesis of Peter Petrovsky Polish art scholar who also contributed to post colonial studies in Eastern European art and he brought up the question of close other and how it affects post colonial is the European context. For example, if we take, I'm speaking from Ukrainian context, I'm Ukrainian refugee at present and well for Ukrainian context, for example, for you give photography school. World War Two, like I'm talking more about like 70s 80s lead the Indian photography was more important than Russian photography it was like not to be compared how peripheries western peripheries of Soviet Union were like much influence influence and they even influenced socialist realism in such a way that the same like artists, like if we like jump to monumental art, they would had to work in post Soviet state commission system. So if you can comment on this. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I mean, this is such a, yeah, again, such a big, a big topic, the question of how this different colonial others interacted what did, how did they impact each other. And I was curious to hear about this Lithuanian Ukrainian connection I have, I had no idea. But of course, Lithuanian photography of that era, we know some of the images and I use some of that in my book some of this images as it was clearly leading the way. Yes, and then for many, another part of that question would be also the Eastern European socialist states, how Poland became such an incredible source for, for, I think, many non Russian nations but also to Russian cultural life where just all the new trends happen perhaps a little bit early. So, but at the same time, there's also the other side of that particular particular issue is also the orientation processes that we're going on, for example, how the Easternians, Latvians, Lithuanians, I'm not sure about Ukrainians and Belarusians but might have been the same, how they looked at the Central Asian populations. And there was clearly this orientalization that was going on. And you might even say that this is almost like colonizing the gaze of the colonizer working but of course, since this was not the position of power it wasn't quite. So yes, I think it's an, in some ways it was a possibility that should have been used ways more. Also people, one of the statements that was made in the perestroika era in the 1980s was that there wasn't really a very good knowledge of other Soviet cultures. But surely certain artists were in connection if you were in the same field, but at the same time, what you had in the Soviet press was some kind of like a beautified image or this kind of an ossified image of other, other borderlands or other Soviet nationalities. So, for example, one Estonian cultural critic just said in 1988 like we would love to hear about these other nations but we don't know because we only have this parade images and we should know more. So I think this is, this is something we should explore more that, and they still, this is still an open field of possibilities in the post-soviet era, right, to tighten these connections and to find support. And in a way we see it, right, who's who support Ukraine the most right now, Polish, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, try to try to make their voice audible within European Union. And yeah, because of that feeling of we know what that means because we have had similar past experience. Thank you. Thank you very much for this very complete answer to the question. Maybe we'll come back to the online audience, because we have two questions to hands were raised and maybe the first one will be Katarina Demerza. Would you like to ask a question please. Thank you so much. And thank you for awesome lecture. My question is about your experience in trying to proceed with this post-colonial approach in Western academia. How do you describe, like, what your experience was when you're talking about post-colonial approach to Soviet or to Russian Empire, and then they say, no, no way, it's not a colonial discourse, it's brother nations and blah, blah, blah, please, if you can tell more. Yes, yes, I think we have all encountered these kind of attitudes. I mean, you just have to continuously, you know, talk about details, point to very specific texts and look at this darling's toast, look at all the things that followed from here. And I think cultural scholars, cultural criticism is always more open, and then actually political science is also more open. But the history, there's a certain trend of historical writing that is very hard to get historians on board. First of all, because they do not like these big comparisons, they want to focus and say, like, look, there's always a difference. It's just, this is an ongoing thing. And I just, yeah, I've been presenting plenty of this sort and it's been interesting, lots of conversations with American scholars. As you can see, there's a gender difference that female scholars are more open towards post-colonial approaches. I don't know if this is just an accident, but it seems to me when I have a positive feedback, the doctrine now comes from female scholars and I get more attacks from male scholars. I don't know what to think of that. But another thing is interesting, if you talk about these issues in the, let's say there's a conference or symposium, people talking in a public space, you get one response, it might be more hostile. But when you start speaking face to face with people, then they