History in Newborn Free Competition: Historical Memory and Building New Postcommunist Values in the Central and Eastern Europe in 1989-2015
Syllabus
1. Introduction (dr. Stanislav Tumis) - 14th November 2017, 14:30-15:50, room 325 2. Making Sense of Traumatic Past – theoretical introduction (21st November 2017, 10:50-12:20, room 313) – dr. Tomas Sniegon (University of Lund, Sweden);
Readings before the lecture: Rüsen, Jörn, Historical Narration: Foundation. Types. Reason. (16 pages) (all texts for lectures of Tomas Sniegon will be distributed as pdf). 3. Europeanisation of the Holocaust memory: the Holocaust, the Gulag and institutions of the ”New Europe” (21st November 2017, 14:10-15:40, room 325) – dr. Tomas Sniegon (University of Lund, Sweden)
Readings before the lecture: Karlsson, Klas-Göran, Uses of History and the Third Wave of Europeanisation. (13 pages); Müller, Jan-Werner, “European Memory”. Some Conceptual and Normative Remarks (13 pages) 4. Vanished History: the Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture after 1989 (22nd November 2017, 15:50-17:20, room 325) – dr. Tomas Sniegon (University of Lund, Sweden)
Readings before lecture: Sniegon, Tomas, Schindler's List Comes to Schindler's Homeland 5. ”Patriotisation” of the Gulag memory in current Russia (22nd November 2017, 17:30-19:00, room 313) – dr. Tomas Sniegon (University of Lund, Sweden)
Readings before the lecture: Etkind, Alexander, Post-Soviet Hauntology: Cultural Memory of the Soviet Terror 6. Dilemmas of nation-building in CEE: between the past and the future (27th November 2017, 14:10 – 15:40, room 325) - dr. Valeria Korablyova (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev)
Readings before lecture: Nodia, Ghia, The End of the Post-National Illusion (all texts for lectures of Valeria Korablyova will be distributed as pdf). 7. The colonial heritage in CEE, or Russia as a subaltern empire (27th November 2017, 15:50-17:20, room 325) - dr. Valeria Korablyova (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev)
Readings before lecture: Viatcheslav Morozov, Russia's Post-Colonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World (looking through chapter one) 8. EuroMaidan and a ‘new Ukraine’: values, interests, and imaginaries (28thNovember 2017, 10:50 – 12:20, room 313) - dr. Valeria Korablyova (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev)
Readings before lecture: Valeria Korablyova, EuroMaidan as a Misinterpreted Revolution: the legacy of 1989? 9. Poland and Ukraine: trapped in memory wars (28th November 2017, 14:10-15:40, room 325) - dr. Valeria Korablyova (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev)
Readings before lecture: Portnov, Andrii, Clash of Victimhoods: the Volhynia Massacre in Polish and Ukrainian Memory (see https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/andrii-portnov/clash-of-victimhood-1943-volhynian-massacre-in-polish-and-ukrainian-culture) 10.Re-building Post-Communist Georgian Nation and State (5th December 2017, 10:50-12:20, room 313) - dr. Adrian Brisku (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University)
Readings for lecture by Adrian Brisku: materials recorded on 3rd December 2017 11. "The Great Son of the Nation": Remembering Stalin, Remembering the Past in Georgia (12th December 2017, 10:50-12:20, room 313) - dr. Adrian Brisku (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University) 12. Conclusion (dr. Stanislav Tumis) - 19th December, 14:10-15:40, room 325
Information about lecturers:
Dr. Valeria Korablyova is Professor of Philosophy at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She has held a number of international fellowships with research projects on post-Communist transformations in East Central Europe (CUNI, 2017; University of Warsaw, 2016-2017; IWM, Vienna, 2015-16; and Stanford University, 2014-15). Her research interests include the EuroMaidan, the EU project of ‘Europe’, and CEE after 1989. Her latest book “Social Meanings of Ideology” (Kyiv University, 2014)covers ideological transformations of European modernity, including the rise of market rationality and emerging alternatives to it, revealing the Maidan uprising in Ukraine as a peculiar case herewith.
Dr Adrian Brisku is a Professor Assistant on the Caucasus at the Department of Russian and East European Studies at Charles University (Prague) and Professor Associated of Comparative History at Ilia State University (Tbilisi). He holds a doctorate in History and Civilisation from European University Institute (Florence). He is the author of Bittersweet Europe: Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008 (Berghahn Books, 2013), Political Reform in the Ottoman and Russian Empires: A Comparative Approach (Bloomsbury, 2017), and several peer-reviewed articles on European and national identity, empire, reform, political-economic thought in nineteenth-century Russian and Ottoman empires as well as twentieth-century Albanian and Georgian history.
Dr Tomas Sniegon is a historian and Senior Lecturer in European Studies. His research focuses on memory of traumatic events of the 20th Century in Central and East European historical cultures and on development of Communism in Europe during the Cold War. He works on a project with the title “Making Sense of the ”Good” Soviet Communist Dictatorship Through Stalin´s Terror, Khrushchev´s Reforms and Brezhnev´s Period of Stagnation. A historical narrative by the former KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny.” It has been supported by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences. He is also grateful to the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University for their support.The project is based on his interviews with Vladimir Semichastny (1924-2001), whom he met in Moscow on numerous occasions between the years 1993 and 1999. The book is under contract with Yale University Press and will appear in the Yale-Hoover series on Authoritarian Regimes.
Annotation
The course deals, primarily, with main tendencies in the formation of historical consciousness and collective memory in the space of Central and Eastern Europe after decline of the Communist block and Soviet Union in 1989–1991. The course will focus primarily on dealing with communist (totalitarian) past and search of new values and identity in post-communist societies on examples of memorial places, analysis of post-communist (post-Soviet) cultural, national and social development etc.
The lecture/seminars, led by Tomas Sniegon, will focus on use of memory in realities of Central and Eastern Europe. The first lesson is introductory and deals with important concept of historical memory, such as historical thinking, history and identity, historical consciousness, historical culture, use of history. The second lesson concentrates on construction of historical traumas, nationalisation, Americanisation and Europeanisation of the Holocaust, the Holocaust and the Gulag as Contested Memories and Europeanisation of the Gulag Memory and Its Problems. The third lesson presents a case-study of Czech and Slovak experience with the “return” of the Holocaust memory during the post-communist transformation, challenges of Americanisation and Europeanisation of the Holocaust for Czech and Slovak national identities. The fourth lesson deals with memory of the Great Patriotic War and memory of the Gulag in comparative perspective, the traumatic legacy of the Gulag as a challenge for post-Soviet Russian national identity.
The module, led by Valeria Korablyova, is focused on the nation-building processes in East Central Europe after 1989. The re-invention of the nations contained not only the challenge of constructing alternative historical narratives but also of choosing the chronotope, or balancing between imagining the past and the future (retrotopias and utopias, respectively). It roughly corresponds to the ethnic and political models of nation. However, recent developments in the region and in Europe at large add more complexity to the picture. And ambiguous – albeit shadowed – colonial heritage must be considered in the context.
The lectures, led by Adrian Brisku, examines the processes of nation- and state-building in the new, post-Soviet Georgia. It does so by looking at the shifts and contestations in the understanding of the nation (its ethnic, civic, ethno-religious attributes), while considering nation-building’s role in the different stages of country’s state-building; from a new, to a failed then becoming a relatively functioning state. The second lecture discusses some of the main aspects of how Georgian society is dealing with its Soviet past. It will do so by considering the use of cultural and political memory, with particular focus on contemporary narratives and opinions surrounding the figure of Joseph Stalin.