CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Recombining Representation During the Transformation from Empires to Nation-States 1905-1923

15-16th of June 2026, Warsaw

Second Conference on Parliamentary Junctures in Continental Europe.

Organizers: Piotr Kuligowski, Wiktor Marzec, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Naum Trajanovski

DAY 1, 15^th of June 2025

Venue: German Historical Institute

Al. Ujazdowskie 39, 00-540 Warszawa

10:00–10:10 Greetings from the Director

Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska

10:10-10:30 Workshop introduction

Wiktor Marzec, Parliamentary Bricolage: A Toolbox for Researching Morphing Representations 

10:30–11:30 KEYNOTE LECTURE 1

Heidi HEIN-KIRCHER | Director of Martin Opitz Library, Herne

The Challenges of Multilayered Transformations: Democratization as a Far-Reaching Task

Chair: Piotr Kuligowski

11-30-12.00 Coffee break

12:00–14:00 PANEL I

Regional Diets and Claims

Chair: Heidi Hein-Kircher

David Smrček
Politics as a Catalyst of Destruction: Habsburg Austrian Parliament and Diets as Sources and Recipients of Popular Claim-Making in an Age of Political Modernization

Sebastian Elsbach, Piotr Kuligowski
Between National and Local Representation: Greater Poland and Grenzmark Posen-Westpreussen Province, 1918-1922

Bert Becker
Transforming Provincial Parliaments in Germany’s Weimar Republic: The Case of Pomerania, 1920-21

14.00-15.30 Lunch break 

15:30–17.30 PANEL II

Russian (post) Imperial Assemblies 

Chair: Ivan Sablin

Darius Staliūnas
When Symbolic Victory Matters More Than Practical Results: Elections to the Russian Duma  in Lithuania

Ekaterina Vasilik
Failing to Liquidate the Empire: The History of the Liquidation Commission for the Kingdom of Poland under the Provisional Government of Russia (1917)

Oliver Rowe
After Godot Arrives: The Idea of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly after its Dissolution, 1918-1921

17.30-17.45 Coffee break 

17.45- 18.45 BOOK TALK

Ivan Sablin

Legislative chambers of the Russian Empire: The State Duma and the State Council, 1907–1917

Chair: Edina Gal

19.30 Dinner (Restauracja Buffo)

DAY 2 16^th of June 2025

Venue: Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Rynek Starego Miasta 31

9:00–9:15 

Welcome note: Maciej Janowski

9:15–10:15 KEYNOTE LECTURE II

Jakub Beneš | University College London

East Europe’s Forgotten Peasant Revolution: The Era of World Wars Reconsidered

Chair: Naum Trajanovski

10.15-10.45 Coffee break 

10.45-12.45 Panel III

Cultural heterogeneity 

Chair: Jakub Beneš

Lucija Balikić
Principles of Minority Rights Advocacy and Representation: The Case of Josip Vilfan and the Congress of European Nationalities

Naum Trajanovski
Education and Elite Formation in Patchwork Parliaments: The New Republic of Poland, Greater Romania and The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Sorin Radu, Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița
From resistance to integration? The Transylvanian Saxon case at the juncture between empire and postimperial state

12.45-14.15 Lunch break

14.15–16.15 PANEL IV

Representative practices in transition

Chair: Andrei Florin Sora

Tamas Nyirkos
Fictions of representation: parliamentarism and its substitutes in Hungary from 1918 to 1920

Zsolt Szabó
Representation and Legacy of Imperial Peripheries: The Parliamentary Elite of Maramureș County in Dualist Hungary and Interwar Romania

Raluca-Sorina Rus, Vlad Popovici

Social Mobility, Economic Involvement, and Civic Engagement among Members of the Romanian Parliament Elected in Transylvania (1919–1926)

16.15-16.45 Coffee break

16.45-19.15 PANEL V 

New national assemblies

Chair: Izabela Mrzygłód

Andrei Florin Sora
The Peasant Movement and Peasant Representatives in the First Parliament of Greater Romania  (1919-1920)

Edina Gal
The Imperial Past in the Romanian Parliamentary Debates (1919–1923)

Mari-Leen Tammela
Reflections of Parliamentary Culture in the Estonian Constituent Assembly, 1919–1920

Martin Klečacký
Forging a New Elite: Electoral Engineering and Political Rupture in the First Czechoslovak Republic

20.00 Dinner (self-arranged, details to follow)

The conference is organized by:

Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw

German Historical Institute Warsaw

Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences