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What do we remember from our national past and why? What are the dangers of history being (mis-)appropriated by politicians? Past in the Present provides a critical analysis of recent disputes over Polish historiography. The author uses theories of collective memory as a guideline, and the Polish-German borderlands as his leitmotif. Western academic currents and long-standing (and often forgotten) Polish intellectual traditions serve as backdrop. Throughout his work - with topics ranging from Golo Mann and Stefan Czarnowski to the «other side of memory» and the «political cult of the fallen» - Traba advocates modernization and «polyphony» in the construction of a new Polish history.
Borderland: On Reviving Culture is a most timely book that tells the story of a project for our times. It is the story of the Borderland organization, which consists of two dovetailing initiatives, an international NGO, the Borderland Foundation, and the more locally and nationally focused Borderland Centre of Arts, Culture and Nations. Borderland is based in the far northeastern corner of Poland close to the borders of Russia, Lithuania and Belarus, where it has devised an array of programs and initiatives designed to promote harmonious cultural plurality in a region of inter-ethnic and religious tensions that date back centuries. Ian Watson, Director of the Theatre Program, Director of the Urban Civic Initiative, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, Rutgers University-Newark
This book explores how the countries of Eastern Europe, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc have, since the end of communist rule, developed a new ideology of their place in the world. Drawing on post-colonial theory and on identity discourses in the writings of local intelligentsia figures, the book shows how people in these countries no longer think of themselves as part of the "east", and how they have invented new stereotypes of the countries to the east of them, such as Ukraine and Belarus, to which they see themselves as superior. The book demonstrates how there are a whole range of ideologies of "eastness", how these have changed over time, and how such ideologies impact, in a practical way, relations with countries further east.
In today's world, we can point to many international disputes and interstate conflicts fueled by past events. Historical resentments or memories of past suffering or fame are often used to justify political, economic and even territorial demands. Inter-state disputes and historical conflicts should be understood as evidence of political and social tensions related to active, serious differences in the assessment of the common past. The book explains the role of such conflicts in international relations and suggests ways of classifying them. It presents examples of the internationally relevant instrumentalisation of history from different regions of the world and outlines ways of overcoming them.
Surveys the ecological impacts of World War I, showing how the war had a global impact on the environment.
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.
"This volume is the first work to cover post-Communist developments in historical studies in six Eastern European countries (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria) from a comparative and critical perspective, written by scholars from the region itself. It is a building block for scholars of the history of European and global historical studies, and a useful pedagogical tool for classes on the history of historical studies. Each individual chapter is in itself a guide to further research through a wealth of detailed notes and references."--BOOK JACKET.
This book examines the online memory wars in post-Soviet states – where political conflicts take the shape of heated debates about the recent past, and especially World War II and Soviet socialism. To this day, former socialist states face the challenge of constructing national identities, producing national memories, and relating to the Soviet legacy. Their pasts are principally intertwined: changing readings of history in one country generate fierce reactions in others. In this transnational memory war, digital media form a pivotal discursive space – one that provides speakers with radically new commemorative tools. Uniting contributions by leading scholars in the field, Memory, Confli...
Explores how contemporary novels dealing with flight and expulsion after the Second World War unsettle traditional notions of Heimat without abandoning place-based notions of belonging. At the end of the Second World War, millions of Germans and Poles fled or were expelled from the border regions of what had been their countries. This monograph examines how, in Cold War and post-Cold War Europe since the 1970s, writers have responded to memories or postmemories of this traumatic displacement. Friederike Eigler engages with important currents in scholarship -- on "Heimat," the much-debated German concept of "homeland"; on the spatial turnin literary studies; and on German-Polish relations -- ...
The result of a research project conducted by Swedish scholars, this text examines interpretations and representations of the Holocaust in European societies, primarily focusing on the most recent decades. Using specific case studies, the articles in this anthology study how, when and why the collective memory of the Holocaust has been expressed and activated for cultural, economic, political and social reasons.