Russia and Belgium have fascinating pages of history together. There have been several periods when our countries were closely connected, and when people from both countries interacted a lot. One of these was the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the period of the First World War, which began exactly 110 years ago.
We’re so excited to announce that the famous historian professor Vladimir Ronin will be giving three lectures on this dramatic and fateful period! These lectures are a must-listen for anyone interested in history.
We invite you to join us at the History Club, a new project of the Russian House in Brussels, for these discussions.
Here’s the schedule:
16 October 2024
Belgians in the land of the Tsars in 1900
the first lecture-meeting (in French, but feel free to ask questions and comment in Russian, Dutch, or English)
When the Belgian Gustave de Molinari wrote in a Moscow magazine in 1861:
‘The surplus of our capital and labour could be put to useful and advantageous use in your country’, it was only the cautious wish of a liberal economist.
When he tried to convince his Russian audience in St Petersburg in 1865 of the need to allow the free movement of labour across borders and to unite workers of different nationalities in one enterprise, it was only a theoretical principle.
No one could have predicted that 30 years later, thousands of Belgian workers, engineers and managers would go to the land of the Tsars.
In 1900, workers were not in the habit of writing their memoirs.
So what do we know about their “exodus” more than 120 years ago to the factories and mines between the Baltic and the Black Seas?
What were their living conditions like and how did they discover a world so exotic to them?
In addition to Belgian sources, which are sometimes too general or focus on the personal experiences of an engineer or other employee, we also have a Russian report from 1900 on a group of Belgian expatriates…
15 November 2024
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. And on the Eastern one?
the second lecture-meeting (in Russian, but feel free to ask questions and comment in French, Dutch, or English)
10 December 2024
Émile Verhaeren and the Russians: Que reste-t-il de nos amours?
the third lecture-meeting (in French, but feel free to ask questions and comment in Russian, Dutch, or English)
