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- Convenors:
-
Rigels Halili
(Nicolaus Copernicus University)
Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper (University of Warsaw)
- Stream:
- Socialist and post-socialist studies
- Location:
- A223
Short Abstract:
The aim of this panel is to bring together researchers, who work on various socio-cultural and political aspects of the process of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Europe. We intend to pose questions and analyse both the work of memory and work on memory.
Long Abstract:
Twenty five years after the memorable 1989 it seems obvious, that despite various path of post-communist transformation, the constant reference to the communist past, both in public and private spheres of life, remains a common trait.
The aim of this panel is to bring together researchers, who work on various socio-cultural and political aspects of the process of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Europe. We intend to enrich the existing body of knowledge by relying on ethnographies of socio-political contexts of both work of memory and work on memory. We ask what is remembered of forgot from the communist past, but also how this process happens, for what reasons and to what purpose. We propose three main general fields of analysis:
a) politics, as the embodiment of aims, strategies and power relations;
b) social practices, i.e. commemorative intentions, ceremonies and rituals on various social levels and by different social groups,
c) everyday life, where the interplay between remembering and forgetting, both individually and communally, takes place and finds it expression.
Without setting any limits we encourage research on:
- local institutions, traditions and social mechanisms;
- interplay between memories on familial, local, social and national levels;
- historical policies and social actors;
- systems of education and commemoration;
- negotiation of official memory, and social actors involved in this process.
The conveners hope to be able to publish the outcome of the panel as a special number in a leading journal of social sciences.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Alexandra Bitusikova (Matej Bel University)
Paper short abstract:
The objective of the paper is to present the relationship between collective urban memories, identities and power struggles in a post-1989 Slovak city on the example of place-renaming (streets and squares) and changes of symbols and ceremonies.
Paper long abstract:
The paper builds upon Maurice Halbwachs´s, Edward Said´s and Pierre Nora´s concepts of memory, which are mainly spatially constituted. It focuses on relationships between collective memory, identity and power in the city of Banská Bystrica in Slovakia in the post-1989 period. Post-socialist transformation brought a large diversification of the society, accompanied by diversification of memories and identities. Ther paper follows two areas related to remembering and forgetting that showed significant changes in the postsocialist period and have an important role in the construction of new collective memories: 1. place-renaming: changes of street and square names as a symbol of ; and 2. changes of urban symbols (destruction of old symbols and erection of new ones) and the introduction of new urban ceremonies. Both areas of memory- and identity-related transformations in the city of Banská Bystrica show power struggles of various groups that want to "privatise" their own history, own memory, identity, places and symbols.
Zuzanna Bogumił (Philosophy and Sociology)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation deconstructs the process of transformation of the public memory of the Soviet repressions in Russia after 1991 with particular emphasis on time of Putin’s regime.
Paper long abstract:
Since the Millennium of Baptism of Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church has canonised over a thousand new martyrs, confessors and other sainted persons who died ‘martyr’s death’ in the times of ‘religious persecutions’, the period of Soviet repression, mainly during the Bolshevik Revolution and The Great Terror. The event that gave the new martyrdom a wider social meaning was the celebration of the anniversary of the Great Terror in 2007, when Vladimir Putin visited the Butovsky firing range and participated in a religious service there. It was the first time when the state, which is not interested in creation of its own memory projects to the victims of Soviet repressions, supported the ROC remembering acts. The preparation of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolutions in 2017 shows that this alliance of the State and the Church continues and may have a great impact on the public memory of the Soviet Repressions in Russia.
On a base of the collected quantitative data during the field research in Russia in 2014, I will try to establish whether the new Russian martyrdom phenomenon is a continuation of the old beliefs or it is rather a new invented tradition? What is its texture? Why the new Russian martyrdom so willingly uses the historical sources and methods typical for the historians’ language of commemoration? What are the social consequences of this alliance of history and religion and what may be its impact on a shape of the cultural memory of the Soviet Repressions in Russia.
Ene Koresaar (University of Tartu)
Paper short abstract:
This paper 1) points to the institutionalization of the life story as mnemo-political genre in the post-1989 Baltic states, and 2) analyses the post-1989 life story as an act of internalization and externalization of memory regimes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is an attempt to synthesize the Baltic biographical research since the postcommunist turn from the point of view of memory studies by focusing on the role of life story telling in the process of social of remembering. A question is posed about the role of life story as both medium and agent of memory in the post-1989 Baltic context.
In the Baltic context the often referred to biographical boom from the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s highlighted the significance of autobiographical genres in a postsocialist society for their presumed ability to transmit the "true memory" of the past. Indeed, for some time the life story shared the same pedestal with historiography. Inspired by the theory of social becoming (Sztompka), the model of formats of memory (A.Assmann), and by the recent works on the mediation of memory (Erll, Rigney), this paper problematizes the role of the life story in post-1989 society. It 1) points to the institutionalization of the life story as mnemopolitical genre in the post-1989 Baltic states, and 2) based on concrete cases analyses the life story as an act of internalization and externalization of memory regimes. As a result it will be argued that the life story telling in a post-1989 context was aiming at gaining a common ground in cultural remembering by simultaneously contesting and stabilizing the dominant representations of the past.
Zsuzsa Plainer (ISPMN (the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities))
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates Roma and non-Roma memories of the state-socialist past in Romania, through a forced relocation of a Roma colony forty years ago. Contrasting Roma and non-Roma sources reveals, how this minority became a muted group during the hegemonic process of constructing the memories of communism.
