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Monumental Conflict: Controversies Surrounding the Removal of the Marshal Konev Statue in Prague
(2020)
On 3 April 2020 the statue of former Soviet Army Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev was removed from its prominent location in downtown Prague. This radical act was preceded by years of public debate over wartime and postwar Czech history and the role of the Red Army in it. The article reviews these debates and discusses the reasons why controversy has flared up now and to what extent it is the result of changing narratives and shifting memory politcs in recent years.
A new Trianon monument has been inaugurated in August 2020 right opposite the parliament building in Budapest. Installed by government decree without much prior deliberation, the ‘memorial ramp’ reveals the current government’s flirtation with irredentist, 'Greater Hungary'-fantasies. While briefly reviewing public reactions to this new installation, the article's main focus is on the monument’s construction of a historical narrative of Hungary's pre-Trianon 'Golden age' and discussing it in its historical evolution.
Debates About the Communist Past as Personal Feuds: The Long Shadow of the Hoxha Regime in Albania
(2021)
More than thirty years after the end of the Hoxha regime, the communist period is still subject of heated public debates in Albania - debates that frequently degenerate into personal attacks and insults. The article traces the origins of the strong polarization in the public discourse to the communist repressive tool of 'family liability' and to an insufficient and heavily instrumentalized post-communist process of transitional justice.
In early 2021, the Director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (GRRC) in Vilnius was replaced provoking a wide-ranging debate on the inner workings and public mandate of the nation’s leading memory institution. The article discusses the Centre's past performances between conducting historical research and engaging in memory activism and it reflects on the new appointment's potential to strike a better balance.
In June 2021, the much anticipated Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion and Reconciliation opened its doors in Berlin. The article reviews the Centre's permanent exhibition at the Deutschlandhaus, placing it within the preceding controversies and asking to what extent it meets the aim to contextualize the post-war expulsion of Germans within the broader European context of forced migrations.
After twelve years of restauration and preparation, the new permanent exhibition on twentieth century Czech history finally opened its doors last July at the National Museum in Prague. The article provides a critical review of this exhibition, questioning its educational function and criticizing its rather narrow, national approach to Czech history as well as its narrative design.
While Putin’s plan to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been widely understood as irrational, it is entirely consistent with the “anti-fascist” discourse of his regime. The article discusses how this discourse draws on the political and cultural neo-traditionalism crystalized in 1970s Soviet TV serials that vilified the West, defined a new Soviet war hero, and nurtured a cryptic fascination with Nazism.
Since gaining independence, Kyrgyzstan has struggled to reconcile its imperial and Soviet history with a post-imperial historical narrative that would be able to unite contemporary Kyrgyz society in a nation-state. No memorial site embodies this more than the Ata-Beyit Memorial Complex near Bishkek. The grave sites and memorials assembled here represent three periods of Kyrgyzstan's 20th century history all at once. The article traces their history and discusses their changing meaning over time.
The Royal Museum for Central Afrika in Tervuren, Belgium, has long been seen as a racist institution. Recently it has come out with a new permanent exhibition that aims at a more (self-) critical approach to the colonial past. The article reviews the new exhibition and the criticism against it. In an epilogue it shows the various ways in which the new AfricaMuseum and its exhibit carry valuable lessons also for museums in Central and Eastern Europe.