actually like, yeah, I agree, yeah, I agree. So perhaps we are in the era of transition here, and definitely the Russian new warfare and Ukraine changed that. I think it's very hard right now to say that Russia does not have imperial ambitions. Some use the word imperial and are more hesitant to use the word colonial. I think these two go hand in hand. So, but I think, and I hope that we are seeing a change here. But, you know, we just need a lot of patience and it's just amazing how many times I have made the same arguments over and over again, even for the same person, we start to meet again and they exactly start all over again. And it's just quite remarkable, but, but we need to do this work because this is an important topic so I'm glad that you are all interested and involved in this, this kind of thinking and work. Yes. Thank you very much. And thanks also to Katarina because I think you voiced the concerns that we all confront every day. So thank you. And the question from Christine, if you would like to address it please. Hi, yes, actually, it was the same question. So it was already answered. But yes, I'm also just wondering sometimes and getting frustrated because I often have the impression that these topics kind of stay in an Eastern European context and a community of people that have migrated from Eastern European countries Central Asia, or still live there and sometimes I have the impression it's not yet really a discourse in the Western academia and yes it has to be promoted still and we have a lot of work to do. Yes, I would also add that there is also a generational difference that I so often I have a PhD students coming to me and say like oh your work is so important to me or oh I so much in trade your work, whereas there's scholars who are on the verge of retirement or already retired. Among them, there's definitely more resistance because they have had their whole career thinking differently so it's very hard for them, even you know you can't believe it but I have had over the recent weeks. And over and over again there is a conversation like boss boss race and issue in the Soviet Union, and you have many various teams scholars of older generation who say like look that was race was not a problem at all in the Soviet Union. It seems like so absurd for everyone who knows who works with, you know, issues in Uzbekistan Kazakhstan, but of course also Ukrainians who can tell you a lot about it. But I'm so glad you're all, you know, helping, helping, helping this process of changing the world. Thank you we have still some questions from the audience. Our remarks. Yes. All right. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the fantastic talk. Really brought up some great ideas I especially appreciated that expansion of the idea of colonialism, moving beyond the, the typical understanding that we have here in Europe, Western Europe of it being the lands far away not lands next door, right. So I really appreciated that now. I really also liked your use of the idea of the subaltern, and I feel like the comment from the lady earlier that's living in Italy Switzerland is that right. Yeah. It's really, really great because that resource of occasion is really important to colonialism and not just minerals and and things like that but human resource. And so being able to orientalize or to other the people and to hierarchize or to create a hierarchy out of those other groups is so important for the colonizing project. I was wondering if you could speak a bit on that more, especially in the Russian case of using some of those other nations and as we sell today. They are using in the war right now. Non Russian, or sorry. I don't know. I don't know the correct language for this but non rusts rust so ethnic ethnicities from for example, Eastern Russia and things like that Siberia to fight in this war. Yes, this is so troubling isn't it. Yeah. So, indeed, one of the things I definitely want to see, for example, Uzbekistan comes to mind and, and the question of cotton, cotton production during the Soviet era. One of the things they did was creating this monocultures right where where you had quite, you know diverse agriculture earlier, the Soviets needed money so cotton you can, you can sell it abroad get hard currency. This was incredibly destructive right and how, how incredibly destructive collectivization was for Kazakhs for Ukrainians for all over for Russians themselves also but the Kazakh family. You know something we should talk ways more and of course Ukrainian holiday Mara which is, I think we are more conscious of that. And so, this is during the Soviet era there was this weird combination, show a resource to vacation and humans also as a resource, at the same time, the way how they wasted human resource to the right, how they let millions die. Because the nationalities questions were definitely more important so what happened then in the 1930s it seemed like that national ideologies national cultures were on the rise in the 1920s, and then Stalin noticed and became afraid, especially in terms of Ukraine, because Soviet Union without Ukraine would have been unimaginable so there was this sense of body, these national cultures become too independent to create themselves and want to separate. So, definitely the number one thing was just suppression, violent, violent careless relationship to what you could call human resources a positive thing. So we have this double dialectics here. It's, it's very complex, indeed, indeed, and destructive and very many different levels. