The “Bandera Debate”: The Contentious Legacy of World War II and Liberalization of Collective Memory in Western Ukraine

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 469-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Narvselius
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Ukraine

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Collective Memory

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger D. Markwick
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Personal Trauma

World War II has never ended for the citizens of the former Soviet Union. Nearly 27 million Soviet citizens died in the course of what Joseph Stalin declared to be the Great Patriotic War, half of the total 55 million victims of the world war. The enduring personal trauma and grief that engulfed those who survived, despite the Red Army's victory over fascism, was not matched by Stalin's state of mind, which preferred to forget the war. Not until the ousting of Nikita S. Khrushchev in October 1964 by Leonid Brezhnev was official memory of the war really resurrected. This article elaborates a thesis about the place of World War II in Soviet and post-Soviet collective memory by illuminating the sources of the myth of the Great Patriotic War and the mechanisms by which it has been sustained and even amplified. It discusses perestroika, patriotism without communism, the fate of the wartime Young Communist heroine Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the battle for Victory Day, the return of ‘trophy’ art, the Hill of Prostrations, and Sovietism without socialism.

scholarly journals Memorialization of the "liberators" in Transcarpathia during the period of preventive Sovietization (1944 – 1946)

2021 ◽  
pp. 142-150
Author(s):  
Pavlo Leno
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
The Carpathians ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Regional Centers ◽  
Short Time

In 1944 – 1946, during the preventive Sovietization of Transcarpathian Ukraine, the local communist authorities initiated radical changes in its symbolic landscape in order to influence the collective memory of the population. The result of this policy was the appearance in the region in 1945 of monuments in honor of the Heroes of the Carpathians (soldiers of the Red Army), who died as a result of active hostilities in October 1944. Officially, the perpetuation of the memory of the fallen Red Army soldiers took place as a manifestation of the people's initiative of the local population in gratitude for the liberation from fascism, including from the “centuries-old Hungarian slavery”. However, archival materials and oral historical research prove that this process was an element of the traditional Soviet policy of memory, initiated by the command of the 4th Ukrainian Front. As a result, a number of memorial resolutions of the People's Council of Transcarpathian Ukraine were adopted in a short time. As a result, the graves of the Red Army were enlarged, fundraising was organized among the population, and the construction of monuments to the fallen liberators was started and successfully completed in all regional centers of the region. The peculiarity was that the installation of monuments in honor of the Heroes of the Carpathians took place long before the end of the Great Patriotic War / World War II, which was not observed in other territories of the Ukrainian SSR. One of the other paradoxes was that, so, the representatives of the Hungarian minority of the region demonstrated their appreciation for their "liberation from Hungarian domination".

scholarly journals Remembering Sugihara, Re-framing Japan in Europe: Holocaust Era Altruism and the Politics of Cultural Memory

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Jane Marie Law
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
The Holocaust

Cornell University This paper is a comparison of two museums dedicated to the Japanese diplomat to Lithuania during World War II, Sugihara Chiune. Credited with having written over 6,000 visas to save the lives of Jews fleeing German occupied Poland into Lithuania, Sugihara is regarded in Europe, in Japan, and within the Jewish community as a whole as an altruistic person. This study is not an inquiry into the merits of Sugihara’s action, but rather astudy of how the process of memorializing, narrativizing and celebrating the life of Sugihara in two vastly different museums is part of a larger project of selective cultural memory on the part of various Japanese organizations and institutions. This paper situates the themes of altruism and heroism in the larger process of cultural memory, to see how such themes operate to advance other projects of collective memory. The case of Sugihara is fascinating precisely because the vastly differing processes of cultural memory of the Holocaust―in Lithuania, in Japan, and in a wider post-World War II, post Holocaust Jewish Diaspora each have different ways of constructing, disseminating and consuming narratives of altruism. This paper is based on fieldwork in Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2003, 2004 and again in 2005 and in Japan in 2005.

scholarly journals The Lviv Train Station Restaurant as a Soviet Enterprise, 1944-1980

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andriy Zayarnyuk
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Economic System ◽  
System Organization ◽  
Organization Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Train Station ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This article is a micro-history of a restaurant in post- World War II Lviv, the largest city of Western Ukraine. Offering a case study of one public dining enterprise this paper explores changes in the post-war Soviet public dining; demonstrates how that enterprise’s institutional structure mediated economic demands, ideological directives, and social conflicts. It argues that the Soviet enterprise should be seen as a nexus between economic system, organization structure of the Soviet state, and everyday lives of Soviet people. The article helps to understand Soviet consumerist practices in the sphere of public dining by looking into complex, hierarchical organizations enabling them.

The political economy of global memory: Shared memory of global conflict in Captain America: The First Avenger

2019 ◽  
pp. 175069801984395
Author(s):  
Jill A Edy ◽  
Garret L Castleberry
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Global Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Captain America ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Common Enemy ◽  
Is Value

Recent scholarship explores the possibility of a global collective memory in which networked individuals transiting national, class, and ethnic boundaries create commonality from shared difference. Yet, the public past’s representation remains influenced by powerful entities such as governments and corporations, and resources made available, particularly by the popular culture industry, will likely shape globally shared memories. This study documents an instance of commercially mediated global memory, showing how Captain America: The First Avenger revised the original comic’s World War II backdrop to appeal to global audiences who would have been dire enemies during the period the film depicts. Scholars positing cosmopolitan memory might agree there is value in representing the world coming together to defeat a common enemy. Yet the film also relativizes historical depravities by claiming that real historical actors are not as bad as they seem and by suggesting that such acts are not truly ours but rather visited upon us by non-human strangers.

Pamela Ballinger. History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-227
Author(s):  
Maura Hametz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

Using anthropological, historical, and political science approaches, Pamela Ballinger demonstrates how memory shapes Istrian understandings of Italian identity. World War II and the events of 1945, specifically the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste and the division of the upper Adriatic territory into Allied and Yugoslav administered zones, form the backdrop for the study that concentrates on the crystallization of collective memory for Istrian esuli (exiles who settled in Trieste) and rimasti (those who remained in Yugoslavia). Grounded in the literature re-evaluating the impact of the Cold War, her work skillfully weaves a narrative that uncovers competing visions as well as common tropes in Istrian visions of ‘Italianness’ constructed in the climate of state formation and dissolution since World War I. Ballinger's major contribution is her analysis of the “multi-directionality” of identity formation (p. 45) that has implications far beyond the Istrian case.

scholarly journals Der Scheitel der Welt. Aline Valangin und das Onsernonetal

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Monika Mańczyk-Krygiel
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
World War ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Elias Canetti ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Politically Persecuted

These considerations are devoted to literary pictures of the Onsernone Valley located on the Italian-Swiss border. It was here in the 1930s and 1940s that the Swiss writer Aline Valangin (1889– 1986) created an extraordinary oasis of freedom and peace in her estate in Comologno. She hosted famous figures such as Kurt Tucholsky, Elias Canetti, Ignazio Silone, or Wladimir Vogel, and provided shelter to many politically persecuted artists. The subject of detailed reflection is the question of the perception, experience and acquisition of the Ticino mountains both in works by Valangin and in biographical works about her; with a particular focus on narrative perspective — from the outside and the inside. Eveline Hasler in biographical novel Aline und die Erfindung der Liebe (2000) attempts to (re)construct an image of the Onsernone Valley as a specific “valley of poets”, presenting a subtle analysis of the interaction between the conservative inhabitants of the valley, attached to tradition, and the extravagant artists who found asylum and inspiration in the Ticino Alps. This novel is an example of a modern biography, which is characterized by narrative polyphony; the description of space becomes an important carrier of meanings and collective memory in the author’s concept. Aline Valangin sketches in her novels (Die Bargada, 1943 / Dorf an der Grenze, 1982) and short stories (Tessiner Erzählungen, 2018) an image of Onserone indigenous people’s everyday life in the thirties and forties, full of worries. Her stories include outsiders, misfits, social outcasts, guerrillas, smugglers, and exiles — and they all find haven in the Valley. Valangin’s works are also an important voice in the discussion of the essence of Swiss patriotism not only through strong criticism of Swiss immigration policy during World War II, but also by reflecting on the concept of the border as a place that unexpectedly proves to be a challenge and a particular kind of self-experience in the face of events that are tearing up the current existence.

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