1. SEEMSG stands in solidarity with global institution of higher learning that have severed their links and are boycotting Russian universities as institutions that express support for the invasion of Ukraine by President Putin’s regime.
2. In response to President Putin’s falsification of history, and to the general erroneous and anachronistic use of the term ‘Russia’ to refer to the medieval past of the peoples who inhabited Eastern Europe, SEEMSG rejects the use of ‘Early Russia’, ‘Medieval Russia’, or ‘Ancient Russia’ when the intended reference is to the languages, arts, cultures, churches, dynasties, histories or lands of Early Rus’.
3. In the general framework of the decolonisation agenda at educational and research institutions, SEEMSG calls on all practitioners to re-evaluate their Introduction to Russian history and culture classes to prevent the propagation of imperialist and nationalist notions that obscure the diverse cultural inheritance of Eastern Europe and Eurasia and that demean the cultural legacies of the varied peoples that today inhabit this part of the world.
The Slavonic and East European Medieval Studies Group (SEEMSG) 