How does art preserve memory, sustain cultural heritage, and shape national identity—especially during times of conflict?

This sixth and final webinar in The Arts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia: A Webinar Series for Educators explores how artistic expression functions as a living record of cultural memory. Through case studies from Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, we will examine how art and culture are mobilized as tools of influence, identity, and messaging, particularly in moments of war, political upheaval, and societal change.

This webinar is the fifth in a six-part series, The Arts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, designed to help K-14 educators integrate Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European arts into their classrooms. It explores the influential and enduring role of theater in this region, where theatergoing remains an ordinary, affordable, and deeply valued cultural practice.

This session focuses on the ancient tradition of pysanky (decorated eggs) in Ukraine. It discusses the history and process of making pysanky as well as the fascinating symbolism in the designs, tracing the change pysanky symbolism throughout cultural shifts in Ukraine. The session also introduces participants to digital resources on pysanky including sample lesson plans that show educators how they can use pysanky in a variety of classroom contexts.

This webinar is the third in a six-part series, The Arts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, designed to support educators in bringing the arts of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia into their classrooms. This session focuses on practical strategies for incorporating the region’s rich musical traditions into K–12 teaching. Participants will explore both traditional and popular musical forms and genres, using sound as a lens to illuminate broader cultural, historical, and social themes.

This webinar will concentrate on UNESCO-recommended methodological strategies of including topics on traditional cultural heritage of Eastern Europe and Eurasia into the curricula, for courses spanning from language, arts, and geography, to mathematics and physics. Educators will come away with resources and strategies for integrating these themes into a variety of classroom settings.

In 1945, Shikl Gershberg sang a song about the massacre by German and Romanian troops that killed 437 people in his small Ukrainian town in July 1941. It ended with the haunting line: "Our town of Zhabokrych became a cemetery." For many years, the song was the only memorial to Gershberg's family and community. A physical monument remained unrealized due to restrictions by Soviet authorities.

This paper deals broadly with a history of music, technology, and changing ideas of race and ethnicity in the twentieth century. It focuses on Leningrad, where researchers in 1935 at the Institute of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Ethnography conducted recording experiments involving Georgian folk singers. Using the work of Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland, and the hugely inflectional linguist Nikolai Marr, it shows how Georgian music inspired and challenged leading theories of language, nationality, and cultural evolution at a pivotal moment in Soviet history.

After World War II, the USSR's leaders relied heavily on construction materials mined and produced in recently liberated territories to rebuild the country's ruined cities. This paper traces the material networks linking Soviet cities to forests, quarries, and factories supplying the wood, marble, brick, and cement integral to Soviet rebuilding. Focusing on the Aseri Brickworks and Kunda Cement Factory, both located along Estonia's northern coast, the paper examines the interplay between Soviet occupation and materials extraction. Part of the Socialist Studies Seminar series.