Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, escalating the war it had unleashed in 2014. With an avowed goal of de-Ukrainization, Russia rejects the idea of Ukrainian statehood and has declared genocidal goals in Ukraine.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A Year of War and Genocide

Thursday, 23 February 2023, noon-1:00 pm (EST)

Please mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by joining us for a conversation about the war, its long-term consequences, and its genocidal nature. The discussion will feature Eugene Finkel, a scholar of genocide and author of the forthcoming To Kill Ukraine, and Elissa Bemporad, an expert on anti-Jewish violence in Ukraine.

Born in Ukraine, Eugene Finkel is the Kenneth H. Keller Associate Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University. The author of several books, including Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (2017) and Bread and Autocracy: Food, Politics and Security in Putin’s Russia (2023), Finkel is a scholar of genocide, mass violence, and politics in Eastern Europe. Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author or editor of numerous works, receiving the National Jewish Book Award twice: for Becoming Soviet Jews (2013) and for Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (2019). She is currently working on a biography of Ester Frumkin.

Chair: Natalya Lazar, Program Manager, The Initiative on Ukrainian-Jewish Shared History and the Holocaust in Ukraine, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This event is hosted in association with:

The Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center—CUNY

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM