Forum: Jelena Subotic’s Yellow Star, Red Star
The review of: Subotic Jelena: Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. 264pp
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The review of: Subotic Jelena: Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. 264pp
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This article draws attention to the specific way in which the important German author Christa Wolf turns scientific findings on memory into literary material in her work. Remembrance and the associated self exploration and self-knowledge form the core of what Christa Wolf calls subjective authenticity. Her key self reflexive texts stage the process of writing, in whichself questioning intermingles with reflections on the process of remembrance and the literalization of the phenomenon of memory. In the 1990s, the author became the target of traumatic discourse practices in the non-literary space. The article also addresses the question of how interdiscursive remembrance contrasts with stereotypical interpretations of the past and what its potential to stimulate a critical distance from hegemonic discourse and the communication of differentiated knowledge may be.
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While significant scholarly attention has been devoted to transitional justice programs that rectify the wrongs of one single past, to date scholars have generally ignored that most countries must reckon with multiple pasts, each characterized by different crimes perpetrated by different torturers against different sets of victims. These multiple and layered pasts – which compete with each other for the attention of governments, civil society groups and international actors – allow political actors to manipulate the transitional justice agenda for their own purposes. I argue that more research is needed to fully understand the selective reckoning with competing pasts.
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Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940) was Romania’s best-known historian and public intellectual between the two world wars, both at home and abroad. He is seen as the father of Romanian nationalism, as well as the main provider of historical continuity and legitimacy for the new Greater Romania of 1918. The aim of this paper is to argue that Iorga’s nationalism has been a political story from the very beginning. It was a politically motivated commitment toward reshaping society, through culture. This political reading contradicts the standard narrative that interprets Iorga as a cultural nationalist who only helped raise national consciousness in the wake and during the First World War. Instead, in the first part of this text, my reading of his political career depicts an intellectual who sought not only to cultivate the nation, but to advance his own political platform (based on the rejection of modernity, antisemitism, and irredentism) and to contribute to the establishment of a single strong territorial state reuniting all Romanians around the Old Kingdom. In the second part of the paper, I move from a short survey of the politics of memory by the main political regimes following Iorga’s assassination, namely the military dictatorship of Ion Antonescu and the communist regime, to a discussion of some strategies used in the post-1989 era to condone or obfuscate some beliefs and actions of Iorga by interpreting his nationalism as a cultural one.
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This article describes the all-Russian scientific conference “International Intervention and Civil War in Russia and the Russian North: key problems, historical memory, and lessons of history”, held in Arkhangelsk, September 10–11, 2020. Co-organizers of the conference were the Russian Military-Historical Society and its Arkhangelsk branch, the Government of the Arkhangelsk Region, the M. V. Lomonosov Northern (Arctic) Federal University , and the Association of the Russian Civil War Scholars. Conference sponsors were the Russian Military- Historical Society and the Government of the Arkhangelsk Region. Established and younger scholars from 14 regions of Russia, as well as from Ukraine and Norway, took part in the conference and its proceedings. Conference participators considered the key problems of genesis, origins, and causes for the Russian Civil War, its modern conceptualization, the role of international intervention in Russia and the Russian North, results, consequences, and historical lessons of this war. Special attention was given to preparing of Volume XII (in two books), Civil War in Russia, 1917–1922, of the 20-volume academic series History of Russia and problems of historical and cultural memory of the Russian Civil War. Four sections and three roundtables considered questions of the dialectical relationship of international intervention and Civil War in Russia and the Russian North; of international, national, regional, and local dimensions of the Civil War; and of the individual at war. Conference participators pointed out the necessity of responsible, competent, and objective historical studies of the Russian Civil War, an attitude of care towards existing monuments and memorials, and strict examination and scientific expertise of new memorial projects devoted to this war.
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During the Great Patriotic War, a massive and well-organized partisan movement developed on the territory of the BSSR. In the conditions of struggle behind enemy lines, the material and technical (including food) support for “forest soldiers” was of crucial importance for its quantitative and qualitative growth. The initial policy of the Soviet government to maximize the self-sufficiency of partisan detachments at the expense of trophies and food captured from the enemy was ineffective. With the creation of the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement, as well as with the organization of partisan airfields and sites, the supply of food (primarily salt and tobacco) became regular. The main source of food for the “forest soldiers” were products obtained during procurement and economic operations from the civilian population. Because of the “food issue.” the attitude of the local population to the partisans was not always positive. There were cases of abuses by the partisan leadership during procurement operations, as well as cases of looting. The leading partisan and party bodies actively fought against offenses among the partisans, but it was not possible to completely eradicate this phenomenon. At the same time, in some cases partisans themselves distributed food and livestock to the civilian population. In some detachments and brigades, small enterprises were organized that produced food products (creameries, small slaughterhouses, bakeries, etc.). In general, during the occupation, the partisans managed to solve the issue of food supply to one degree or another, which had a positive impact on the dynamics of growth in the number of “forest soldiers” and on the combat and moral qualities of the personnel.
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The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 led to a rupture in Central-European geopolitics and in the aftermath, having a hand in the establishment of Czechoslovakia became an important source of political capital, which individual actors utilized to increase their influence and reputation. In this paper, we discuss two dimensions of the memorialisation of Italian-Czechoslovak military cooperation in 1918-1919 that contributed to the creation and stabilisation of Czechoslovakia: one pertaining to ceremonies and the formal aspects of remembrance, and the other centred on the effects of international politics—specifically the often-turbulent Italian-Czechoslovak relations-on commemorative practices. Italy sought to limit these ceremonies to only a military dimension, though both countries emphasized the “glorious” aspects and persons of their military cooperation, leaving out “unsuccessful” symbols of the time. Special attention was paid to executed Czechoslovak soldiers, who were remembered as both heroes and martyrs at the same time.
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The author, relying on the concept of nations as imagined communities, sharing the existence of the scientific concepts of “ethnic” and “civil” nations, considers the possibility of the emergence of a single national myth, which could become the most important construct in the formation of national unity in a multinational country. Based on various legislative initiatives, amendments to the Constitution of Russia, considering certain aspects of historical policy in Russia, the author concludes that after 2014, on the background of the Ukrainian crisis, the Syrian crisis, US and European Union’s sanctions pressure and political confrontation with the West, the Russian authorities situationally started the mobilisation of public opinion. This policy is capable of producing results only in the short term. Achievement of national unity based on the single national myth, acceptable for most of the Russian society, will require more thorough work and delicate inclusion in the information space, as well as in the educational programs of secondary and higher education.
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Petar II Petrović Njegoš is probably the most famous figure in Montenegro’s history and a particular symbol of this place. Despite his short life, he achieved fame not only as a politician but also as an artist. The article aims to analyze how the memory of Petar II Petrović Njegoš – a symbolic figure in the history and culture of Montenegro – has been constructed. The analysis will focus on the public debate on this figure in relation to the motion to establish a new national holiday – Njegoš’s day, i.e., the day of Montenegrin culture. The study uses both the discourse method and content analysis, including legislative projects, newspaper articles, television broadcasts, public speeches, and other messages from individual politicians and intellectuals. The public debate on Njegoš revealed how the inconsistency of memory, primarily the Montenegrin, Serbian and Bosniak memory, generates conflicts and at the same time deepens the prevailing social divisions.
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The aim of the paper is to scrutinize activities related to the commemoration of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. There were three main goals of the research. The first one was to identify the most important actors of the commemorative activities. The second goal was to reconstruct the strategies applied by these agents. Thirdly, this research aimed to consider current processes in the Ukrainian political system. In particular, the question was what we can know about the evolution of these commemorative activities after the Euromaidan based on relations between different agents in the mnemonic field. Special emphasis was placed on Sheptytsky’s attitude during the Holocaust and on the impact of this topic on the commemorative activities. As a theoretical framework of the research, Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard’s theory of the politics of memory was applied. The research enabled verification of some elements of Kubik and Bernhard’s concept. Inter alia it was an issue of a set of presumptions regarding interrelations between strategies applied by mnemonic actors, the structure of mnemonic regime, and prospects for democratization of a political system.
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The article describes the ideological shifts in one of the most established Slovenian political parties in the period since the introduction of political pluralism in Slovenia. Given the social democratic political orientation that this party strongly identifed with at the beginning, this contribution is an attempt to outline the disappearance of the initial social democratic elements, which were no longer present after 2003: after this point, the party in question could be classifed as a representative of social conservatism.
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The article focuses on the image of Africa and Africans in the Zgodnja Danica newspaper among Slovenians in the period fom 1849 to 1859. At that time, the Catholic mission for Central Africa under the leadership of Ignacij Knoblehar was also supported by the Austrian Empire for the reasons of a potential colonial expansion, while the decade coincided with the beginning of the Slovenian nation-building process. After 1848, however, the non-absolutist regime and the principles of Catholic ideology prevailed, so that only two newspapers were allowed to be published in Slovenian, one of them Zgodnja Danica. Luka Jeran, the editor of the journal and strong promoter of the mission, published, translated, and censored numerous leters and reports by Knoblehar and his co-workers that presented the missionary’s view of the physical aspects and people of what are now Egypt, Sudan, and South Sudan. The land was portrayed as “distant” and as possessing an “unhealthy climate”. In contrast, the people were portrayed, on the one hand, as bright, beautiful, and skilled, while on the other hand, they were deemed as “lazy and undeveloped”, as they were seen fom the Western perspective of development and progress. Moreover, the articles written by people who had never been to Africa generated the stereotype of the “helpless and poor” African, while the land was portrayed as “dark” and “dangerous”. As a part of the prevailing image, numerous “fundraisers” in support of the Central African mission reveal not only how Slovenians saw Africa and Africans, but also how they saw “themselves” in contrast to “the others”, forming an “autostereotype” of the Slovenian who can “help” those who, in their perception, needed their assistance.
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The author deals with the Yugoslav diaspora in Brazil during the interwar period. Although the formation of the Yugoslav diaspora out of Slovenian and Croatian emigrant communities was in line with Yugoslavia’s aspirations for organising emigrant communities on the Yugoslav basis, the foundations of South Slavic cooperation in Brazil had existed already before World War I. The Yugoslav diaspora in Brazil was very fagile, and its contacts with the “homeland” only superfcial. Several factors contributed to that, among them most signifcantly the absence of Yugoslavia’s concern for its emigrants in Brazil on the one hand and the Brazilian policy of nationalising immigrants on the other. Emigrant activists sought to compensate for the absence of Yugoslavia’s engagement, but their actions would ofen lead to increased fagmentation of the community. Moreover, the author focuses on the community of Slovenian emigrants fom the Julian March region. While a part of this community identifed with the Yugoslav diaspora, another segment of it remained autonomous.
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Based on the preserved archival and newspaper materials as well as the existing scientific literature, the authors of the following contribution present the key events in the city of Maribor, the centre of the Slovenian province of Styria, in the decisive period and the pivotal year of 1919. This year was tumultuous ever since its beginning, as even the January events went down in history as momentous. They involved the replacement of the last Maribor mayor from the Austrian period Johann Schmiderer with Government Commissioner Vilko Pfeifer and the mass demonstrations on 27 January, which have been preserved in the people’s memory for more than a century as “Bloody Sunday” (even though they took place on a Monday) and represented the culmination of the mounting national tensions between the Slovenian and the German population. In the year under consideration, the city of Maribor underwent bureaucratic, economic, and political changes and faced national tensions, the struggle for the northern border, the “Maribor Treaty” in February, as well as the eagerly anticipated recovery after the end of the Great War.
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Review of: Enzo Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia. Marxism, History, and Memory. Columbia University Press: New York, 2016, 289 strani. Reviewed by: Tjaša Konovšek.
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Any time social energies come together, full of hope, to constitute a political party promising to do what the current political parties have failed, we can expect people to be disillusioned; their resentments touch the fibre of democratic life. The illusion that a new party can solve the social problem and may “truly” represent the population is a future disillusion adding to the lack of trust in politics and politicians. To illustrate it, I chose a specific context in Romania and case studies featuring attempts to form political parties. At the same time, the international context plays a significant role, and it explains the most relevant trends of theoretical debates concerning the inception of a new, modern, and efficient political party. I noticed this phenomenon as it unfolded, and I saved over 150 articles and media coverages, including the extended commentaries for the period assessed. The personal observations and media appearances of the opinion leaders/trendsetters are the dominant sources of this analysis.
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Even though the motif of the Great Terror is present in Russian literature for children and the youth (not only contemporary, but also that published during the period of the Soviet Union), one could assume that after the fall of communism the need to re-evaluate and revalue the past, and at the same time giving a literary voice to the victims of the Stalinist regime, will increase. However, when Eugen Yelchin’s book Breaking Stalin’s Nose, first released in English in the USA, was translated and made available in print in Russia in 2013, its reading triggered a loud and ongoing public discussion, including voices calling it “anti-Russian.” Therefore, in this article I draw the reader’s attention to how the subject of the Great Terror was and is present in Russian children’s literature. Analyzing it (using the motifs from Breaking Stalin’s Nose as an example) from the perspective of memory and post-memory theory, I would like to point out why one short novel for children provoked so many extreme opinions among adult readers around the world.
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The analysis of literature evidences of the Great Patriotic War is closely connected with the consideration of the category of space. The war scenery represents not only the model of geographical space but has the symbolic status acting as the place of memory. The aim of the present article is the research of memory sceneries presented in the first two books of the Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. In the works of Belarusian writer the space, war and memory act in different configurations, creating complicated and multi-level system where the number of repeating motives and images can be found. The peculiarities of women and children memory functioning determine the ways of constructing space and identity of a person in it. The article analyzes various types of the space: the own and the others one, the space of initiation, the taboo spaces, acoustic space, heterotopias, etc. composing the world of the Great Patriotic war seen by the eyes of Alexievich characters.
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In the novel City Written from Memory by Yelena Chizhova published in 2019, the siege of Leningrad is inscribed in several different thematic lines. It determines the fate of the family, becomes a reference point for many situations, events and facts. The article is devoted to the process of constitution and slow formation of separate, individual postmemory of the siege in the consciousness of the author’s subject. The analysis of the novel’s text shows that this process was never uniform, but consisted of several phases, the diversity of which resulted from the factors such as i.a. the age of the post-remembering subject, external (cultural, socio-political) circumstances, family relationships, readiness of memory bearers to share their experience, the ability to express in words the heritage received from them. The article focuses primarily on issues related to the distinctive features of individual phases of postmemory, as well as its impact on the personality of the subject being its owner.
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