WEEK 9-10 Flashcards
4 different memory regimes
GERMAN
-German memory regime is about holocaust memory, comming to terms with defeat and what happened to eastern europe afterwards
RUSSIA
-Russia focused on great patriotic war
- russia at the end is the liberator of Eastern Europe
East-Central Europe
- Nazi Soviet pact and the secret protocols
- Recognition of anti-Soviet partisans
- Soviet liberations as imperial takeover
Eastern Front Border
- Narrative talking about national suffering in the war that culiminates with soviet takehover and colonization
Ontological Insecurity
Ontological security = security of identity
Assumption that states care as much about their ontological security as about material and physical security.
To continue being secure, states need predictability and order – strive for routine and stable relationships with other states in the international system. They also need narratives of past from which the basis of their identities.
- Vernacular memory foundational to nation building, MEMORY IS CRITICAL TO ONTOLOGICAL SECURITY!
Created by centrality of holocaust memory in the West v. secondary role in the East
Holocaust as a memory in EAST V. WEST EUROPE
East - holocaust doesnt have a strong centrality of memory.
West - holocaust is central
Political Memory
just as your memory is improtant to your identity, political memory is important for a country’s identity.
Political memory, therefore, is never just about the past but is also very much about a particular political project in the present that it supports and maintains, which of course was the principal insight of Maurice Halbwach.
can be a source and product of ontological insecurity.
Memory Appropriation
Countries engaged in this as a method of
Memory of WWII in communist soviet controlled Europe:
memory of WWII reduced to the win of soviet union over fascism.
Communist forces framed antifascism as a military and ideological battle with the ultimate triumph of the communist idea
Buchenwald Concentration Camp
in Eastern German narrative of WWII was about fascist persecution of communists and communist revolt and liberation. a narrative that completely marginalized the jews who were killed there and ignored US troops in liberalization
allowed for glorification and embellishing communist resistance in the camp.
3 PHASES OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY:
Immediate post WWII period
Rising awareness since the 1960s
Consolidation of a global memory of the holocaust since the early 1990s
memory of holocaust v. memory of communism
Again, the memory of communism was constructed against the memory of the Holocaust—the authors of the Black Book of Communismchose this title precisely to mirror Grossman’s and Ehrenburg’s Black Book of the Holocaust. The two memories, in other words, were in conflict from the beginning. Europe’s divided memory is not a recent invention
Europe defined by the holocaust
big deal since 1990s
central to European identity, has become a “contemporary European entry ticket” where joining, contributing, and participating in a shared memory of the holocaust defines what a european state is.
…..especially for late eastern european entrants….
HOLOCAUST AS HAVING ITS OWN MNEMONIC CODE!
Why eastern europe (post-commi europe) is not focused on holocaust remembrance….how is holocaust remembrance threatening for them?
!! communism memory was constructed against the memory of the holocaust !!
For post-commi nations, not focused on the evil v. good atm (holocaust framed as evil). its more like the role of evil in postcommunist europe is reserved for comunism as the more recent and immediate source of oppression and victization.
Holocaust remembrance (emphasized in the west) threatening for them and destabilizing for their identities - bc need to consider how the narrative of stalinism and the gulag and nazism were constructed the same.
consider phases (eastern europe in commi regime while the sentiment of the horrors of the holocaust were evolving in the 1960s) and so when they broke free from communism, they want to avoid all narratives elevating the heroism of communists and antifascists in resisting nazism so the post-communist narrative erased them completely .
The end of communism and the return to Europe of its East, brought the memory of Aushwitz and the memory of the Gulag HEAD TO HEAD. These new eastern european states were expected to participate in and contribute to the already established and canonized holocaust remembrance as developed in the West.
BUT CRAZY DEMAND! Holocaust remembrance was not central to these states identities, it was overpowering the remembrance of communism which was central to their identities
BLACK BOOK of Communism
collapse of communism provided an opportunity to completely revisit history of eastern europe’s 20th C and the hsitories of both teh holocaust and stalinism.
Black book of communism (1997) marked a specific moment in which the memory of communism was flattened to represent one unitary evil akin to Nazism and not a collection of disparate regimes over a long period of time.
THEY WANT TO REJECT communism. for it to be rejected - they need to discredit it, delegitize and criminalize it.
Strategies of Memory Appropriation
wanted to overcome threats to their identities so postcommunist states pursued a variety of strategies to transpose their specific memory of communism onto the symbolic memory architecture of broader europe and institutionalize a NEW transnational memory of communism.
but they did NOT deny the holocaust, rather they memory appropriated –> holocaust remembered as a proxy to something else- communism
Memory Inversion (method of memory appropriation)
Serbia & memory inversion: holocaust and its crimes appropriated to make space for the discussion of crimes of communism.
Holocaust was a vehicle for remembering crimes of communism. used to invert the suffering and victimization of the Holocaust’s principal victims - the Jews - and instead represent other victims (ethnic majorities) as its primary targets.
basically using holocaust and jewish extremism for its own political needs.
memory divergence (method of memory appropriation)
Croatia - made it seem as though anti-jewishness was a foreign import
this narrative opens up a space for a connection with an imagined precommunist past - the true home of the national state, unpolluted by external forces of violence and terror. National self remains pure.
