INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
31 August, 2023 / Thursday / 9:00 AM
Venue: Moise Palace, Zagrad 6, 51557, Cres, Croatia

Conference Organized under the Auspices and with the Financial Support of
ERC Consolidator Grant Project “NEPOSTRANS: Negotiating Post-Imperial Transitions” (Grant No. 772264, 2018–2023), hosted at the Institute of Political History, Budapest, Hungary
and
ERC Consolidator Grant Project “REVENANT: Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation” (Grant No. 101002908, 2022–2027), hosted at the University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
Scientific-Organizational Committee
Lucija Balikić (Central European University, Budapest/Vienna)
Cody J. Inglis (Central European University Budapest/Vienna)
Kevin Kenjar (University of Rijeka)
Stefan Gužvica (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade)
Ivan Jeličić (University of Rijeka)
Emanuela Erasmus (University of Rijeka), Organizational Secretary and Coordinator
PROGRAM
“Breaking Away: Micronations, Microstates, and the Contestation of Sovereignty in East Central Europe, 1918– Present: Political Thought, Aesthetic Output, and their Afterlives”
Moise Palace, Cres, Croatia (August 31–September 1, 2023)
THURSDAY, AUGUST 31
9:00-10:00: Jeremy F. Walton (University of Rijeka, ERC REVENANT), Welcome address
10:00–10:30: Coffee break
10:30–12:30: Post-post-imperial Austro-Hungarian Microstates
Chair: Christopher Wendt (European University Institute, Florence, ERC NEPOSTRANS)
- Cody J. Inglis (Central European University Budapest/Vienna, ERC NEPOSTRANS), Nationalist Separatism as the History of State- Building, as the History of Political Thought: The Case of Deutschsüdmähren, 1918 and After
- Samuel D. Albert (Fashion Institute of Technology and Fordham University, New York City), Art Exhibitions and Political Justification: the Hungarian Soviet and the Horthy Regime in Comparison
- Csaba Zahorán (Institute of History, Research Centre for Humanities, Budapest), From the independent Szekler Republic to autonomy – the issue of Szekler self-determination
- Ivan Jeličić (University of Rijeka, ERC NEPOSTRANS), “I know that that word appeared and that troops and possibly a battalion were actually fighting units which would fight for the realization of that Autonomy”. Fiume Autonomy as a Persisting Imperial Legacy
12:30–14:30: Lunch break
14:30–16:00: Red Microstates
Chair: Ivan Jeličić (University of Rijeka, ERC NEPOSTRANS)
- Željka Oparnica (Institute of Historical Studies, University of London), Red Adriatic in the interwar period: historical context and historiographical debates of Petrovac Red Comune
- Csongor Molnár (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest), Just a legend? The reception of the Banat Republic in local newspapers and memoirs
- Lucija Balikić (Central European University, Budapest/Vienna), Petar Dobrović/Péter Dobrovits’s Intellectual Milieu (1900-1922): Between Integral Yugoslavism and Socialist Internationalism
16:00–16:30: Coffee break
16:30–18:00: Post-imperial Austro-Hungarian Microstates
Chair: Cody J. Inglis (Central European University Budapest/Vienna, ERC NEPOSTRANS)
- Balázs Ablonczy (Eötvös Loránd University, and Institute of History, Research Centre for Humanities, Budapest), Wilsonism, Interregnum, Adventurism. A Taxonomy of Ephemeral States on the Territory of the Former Hungarian Kingdom, 1918-1921
- Christopher Wendt (European University Institute, Florence, ERC NEPOSTRANS), Challenging the Province from its Margins: The Little Tyrols of 1918
- Federico Carlo Simonelli (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), The Italian Regency of Carnaro: A Nationalist Free State as the First Step toward a Pan-Adriatic Ghost Protectorate
19:15: Dinner
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
9:00–10:30: Contemporary Microstates
Chair: Kevin Kenjar (University of Rijeka, ERC REVENANT)
- Islam Jusufi (Independent Researcher, Skopje, North Macedonia), Vevchani: imagining sovereignty and its consequences
- Keith Harrington (School of History and Geography, Dublin City University), Separatism in the southern Moldova: The Failed History of the Budjak Republic
- Ivan Laškarin (Department of International Relations, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena), Introducing Municipal Separatism: A New Perspective on Krajina Rebellion (1990-1991)
10:30–11:00: Coffee break
11:00–12:30: Peasant Republics
Chair: Goran Stanić (University of Rijeka/KU Leuven, ERC REVENANT)
- Jakub Beneš (University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies), Peasant republics in Polish Galicia and Slavonia in 1918
- Rosario Forlenza (Luiss University, Rome), Republics before the Republic: Peasant Revolts in Southern Italy, 1943-1945
- Tamás Révész (Institute of History, Research Centre for Humanities, Budapest), Peasant veterans and their micro-states. The role of peasant war veterans in the creation of micro-states in the territory of the former Hungarian Kingdom 1918-1921
12:30–14:30: Lunch break
14:30–16:00: Creation and Persistence of (Micro) Borders
Chair: Lucija Balikić (Central European University, Budapest/Vienna)
- Vjeran Pavlaković (University of Rijeka), Memory Politics and Failed Microstates: Second World War Revisionism in the Republika Srpska Krajina (1991-1995)
- Kevin Kenjar (University of Rijeka, ERC REVENANT), Terra Nullius, Phantom Borders, and Micronations: From Liberland to the Hajduk Republic
- Goran Stanić (University of Rijeka/KU Leuven, ERC REVENANT), Bosna Srebrena – a story of a surviving Medieval religious micro-state
16:00–16:30: Coffee break
16:30–18:00: Gábor Egry (Institute of Political History, ERC NEPOSTRANS), Dispersed states and patchwork sovereignties. Statehood and the Wilsonian moment from below (keynote speech)
18:00–18:30: Closing remarks
19:15: Dinner
