On 28 November 2011, the IICCMER organized in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Humanitas Publishing House, the Polish Institute and the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Conference entitled Gulag: What We Know and Why It Matters. The event benefited from the participation of Anne Applebaum, renowned historian of the Soviet concentration camps universe and editor of Washington Post, the philosophers Horia-Roman Patapievici, President of the Romanian Cultural Institute, and Gabriel Liiceanu, Director of Humanitas Publishing House.

Ana Blandiana, President of the Managing Council of the Civic Academy Foundation, Romulus Rusan, Editor of the Sighet Annals series, Andrei Pleşu, Rector of New Europe College, Holger Dix, Director of the Konrad Adenauer branch for Romania and the Republic of Moldova, Alain Blum (EHESS), Jean-Charles Szurek (Institut des sciences sociales du politique, CNRS), Marek Szczygiel, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Romania, Maja Wawrzyk, Director of the Polish Institute in Bucharest, and Constantin Gembaşu, the Romanian translator of Czeslaw Milosz, attended the event as well.

The Conference was organised on the occasion of the launch of the Romanian edition of Anne Applebaum’s Gulag. A History (Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2011; translation by Simona-Gabriela Vărzan and Vlad Octavian Palcu). The publication of the Romanian edition was supported by the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile.