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Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe
It is the aim of this volume to investigate how academic practices of Memory Studies are being applied, adapted, and transformed in the countries of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. It affords a new, startlingly different perspective for scholars of both Eastern European history and Memory Studies.
293 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
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July 8, 2014
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting".Milan Kundera
Europe as a community of divided or united memory? A new compelling volume, which explores the difficult challenge facing Europe in reaching common understanding of very different memories, particularly of Holocaust and Stalinist repressions. The study of memory is crucial to understand the European past, present and future. Focusing on memory boom in Eastern Europe, this volume collects new and varied perspectives on the challenges of post-catastrophic memory, offering a new theoretical approach and examining how the theoretical approaches and academic practices can be applied in this region. In the contrast to the West, the cultural material of memory studies is quite different in the East.
First part "Divided memory" focuses on divided European memories. Aleida Assmann handles the problem of establishing a museum of European memory asking a question if the one coherent pan-european narrative is possible? Holocaust is undeniably one of the foundation myths for EU, while the Stalinist terror is in the center of national narratives. How to reconcile them? She points out the asymmetry of these memories in the united Europe. She gives some examples how to overcome the division. Jay Winter speculates about human rights as paramount and the core of EU, he argues that the role of memory is essential in the human rights discourse, as it is "embedded in the language of transition to democracy". Thus the question is the following one: "How do the memory and cultures of Eastern Europe interact with the idea of European unity, cosmopolitan, transnational and universalized memories?"
Memories wars in the XX century include the contributions of Andrii Portnov about Ukraine and Ilya Kalinin about the past as a limited resource in Russia. Two compelling contributions, which in the actual context allow to understand the historical wars between Russia and Ukraine (N.B. Just today one Russian deputy asked Duma to use the name “Malorossia” to name Ukraine). Portnov argues that "inherently fractured and shifting nature of Ukrainian formation of memory" resists the state monopolization more successfully than in Russia and in Belarus, where, as argues Kalinin, the past is actively appropriated and politically abused in the “zero-sum struggle with their citizens and the West”.
Europe as a community of divided or united memory? A new compelling volume, which explores the difficult challenge facing Europe in reaching common understanding of very different memories, particularly of Holocaust and Stalinist repressions. The study of memory is crucial to understand the European past, present and future. Focusing on memory boom in Eastern Europe, this volume collects new and varied perspectives on the challenges of post-catastrophic memory, offering a new theoretical approach and examining how the theoretical approaches and academic practices can be applied in this region. In the contrast to the West, the cultural material of memory studies is quite different in the East.
First part "Divided memory" focuses on divided European memories. Aleida Assmann handles the problem of establishing a museum of European memory asking a question if the one coherent pan-european narrative is possible? Holocaust is undeniably one of the foundation myths for EU, while the Stalinist terror is in the center of national narratives. How to reconcile them? She points out the asymmetry of these memories in the united Europe. She gives some examples how to overcome the division. Jay Winter speculates about human rights as paramount and the core of EU, he argues that the role of memory is essential in the human rights discourse, as it is "embedded in the language of transition to democracy". Thus the question is the following one: "How do the memory and cultures of Eastern Europe interact with the idea of European unity, cosmopolitan, transnational and universalized memories?"
Memories wars in the XX century include the contributions of Andrii Portnov about Ukraine and Ilya Kalinin about the past as a limited resource in Russia. Two compelling contributions, which in the actual context allow to understand the historical wars between Russia and Ukraine (N.B. Just today one Russian deputy asked Duma to use the name “Malorossia” to name Ukraine). Portnov argues that "inherently fractured and shifting nature of Ukrainian formation of memory" resists the state monopolization more successfully than in Russia and in Belarus, where, as argues Kalinin, the past is actively appropriated and politically abused in the “zero-sum struggle with their citizens and the West”.
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