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you for the question as well and for the comment. And I think we have a question from Viola. Yes. Hi, everyone. I am, my name is Yola Weasdowska and I am also a member of the beyond the post soviet. I am a visual artist, and I also am doing a PhD in the Art Academy in Gdansk. My question is kind of a comment and, and also a question. Following up the, the, the, the kind of the comment of Katarina and the, the, right now the question from the audience, because I, I think about this otherness of the nation that they have been colonized by the Russian Empire and then afterwards the Soviet Union, and it came to my mind immediately, an illustration of Estonian men that I think I found out I was like a caravan of was, was done it like he did the illustration of Estonian and Latvian people. And he posted them a little bit like more animalistic, like, like the humanizing it. And my question is of this like, like growing otherness of, for example, also there was a description of Belarusian that the young Belarusians are whipping at like Yelps like like or stuff like this. What I'm curious is, is because this miniature is coming from. I found it right now 1851. How is it like, is there any examples for example in literature, or, or other like visual representation that have been circulating during the times, especially in, of course, in Russia, being conducted by Russian propaganda or Russians, that they were actually were going further, because we've talking about humans, human as also resources going further to actually also dehumanize, dehumanize the nations when you maybe something comes to your, to your mind that was happening that in the, in different ways of, of expression. Yes, indeed. I mean, one of the one thing that comes to my mind first is this affiliation of the Baltic, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians with with fascism. And now we see the same discourse in relation to Ukraine, right. And the Ukrainians are, or there are fascists in power that was Putin's first claim. So, so we need to come and liberate and, and make sure that, you know, Ukrainians are not suffering on this fascism. And in the Soviet Union, this was a huge discourse. And again, it was part of the popular imagination that and Estonian Latvians, Lithuanians, they were fascists. So, a part of that was because they use different language, they use the Latin alphabet instead of Cyrillic. So everything Latin, there was this stereotype written in Latin alphabet. So this must be German, because if people do not, if Russians wouldn't understand it, this was a way for them to say like, we don't need to understand it. So that was one. And, but if we are looking at earlier periods, then there's also a question of earlier layers of colonialism in. Yeah, I opened right now the link, but I guess, yes. And here, these early layers of colonialism, and the whole ethnographic trends in the 19th century is super, super interesting. And one part of that was that actually these ethnographers, leading ethnographers in the Tsarist Empire were Baltic Germans. For example, like Karl Ernst von Behr, for example, who, who were connected to the Tartu University. So you, and that already changes the whole, the whole, you know, realm of this circulation of colonial ideas or globalization of different nations that they were trans-European, they were not necessarily Russian based in the 19th century Russian Empire relied heavily on German intellectuals. So even the, yeah, in different schools, they had professors, both from Germany and then Baltic Germans from, from the Baltic parts of the Russian Empire. So things become so complicated then, right. So you don't, you don't even have like a clear, oh, these are the bad guys, right, who did it all because this is just, this is the discourse that is spreading from the enlightenment there onwards at least and of course had different forms before that. And you have then this scientific discourses around races, and this is where also fascism developed from right. So many different varieties. And indeed, in the 19th century, you did have these images of like, for example, Estonians, peasants and Latvian peasants as very like significantly racialized as of, you know, some kind of a lower class. And at that point, the dominant understanding was, let's say, meet 19th centuries that Estonians and Latvians, these, the only future for these nations would be to assimilate to German, that there would be no way to, because of, you know, lower quality, there would be no way to, to have a fully functioning high culture and the scientific language and all that. So all these mixes and then of course if you talk about Lithuania, there's a question of Lithuania and Polish relationship, which definitely has a colonial aspect to it. You have Ottoman rule, so you have such a mix of ideas and racial stereotypes that are coming in from different corners of Europe and the mixing together, starting from, yeah, earlier centuries, but not that old Soviet thing. Thank you for that. I think we have slowly to close, but I will just end the floor to Azadbek who had the last question. So, please. Thank you. So my name is Azadbek. I'm an artist and curator based from Uzbekistan based in Switzerland. I was thinking about the, because as I'm really interesting in the colonial