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Andreas Umland’s Public Lecture

By Mariam Chanishvili
Thursday, January 17
Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung Tbilisi Office - South Caucasus Region is hosting a public lecture by Andreas Umland on January 17.

The main topic of the discussion is - ‘Why the Post-Communist Grey Zone Is Still Grey: Causes and Future Scenarios’.

The event will take place in English.

“There are five potential solutions to the problem of Ukraine's, Georgia's, Moldova's and Azerbaijan's current location in a security-political nowhere-land. They include a Western-Russian grand bargain, NATO accession, EU membership, US security guarantees, and the Intermarium. Yet, none of these models has so far materialized. Why is that the case?” reads the event description.

According to Andreas Umland, one of the reasons for the emergence and persistence of the grey zone include the absence of sufficient strategic foresight among Central-East European elites. their judgment on their own security interests has been and still is insufficiently independent. It remains oriented towards repeating truisms emanating from Washington, Brussels, London, Paris and Berlin.

Andreas Umland is a German political scientist, historian and Russian interpreter, specializing in contemporary Russian and Ukrainian history. He is a Member of the Institute for Central and East European Studies at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt in Upper Bavaria, a small, yet active research center.

The Heinrich Boell Foundation, affiliated with the Green Party of Germany, is a legally independent political foundation. The regional office for the South Caucasus was opened in 2003. Its main objective is to contribute to the forming of free, fair and tolerant societies in the region.

Therefore it supports and facilitates cooperation of individuals and organizations throughout the region who, based on the principle values of human rights, search for the change of undemocratic and intolerant attitudes in societies and politics, for the transformation of ethnopolitical and territorial conflicts into the direction of fair and non-violent solutions and for the sustainable development of people and communities.

The main goal of the South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation is to contribute to the forming of free, fair and tolerant societies in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.