News Details

January 17, 2024, 13:00 – 16:00, University of Constance, Bischofsvilla + Online

Zoom- Login: https://uni-konstanz-de.zoom.us/j/95151648124, Meeting-ID: 951 5164 8124

The question of the specifics of memory culture in the post-communist space has become dramatically acute with the current war in Ukraine. The war has revealed that European memory culture lacks a common mapping of the catastrophes of the twentieth century. With the Second World War and especially the Holocaust being at the center of the European community of memory (Claus Leggewie) as it developed in the course of the European integration process, events such as the Holodomor remained largely overlooked or marginalized in the dominant narrative of Europe’s post-catastrophic renewal. Yet historical experiences of imperialist suppression and exploitation for which the Holodomor is an especially drastic example are of key importance for the orientation towards the European Union in many post-soviet countries. “Never again!” – the foundational motto of the European integration has distinct historical reference points in different parts of Europe: On the Western side of the old iron curtain, it involves not only the break with own traditions that are regarded as causes for the catastrophes of the early 20^th century, including racism, antisemitism, imperialism and colonialism, but also the promotion of post-nationalist and post-heroic values and ideals. Europe here stands for the transgression of the national. In contrast, in the former peripheries of the imperial spaces of the old monarchies and later the Soviet empire, the adherence to the European project is (as the Ukrainian example shows) still conceived of as the concluding part of a process of national emancipation, albeit this notion has recently been heavily challenged by sovereigntist tendencies in several post-soviet countries that joined the EU in the 2000s. It is also clear that with its aggression against Ukraine and threatening gestures towards other countries of the European east, Putin’s Russia has created an environment that is hardly compatible with the cultivation of post-heroic values that are deeply engraved in the memory culture connected with the European integration project. The consequences of the most recent events for European memory culture and European identity are unforeseeable, yet shifts and processes of reformulation along oppositions such as perpetratorhood/victimhood, colonial metropole/colonial periphery, post-heroism/heroism are likely to appear.

In the workshop “New Perspectives on Memory Culture and National Identity in the Post-Soviet Space”, the question of current developments in post-communist European memory culture and memory politics will be approached through the analysis of concrete memorial cultural practices, institutions and policies.

Program:

13.00-13:05: Short introductory note by the organizer

13:05-14:15: Constantin Iordachi (Central European University Budapest, Vienna):

Condemning vs. Remembering Communism: Memorial Museums of Communism in Global Perspective

The main lecture of the workshop will explore dominant master narratives over the communist past and the way they are implemented and “institutionalized” in museums of the Second World War and of communism, as part of more general governmental campaigns on “politics of history” in post-communist Eastern Europe. As it is well known, the sharp debates over the memory of communism have led to the emergence of comprehensive campaigns of “historical politics” conducted by governmental or non-governmental organizations or other sociopolitical actors and meant to articulate and disseminate narratives about historical events with the aim of reaching certain (immediate or long-term) political goals. A genuine war on historical memory ensued, involving rival political parties, state institutions, non-governmental organizations, private and public associations as well as various other collective and individual actors.

I argue that the continuous process of creating and recreating the memory of communism in Eastern Europe has been framed by a confrontation, a schism between the understanding of communism as an everyday “lived experience” and communism as a totalitarian, occupational regime, characterized by political repression and criminalized behavior. Within the second approach, I identify a further schism between a civic-liberal condemnation of communism and a conservative-nationalist one. The distinction between the two approaches is, by and large, also chronological: the liberal politics of history dominated the first two post-communist decades (1989– 2008/2009) as part and parcel of the process of democratic transformation, whereas the conservative-nationalist approach has become predominant in some countries in close connection to the populist backlash that followed the 2008 Great Recession. The tension between the two approaches is amply evident in representations of the communist past in museums. After 1989, a plethora of museums and memorials of communism have mushroomed in Eastern Europe. The typology of such museums includes memorials of victims of communism; museums of occupation, terror, and resistance; research and documentation centers; museums of everyday life; entertainment parks and tourist complexes; and statue or memento parks. My research questions for addressing these representations are: How are these two dominant approaches represented in museums? Are they cohabitating or mutually incompatible? How are they inserted into political master narratives? How are they reconciled at individual and collective level? To answer these questions, I will survey a sum of the most representative museums of the Second World War and of communism in Eastern Europe, by inserting them into a larger comparison with global trends in museum, with a focus on communist regimes in Cuba, China, and North Korea, but also with memorial museums emerging around the world, from North and South America to Africa and Asia. Special attention will be given to patterns of historical representation, capitalizing on a set of antithetic emotions, such as universalism vs. parochialism, pro- vs. anti-European feelings, attitudes of collaboration and accommodation vs. heroic resistance, and the pedagogy of “shame” and stigma versus the pedagogy of national pride, charisma, and messianic nationalism.

14:15-14:30: Pause

14:30 -16:00:

Jiří Přibáň (Cardiff University): Collective Memory, Historical Justice and Constitutional Identity in Central Eastern Europe

Gruia Bădescu (University of Constance): Emancipatory Promises? Contemporary Reframings of Nationalism and Imperial Duress in Central and Eastern Europe

Oksana Dovgopolova (University of Odessa): Commentary