Cultures of History Forum (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)
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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.
75 years after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, different narratives of the war still mark public commemorations across the former Soviet Union, epitomized by two dates: 8 and 9 May. In Ukraine today, both are official commemorations days yet they are surrounded by contentious debates about history and identity. The article zooms in on this year's commemorations in Kharkiv discussing these debates and what they tell us about Ukraine’s evolving memory culture.
How strong are memories of the 1989 revolution in Germany and the Czechoslovak successor states, and how do they reinforce democratic politics today? In a comparative review of the anniversary commemorations in Leipzig, Berlin, Prague and Bratislava, the article discusses to what extent these events managed to reanimate the civic spirit of 1989 and how they alert to contemporary threats to democracy.
Why is it that one of the most visited museums in Prague, the Museum of Communism, is largely ignored by Czechs? Whose narrative is being presented here and who is being addressed? The article reviews the history and current permanent exhitition of this private museum and uses it to reflect on broader issues relating to the definition and functions of contemporary museums.
A new prime-time show on Czech public television entitled 'Devadesátky' (‘The Nineties’) has turned out to be vastly popular and triggered a lively public debate. In six episodes, the series reconstructs the most notorious cases of violent, organized crime during the first post-socialist decade in the Czech Republic. The article reflects on the TV series’ popularity and what it tells us about public memory and narratives of the turbulent post-1989 period in Czech society.
The Stench of Pigs and the Authority of Historians: Czech Debates About the Lety Concentration Camp
(2022)
For thirty years, Romani and other memory activists have struggled to get a pig farm that stood on the site of the former concentration camp for Czech Roma in Lety removed. This is now going to happen, and a new memorial museum will be set up on the site. The article reconstructs the debates that evolved around the site since the mid-1990s and sheds light on some of the misconceptions and controversies in Czech society about the Romani Holocaust.
Cinematic attempts to tell the story of historical mass violence and trauma in former Yugoslavia are often steeped in political controversy. The article discusses two recent films – ‘Dara of Jasenovac’ (Serbia, 2020) and ‘Quo vadis, Aida?’ (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2020) – and the public reactions to them. While both films share certain features such as looking at historical horrors and inter-ethnic violence from a female perspective, they differ remarkably in style as well as in how they were received in Serbia and beyond.
In April 2021 a Czech researcher stumbled over a file card that identified Prime Minister Andrej Babis as a former agent of the StB. This new piece of evidence, however, was barely discussed in the Czech public. The article tries to explain this non-existing debate about the Prime Minister’s StB past and finds answers in the changing significance of anti-communism as a driving force of Czech public debate and memory politics.
Images of refugees being trapped at the eastern Polish border have evoked memories of another time: in 1939, Polish Jews fleeing from Nazi occupied Poland eastwards were denied entry to the Soviet Union and were stuck right at the same place as people today, along the river Bug. Reflecting on the historical analogies that have been drawn in this context in Polish public debate, the article discusses their validity and usefulness in understanding similarities and difference of both past and present refugee crises.
As part of the special issue on 'Lex CEU', the present article argues, that the antiliberal tendencies in Bulgarian politics and society and apparent recourses to nationalism are not really a new phenomenon. Instead, the developments in the country over the last decade and more rather point to a stable trend towards increasing illiberalism that is accelerated by rampant elite corruption and an ever decreasing media independence.
On 13 February 2020, citizens of the city of Dresden commemorated the 75th anniversary of their city's destruction by Allied bombing attacks in 1945. Subject to great contestation in politics and civil society, political protest and counter-protest also marked this year’s anniversary. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dresden before, during and after 13 February 2020, the article reviews the public events and discusses the actors and narratives that shape Dresden’s most important remembrance day.
The situation in Ukraine is the subject of an intense discussion in the public sphere and the media across Europe. But what do we know about how our neighbouring countries are reflecting on the crisis, its historical background and its meaning for the relationship between our countries, Ukraine, Russia and the European Union? During 2014 and 2015 the Cultures of History Forum asked historians and sociologists from more than 15 European countries, the US, Israel and Turkey to reflect on the media coverage and public debates regarding the Ukrainian crisis in their countries.