Ukraine/Russia history is focus of Nov. 8 lecture

Free public talk is Edward N. Peterson Lecture Series event

Oct. 18, 2022 -- Thomas Wolfe, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s History Department, will present a lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 8, at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls on the timely topic of the “Crisis in Ukraine: War and Russia’s Deformed Transition.” 

The lecture, part of the Edward N. Peterson Lecture Series, is free and open to the public at 4:30 p.m. in Room 320 of the University Center. A reception begins at 4 p.m., and a Q&A session will follow the talk. 

Wolfe, who is affiliated faculty with the U of M’s Department of Anthropology, the Institute for Global Studies, and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, said one of the themes of his presentation will be Ukraine’s defense of its sovereign state status. 

“Ukraine’s history has indeed been marked by the difficulty of achieving this (independent) status, but there is nothing in Ukraine’s history that meant it is an artificial or 'fake' state,” Wolfe said in a summation of his presentation. 

Wolfe’s presentation will also examine how Russia “became Putin’s regime,” referring to the transformation of Russia into full-fledged authoritarian state, as well as a “reflection about the continuity of Russian political culture.” 

The Peterson Lecture Series honors Edward N. Peterson, a history professor at UW-River Falls from 1954 until his death in 2005. To honor his memory and his achievement in teaching and research, the UWRF History and Philosophy Department established the Peterson Lecture Series as an annual forum for leading scholars to present their scholarship on war and peace, abuses and limits of power, and the struggle for democracy in the 20th century, issues that Peterson taught about and wrote about during his long career as a historian. The series is funded by an endowment made possible by donations from students, alumni, faculty and other supporters. 

More on Wolfe’s presentation and the lecture series is available at https://www.uwrf.edu/HIST/Events/PetersonLectureSeries/Index.cfm.