The Strauss Center, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Law and Democracy, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and Clements Center for National Security, will host the “Eurasia Policy Forum: Contemporary Political Myth and Reality in Eurasia” on February 13, 2026 at the LBJ School of Public Affairs’ Bass Lecture Hall.
Conference Description
Eurasian states face mounting challenges amid growing polarization, gaps between social needs and political responses, blurring myth and reality. Further, Eurasian states face additional pressures from a legacy of authoritarian rule, active conflict and irredentism, and political mobilization of social divisions across the region. Yet Eurasian countries also have unique strengths in navigating these challenges, with strong national identities, robust civic engagement, bursts of democratic progress, and deep cultural traditions.
The conference explores the complicated social and political myths and realities shaping the contemporary Eurasian region, as they are poised to either discourage democratic progress or inspire civil society to action. Academic disciplines have each made progress in understanding the complex dynamics in their area of social, political, legal, or cultural study, yet these lessons are often stove-piped. Meanwhile, states—and students training to work in those states—must grapple with the intersection of challenges across all of these areas. This conference tackles this by bridging disciplines, bridging academic and policy spheres, and bridging policy and cultural studies to critically examine these pressing issues in Eurasia. Panels will be designed to foster discussion among experts from cultural studies, history, law, linguistics, policymaking, political science, sociology, and other fields.
The conference will be deeply interdisciplinary, fostering creative engagement on a diverse range of critical topics from state-building and democratic backsliding to construction of national heroes and majority-minority identities to technology’s role in the spread of these narratives. For questions and additional information, please contact eurasiapolicyforum@gmail.com.
Registration: Register here.
Registration is required. Parking is available for a fee in Manor Garage and San Jacinto Garage and will not be validated.
Thank you to our co-sponsors!
Conference co-hosts include the Center for European Studies, the Center for Law and Democracy, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, the Clements Center for National Security, the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of Government, the Department of Religious Studies, the Program in Comparative Literature, the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
Agenda
8:15 am: Doors open
Coffee and light breakfast available
8:45 am – 9:00 am: Introduction and Welcome Remarks
Eliza Fisher, Assistant Director, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Ashley Moran, Co-Director, Center for Law and Democracy, and Research Scientist, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin
9:00 am – 10:00 am: Keynote Conversation
Michael Kimmage, Director, Kennan Institute
Moderator: Alexandra Sukalo, Director, Clements-Strauss Intelligence Studies Project, University of Texas at Austin
10:00 am – 10:10 am: Break
10:10 am – 11:00 am: Geopolitical Competition among Major Powers in Eurasia
Chair: Sharyl Cross, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, St. Edward’s University; former Director of the Kozmetsky Center at St. Edward’s University, and former Global Policy Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Craig Nation, Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow, U.S. Army War College, and Visiting Professor, Department of International Studies, Dickinson College, The Geopolitics of Modern Eurasia
Elizabeth Prodromou, Professor, International Studies Program, Boston College, and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Turkey’s Civilizational Revisionism in Eurasia: Geopolitics as Domestic and Foreign Policy
Michael Reynolds, Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Wolf Whisperer and Bear Tamer? The Civilizational Sources of Azerbaijani Conduct
Andrei Tsygankov, Professor, Department of International Relations, San Francisco State University, A Nation Formed by War? Russia’s Identity and Great Power Militarism
11:00 – 11:50 am: The Political Myth of Holy Rus’ in Russia and America
Chair: Jason Roberts, Associate Professor of Instruction, Department of Religious Studies and Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, The Myth of the Nation
Rebecca Echevarria, Masters Student, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and LBJ School of Public Policy, University of Texas at Austin, The Antichrist, Holy Rus', and Other Ideomyths: Strategic Mythmaking in the Ukraine War
Eliza Fisher, Assistant Director, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Coal and Censers: Weaponized Nostalgia for a Constructed Past in Orthodox Appalachia
Domingos Tavares Campos, PhD Candidate, NOVA University of Lisbon School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Exporting the Katechon: Russian Orthodoxy in the United States of America
11:50 am – 1:00 pm: Lunch
1:00 – 1:50 pm: Myths of Power and Identity During War
Chair: Steven Seegel, Professor, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Jonathan Brunstedt, Associate Professor, Department of History, Texas A&M University, An Antifascism without Fascists: Soviet/Russian Mythmaking and Interventionist Justifications from the GDR Workers’ Uprising to Ukraine
Nicholas Kupensky, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, United States Air Force Academy, Not a Hollywood Movie: The Myths of the Dnipro River Crossing
Anna Romandash, Visiting Fellow, Center for International Governance Innovation, Othering and Myth-Making: Russian Propaganda and Ukrainian Resistance Narratives in the Occupied Territories
Dmitry Shlapentokh, Associate Professor, Department of History, Indiana University South Bend, Russian-Ukrainian Myth and the War
1:50 – 2:00 pm: Break
2:00 – 2:50 pm: From Myth to Reality in State Building
Chair: Ashley Moran, Co-Director, Center for Law and Democracy, University of Texas at Austin
Kiril Avramov, Assistant Professor, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Power and the Paranormal: Belief, Security Surveillance, and State Support in Late Socialist Bulgaria
Alexey Golubev, Associate Professor, Department of History, Rice University, The Knowledgeable Citizen: Political Literacy and the Making of Socialist Reality in the USSR
Paul Kubicek, Professor, Department of Political Science, Oakland University, Myths, Heroes, and State and Nation-Building in Central Asia
Chechesh Kudachinova, Guest Researcher, Institute for East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Infrastructures of Political Loyalty: Recycling Ethnic Diversity in Russia
2:50 – 3:40 pm: Myths Advancing or Eroding Democratic Values
Chair: Michael Mosser, Director, Center for European Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Natalia Cwicinskaja, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and Administration, Adam Mickiewicz University, Between Myth and Accountability: Human Rights in Unrecognized Entities of Eurasia
Ia Eradze, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, and Visiting Fellow, Harvard University, Tales of Sovereignty: Unfolding a Crisis of Democracy and a Geopolitical Shift in Georgia
János Fazekas, Associate Professor, Department of Administrative Law, Eötvös Loránd University, and Visiting Professor, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin, The Contribution of the European Court of Justice to the Evolution of the European Union as a Political Community
Delgerjargal Uvsh, Assistant Professor, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Reclaiming the National Flag: Nationalist Rhetoric and Support for Democracy and Democrats in Mongolia
3:40 – 4:00 pm: Concluding Remarks
Marina Alexandrova, Associate Director, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Alexandra Sukalo, Director, Clements-Strauss Intelligence Studies Project, University of Texas at Austin