studies, I know that colonialism has had a huge impact on the way that European people see themselves, how the colonies also constructed the national identity of a lot of countries in Europe. So I was thinking about how the Russian colonialism and the Soviet colonies has also an impact on the way that Russians see themselves in the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union like how colonialism also had to like build the national identity of Russia. Yes, yes, and that is, I think that is such a crucial question these days, right, because what we see is that once you develop an imperial identity, as you know, we are the great nation and, oh, and this is what happened in the, definitely in the Soviet era, not so much, you know, if we were talking about Russian Empire. There was no clear Russian identity at developed like uniform Russian identity. There were different efforts, different ideas, how to, how to understand the nation and its role. So David Brandenberger makes this claim and I think quite convincingly that the understanding of Russian and developed during the Tsarist era, because first after the revolution during the Lenin era, there was an emphasis on decolonization from the Russian Tsarist Empire, and everything Russian, Russian related was not emphasized so much. And then during the Stalin era, there was this occasion to think who we are and clarify the past. And what happened was that for in Russian imagination, Russian and Soviet became homo synonyms. Yeah, so, so Russia, Russia equals Soviet Union, and we can see how other parts of the world took it away if you, if I talk to my American students even now, I mean, their first impulse is Soviet Union, these were Russians, right? Now with Ukraine and the war, I hope that this is changing, but yes, this understanding that Soviet Union is all our big homeland was something that was a lot promoted during the Soviet era, but these were Russians who bought it. Otherwise, other non Russian nationalities never, I mean, they just thought this is obviously it was just clearly a fake idea for them. No, they had their own more specific comments. And so once you have this idea of a nation also very much supported by the sufferings of the World War Two. So look how much we Russians suffered. We were the ones who won this war. This came very clearly, you know, you could see that in Stalin's speech and the whole ideas that developed from that. So we Russians, we won this great war, we sacrificed so much for the happiness of everyone basically. So we are this great nation. And so what do you do then when the empire starts crumbling? And when when economy collapses, there's, you know, just poverty for many people, it takes time to build up a new economy. So you really have this crisis and identity. And this is what Putin used, right, to, to force to continue saying like, look, we are these nations we need to, and the idea of great Russia that Putin is developing. So I think it's, but it's, it's, it's very regrettable side, side, you know, consequence of this longer historical developments that you get the identities, which, and it's difficult to change, you know, cultural imaginaries, cultural big ideas. It takes a lot of time. So, and it's, as we see, it's not going in the right direction right now for Russian national identity. Unfortunately, hopefully something better is will be happening in the future. But right now we don't really see even in any hope in that. Thank you. That was a great question. I think just to close our great discussions, I will just ask a last questions, because you are a writer, and you write fictional novel. Can you maybe choose a word that would describe our ability as maybe post colonial thinkers to imagine other futures and what words we can kind of for tonight have in mind and that can bring us some meaningful reflections for tomorrow. Yes, thank you. Actually, it's nice that you brought this up in the end here because as a writer my last novel is a utopia actually, surprise, surprise. And my idea behind it was that we actually we need also some positive ideas, which is cannot we die as human beings if we only dwell in the misery of what's all around us. So, I was envisioning something like realistic utopia, which is still at that point, maybe not in 10 years if we don't do anything, but right now there are still possibilities for it to open. And the word that I let me choose the word the sea, the sea, because I think it's a very first of all for me personally it's been very, very important because I grew up by the sea. And then the colonial era in in Estonia close the sea, the sea shore became boarded. There's a whole question when and how you can go that it became politicized. Because who knows maybe you escape. And at the same time the fluidity of it. And it's amazing how the sea is always different. It's just such a, if you want to think about difference, and at the same time something like permanence the sea is your perfect example. And the day ago that you always like, wow, I don't know and there's something new. And yes, so I think I like to think about the sea. Thank you very much. And so we're closing this and I must apologize again for the technical issue that appeared. I hope it was, yeah, we had a nice discussion so very grateful. Thank you everyone for being here in Luxembourg, but also online. Thank you so much for organizing this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice Sunday.