Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Memory Laws, Memory Wars
A major contribution to our understanding of present-day historical consciousness through a study of memory laws across Europe.
Patriotic History and the (Re)Nationalization of Memory
This book charts and traces state-mandated or state-encouraged “patriotic” histories that have recently emerged in many places around the globe. Such “patriotic” histories can revolve around both affirmative interpretations of the past and celebration of national achievements. They can also entail explicitly denialist stances against acknowledging responsibility for past atrocities, even to the extent of celebrating perpetrators. Whereas in some cases “patriotic” history takes the shape of a coherent doctrine, in others they remain limited to loosely connected narratives. By combining nationalist and narcissist narratives, and by disregarding or distorting historical evidence, ...
Memory Laws and Historical Justice
This book examines state efforts to shape the public memory of past atrocities in the service of nationalist politics. This political engagement with the 'duty to remember', and the question of historical memory and identity politics, began as an effort to confront denialism with regard to the Holocaust, but now extends well beyond that framework, and has become a contentious subject in many countries. In exploring the politics of memory laws, a topic that has been overlooked in the largely legal analyses surrounding this phenomenon, this volume traces the spread of memory laws from their origins in Western Europe to their adoption by countries around the world. The work illustrates how memory laws have become a widespread tool of governments with a nationalist, majoritarian outlook. Indeed, as this volume illustrates, in countries that move from pluralism to majoritarianism, memory laws serve as a warning – a precursor to increasingly repressive, nationalist inclinations.
The Future of the Soviet Past
In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.
Rule of Law in Crisis
This book addresses the current crisis that threatens the rule of law and has led to the need for its adjustment as normative concept, legal principle and pragmatic guideline for the behaviour of political players. Rule of law is a pillar of the constitutional orders and a key principle of national, international and EU law. Yet, rule of law is subject to pressure for change in the face of emergency, crisis and transition. This book explores how constitutional crisis, emergency constitutionalism and constitutional polycrisis assert pressures for the transformation of rule of law and thus produce a state of flux. It examines the rule of law from the viewpoint of constitutional imaginaries, me...
Memory Crash
This account of historical politics in Ukraine, framed in a broader European context, shows how social, political, and cultural groups have used and misused the past from the final years of the Soviet Union to 2020. Georgiy Kasianov details practices relating to history and memory by a variety of actors, including state institutions, non-governmental organizations, political parties, historians, and local governments. He identifies the main political purposes of these practices in the construction of nation and identity, struggles for power, warfare, and international relations. Kasianov considers the Ukrainian case in the context of a global increase in the politics of history and memory, with particular emphasis on a distinctive East-European variety. He pays special attention to the use and abuse of history in relations between Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.
Putin’s Dark Ages
Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a “special operation” was launched against Russian historical memory, aggressively reshaping the nation’s understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlin’s militarization of Russia through World War II propaganda is well documented, but the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords as a source of support for Putinism has yet to be explored. This book offers the first comparison of Putin’s political neomedievalism and re-Stalinization and introduces the concept of mobmemory to the study of right-wing populism. It argues that the celebration of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible’s regime of state terror (1565–1572), has been fused with the rehabilitation of Stalinism to reconstruct the Russian Empire. The post-Soviet case suggests that the global obsession with the Middle Ages is not purely an aesthetic movement but a potential weapon against democracy. The book is intended for students, scholars, and non-specialists interested in understanding Russia’s anti-modern politics and the Russians’ support for the terror unleashed against Ukraine.
Different Shades of the Past
In his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century the historian Yuval Noah Harrari wrote that man had the possibility to conquer the world precisely because he could create fictional stories and believe in them. People created more and more complex stories about themselves that served and continue to serve, according to the professor of the University of Jerusalem, building unity, social harmony and gaining power. A narrative about past, in which memory fragmentation and victimisation play a large role, may be a temptation to instrumentalise the past. This is especially true in relation to the events of the twentieth century, when a series of bloody war conflicts occurred. As shown in the following post-conference volume, today the wars of the past (World War I and World War II, Indian-Pakistani war) and current conflicts (Russo-Ukrainian war, war in Sudan or Nagorno-Karabakh) are also a catalyst for the process of instrumentalisation. This process can be analysed both at the level of the evolution of the language of conflict, including the erosion of the values of democratic dialogue, and the use of specific means of commemorating the past (monuments, museums, the Internet).
In Visible Presence
An absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past. A faded image of a family gathered at a festively served dinner table, raising their glasses in unison. A group of small children, sitting in orderly rows, with stuffed toys at their feet and a portrait of Lenin looming over their heads. A pensive older woman against a snowy landscape, her gaze directed lovingly at a tombstone. These are a few of the evocative images in In Visible Presence by Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko, an exquisitely researched book that brings together photographs fro...
Called Beyond Our Selves
Higher education today faces challenges from all sides, but college can provide young people with an opportunity to explore what it means to live a meaningful life. Increasingly, undergraduate education encourages students to reflect on their many callings in life, but this does not need to be a purely individual pursuit. This volume provides an argument for helping students to think about the interconnectedness of individual and communal life as they reflect on their various vocations.
