#  Ukraine as a Place of Economic Imagination (1870-2022) 

 



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####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **March 5, 2025** 

 05:00PM - 06:30PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **CGIS-Knafel/North Building, 2nd Floor, Room K-262**  

 [1737 Cambridge Street  
Cambridge, MA 02138  
United States



 ](<https://www.google.com/maps?q=US MA Cambridge 02138 1737 Cambridge Street>) 



 

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### A lecture by [**Max Trecker**](https://www.history.pitt.edu/people/max-trecker), Visiting Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh.

Moderated by [**Mie Nakachi**](https://www.huri.harvard.edu/people/mie-nakachi), Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Professor of Global Studies at Hokusei Gakuen University, Research Associate at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center of Hokkaido University.

**IN-PERSON and ONLINE** via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online.

## About the Lecture

Like no other country in Europe, Ukraine served as a projection surface for economic ideas in the modern era. What all these ideas had in common was that they attested to Ukraine's—in theory—great potential, provided that the space was only reshaped in the right way. In his research project, Prof. Trecker asks the following questions: Why was Ukraine repeatedly the focus of large-scale economic planning? Why could these imaginaries be reproduced over a long period of time? Who were the subjects behind the idea of Ukraine as a potent economic space at what time?

Prof. Trecker argues that Western and Russian notions of prosperity in economic thought and action cannot do without recourse to Ukraine over long stretches of the period under investigation. In this context, various ideas and imaginations were projected onto Ukraine by different actors from Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the USA. The Ukrainian independence movement actively drew on these imaginations to advance its political project. Especially in times of subjectively (and objectively) great geopolitical tensions, Ukraine became particularly interesting as a projection surface for economic imaginations.

## About the Speaker

   ![Max Trecker](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-01/TO_REUPLOAD_POST_MIGRATION_1trecker_max_0.jpg?itok=cTqoOPur) 

 

Max Trecker, born in 1989 in Strausberg, studied history and economics at LMU Munich and CEU Budapest. His dissertation on the coordination of East-South economic relations in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was published by Routledge in 2020 as *Red Money for the Global South: East-South Economic Relations in the Cold War*. His most recent book, *Neue Unternehmer braucht das Land: Die Genese des ostdeutschen Mittelstands nach der Wiedervereinigung*, on the birth of a new entrepreneurial class in East Germany after 1989, came out in 2022. \[[Source](https://www.kfg20.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/fellows/previous-fellows/trecker/index.html)\]

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*This event is organized by Harvard's* [*Ukrainian Research Institute*](https://huri.harvard.edu/) *(HURI) as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.*

*Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Hanna Leliv, HURI Events Logistics Coordinator, at* [*hleliv@fas.harvard.edu*](mailto:hleliv@fas.harvard.edu) *at least two weeks in advance of the session.*

*Watch videos of past HURI events on our* [*YouTube Channel*](https://www.youtube.com/user/huriyt) *and* [*subscribe*](https://web.lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/lists/huri-events-list.lists.fas.harvard.edu/) *to our email list to receive announcements about events and other activities.*



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Seminar in Ukrainian Studies ](/event-type/seminar-ukrainian-studies)
- [ Contemporary Ukraine ](/fields-expertise/contemporary-ukraine)
- [ History ](/fields-expertise/history)
- [ Russia-Ukraine War ](/fields-expertise/russia-ukraine-war)
 
 

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