Paper long abstract:
Law number 59/1974, also known as law of systhematization, was part of the state-communist urbanization policies in Romania. According to its officially admitted intentions, this document was enacted to provide better living conditions to the citizens, however it aimed demolition of urban districts and forced relocation of local communities. One outcome of the law was the blurring up of a Roma colony from the medium-sized Romanian town, Oradea during the 1970ies and 1980ies.
This presentation investigates how memories of the place, events on relocation and its consequences were made up and preserved. In doing so, two major sources are analyzed. At one hand post-socialist, even present-day representations of the colony are investigated,they ways it appears in non-Roma representations (official documents, newspaper articles, personal memories on the local history), on the other hand Roma narratives of the past are collected and subjected to inquiry.
Contrasting these two sources clearly shows that Roma became a muted group within this non-Roma process of remembering and forgetting the communist past. Meanwhile members of the minority group regard the colony as a place of well-being, happiness and pride, the non-Roma memories see it a shame for the whole town, a terrain for delinquency, poverty and misery.
Putting this in a broader context, within the various discourses on remembering communism, biases in representing the Roma became more salient. Memories on state socialism see the non-Roma as victims of a totalitarian power, still, relocation of the Roma is represented as an isolated event with no social and political relevance.
Mary Beth Stein (George Washington University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines representations of state-sponsored “Join In” campaigns in East Germany, their utopian demands as well as utilitarian purposes, and how they were perceived, enacted and represented by individuals and local communities.
Paper long abstract:
Toward the conclusion of a multi-hour life history interview conducted in Rostock in 2012, the 81-year old former East German Communist and Stasi officer who had spoken rather reluctantly about his life and work in East Germany, pulled out a Hauschronik (scrapbook) and began to reminisce nostalgically about good times under socialism. He spoke with more detail and delight, his reflections illustrated by the scrapbook documenting the communal activities, parties and major life events of ten families in an apartment building in Rostock from 1969 to 2000. Does this scrapbook suggest that a socialist utopia was realizable? As the creator of the scrapbook, he had been the driving force behind the realization of a tight-knit socialist community and the keeper of its collective memory.
This paper examines how material objects, such as scrapbooks, from the socialist past and the narratives it evokes in a post-socialist context function to negotiate the discrepancy between utopian demands of the state and "real existing socialism" (socialism as it existed in reality) in East Germany. In particular I focus on visual and verbal representations of communal activities undertaken under the guise of state-sponsored "Mach Mit" ("Join In") campaigns that had both an ideological and utilitarian purpose of creating a socialist consciousness/habitus while also beautifying the neighborhood, and how such utopian demands were perceived, enacted and represented by individuals and local communities.
Ilze Boldāne-Zeļenkova (Institute of Latvian History, University of Latvia)
Paper short abstract:
Former settlements reserved for Soviet military what nowadays continues exist as populated areas since 1990s were subjected by changes of social and cultural environment. Amongst many fields resulting from the fact I will focus on coexistence of two communicative memory spaces in chosen settlement.
Paper long abstract:
This is the beginning of the study on uses of the past in post-Soviet settlements in modern Latvia in comparison with similar cases in other post-socialist countries. Soviet military objects were located in 24 of 26 of Latvia's districts. Nowadays it is evident that there are three ways of development of post-Soviet settlements: 1) they have become ghost towns; 2) they are used as tourism sites; 3) they continue to exist as populated areas. My object of interest is the settlements, which maintained the status and features of a populated area. I will focus on coexistence of two memory spaces there - belonged to remained families of ex-milities and to newcomers who are unrelated to the site's Soviet military past and on areas of their representation (informative space, calendar of anniversaries and commemoration days, symbols etc.)
Sources of my presentation: field work data (observation, interviews), national and local press (1992-1998, 2014), materials available in the local museum.
Dagnoslaw Demski (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences) Dominika Czarnecka (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Al. Solidarnosci 105, 00-140 Warszawa NIP 5250008844)
Paper short abstract:
The newly settled inhabitants of the post-soviet military base have to cope with the communist past and difficulties with ‘familiarizing’ the local space. We present ethnography of the practices that enable using the foreign past and material heritage to create a new local identity since the 1990s.
Paper long abstract:
Our general interest relates to the uses of the past in the post-soviet ex-territorial areas in Poland. Among many examples of such places, for the purposes of this presentation we have decided to choose one area. The Soviet Army left the town in the early 1990s and since then it has been settled by the new inhabitants. We focus on the social and cultural practices that enable using the foreign past and material heritage to create a new local identity by Poles. Our aim is to present:
- a range of social practices taken up by different social actors (i.e. commemorative intentions, anniversaries - May 3rd Constitution Day, May 8th Victory Day, the local celebrations) in which the references to the Polish, Soviet and German past of the place are present
- what kind of references to the foreign past appear in these practices and in what context
- how the social practices are used to 'familiarize' the space of the post-soviet military base
- how these practices help to create a new local identity.
We also try to answer the question what do these social and cultural practices reflect, nostalgia for what has already passed or denial of the "shameful" foreign past.
Our analyses are based not only on fieldworks, but also on the research on visual materials available on the internet and created by different local actors and entities, i.e. the Regional Museum, the Association of the Polish-Soviet Army Enthusiasts, the Military History Enthusiasts' Club.