Per Anders Rudling


Per Anders Rudling is a Swedish-American historian and an associate professor in the Department of History at Lund University. He specializes in the areas of nationalism and memory and trauma in Eastern Europe.

Education

Rudling holds a Master of Arts degree in Russian from Uppsala University, a Master of Arts degree in history from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta, and completed a post-doc at the University of Greifswald, Germany.

Career

2013 Rudling was appointed as Associated Professor in History by Lund University.
In summer semester 2015 he was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Eastern European History at University of Vienna. From December 2015 to June 2019, he was Visiting Senior Fellow in History at the National University of Singapore. From July 2019 to June 2021, he was Research Associate at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in Huddinge with Focus on Belarus.
In 2019, Rudling received a five-year scholarship from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The Wallenberg scholarship is considered the highest and most prestigious academic award for young researchers in Sweden. The scholarship, worth around 160,000 euros a year, will be used to study Ukrainian "long-distance nationalism" of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, focusing on the formation of a "collective memory" through the Great Famine of 1932-33 and the anti-Soviet resistance in the immediate post-war years.

Research

Rudling is the author of The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, devoted to the subject of present-day Belarusian nationalism from its origins until the 1930s. The book won the Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies in 2015.

OUN Controversy

Rudling gained international attention in October 2012 when a group of Ukrainian organizations in Canada delivered a signed protest to his employer, accusing him of betraying his own university's principles. The letter was a response to Rudling's public criticism of what he considered a glorification of OUN-B, UPA, Stepan Bandera, and Roman Shukhevych by fellow historian Ruslan Zabily from Ukraine, during his lecture tour in Canada and the United States. Rudling delivered a communiqué from Lund to concerned universities, pointing out to the role of OUN-B in the Holocaust in Ukraine and the involvement of UPA in the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. He also wrote about Bandera's antisemitism and political violence during World War II, which led to ethnic cleansing not only of Poles and Jews but also of Ukrainians themselves. In response to the Canadian-Ukrainian complaint about Rudling, a large group of academic researchers published an open letter in support of him.

Books

The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 2015,
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Articles

  • "'We are appalled to have these false beliefs associated with our campus': Holodomor, Trigger Warnings, and Free Speech at the University of Alberta", in: Klas-Göran Karlsson, Maria Karlsson : Historical Lessons: On History as Guidance and Orientation. Berghahn Books, New York 2025,
  • "A Silent Death: The Destruction of Academic Scholarship in Belarus" in Ninna Mörner:,, Huddinge: Södertörn University, 2024, p. 99-108
  • ", in. Isak Hyltén-Cavallus : Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund: Årsbok 2024, Lund: Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund, 2024, p. 82-98 32 page book chapter in Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020
  • , in: Rethinking Holocaust Justice: Essays across Disciplines. Goda, N. J. W., p. 158-187, New York: Berghahn Books, 2019', in: Jarosław Suchoples, Stephanie James, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa : World War II Re-explored. Some New Millenium Studies in the History of the Global Conflict. Peter Lang, Berlin 2019, p. 401–428,,
  • With
  • ', in Bizeul, Y. : Rekonstruktion des Nationalmythos?: Frankreich, Deutschland und die Ukraine im Vergleich, p. 227-258, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, The Invisible Genocide: The Holocaust in Belarus, in: Bringing to Light the Dark Past, The Reception of the Holocaust in Post-Communist Europe, John-Paul Himka, Joanna Beata Michlic, Nebraska University Press, Lincoln 2023, ', in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson : Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text, Routledge, London and New York, 2013,
  • ', in: Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe, Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, Brian Jenkins, Routledge, Hoboken 2012, ' In: Historical Yearbook. Academia Română Institutul de Istorie Nicolae Iorga, Bucharest 2012
  • ', In: Historical Yearbook. Academia Română Institutul de Istorie Nicolae Iorga, Bucharest 2011
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