Memory Wars in the ‘New Europe’

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Stone
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Cold War

Seventy years after the start of World War II, revisionists across Europe are arguing that Joseph Stalin was as much to blame for starting the war as was Adolf Hitler. As Adam Krzeminski rightly says, World War II is still being fought. This article sees ‘collective memory’ as a set of representations of the past that are constructed by a given social group (be it a nation, a family, a religious community, or other) through a process of invention, appropriation, and selection, and which have bearings on relationships of power within society. ‘Memory’ here refers not only to the academic study of memory but primarily to the various manifestations of ‘memory politics’ that have characterised Europe since the end of the Cold War. It is worth situating these European memory wars in a broader context, since they occur worldwide, especially in societies scarred by civil war, genocide, and authoritarianism, such as post-apartheid South Africa, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Argentina.

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.

What was bipolarity?

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Harrison Wagner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eurasian Continent ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Structural Theories

In spite of its widespread use, no one has ever stated clearly what the distinction between bipolar and multipolar systems refers to. Moreover, some common definitions of “bipolarity” imply behavior that is inconsistent with the behavior of states during the cold war. This article argues that the distinctive feature of post–World War II international politics was not that two states were more powerful than the others, as the literature on bipolarity would suggest, but that one state, the Soviet Union, occupied in peacetime a position of near-dominance on the Eurasian continent, a position that states in the past had been able to achieve only after a series of military victories. This fact explains the behavior that others have sought to explain by bipolarity, as well as behavior that is inconsistent with what common definitions of bipolarity would lead us to expect. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the argument for structural theories of international politics and controversies about what lies ahead.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Martha Sprigge
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Grief Work ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The Cold War

By taking the reader on a cemetery walk in the Eastern part of now-reunified Berlin, the Introduction describes how mourning practices, while constrained by the governmental strictures in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), were made possible through musical practices. It positions the book within musicological work on the Cold War and provides an overview of antifascism, which was the central framework for interpreting the nation’s past in East Germany, particularly World War II. Rather than taking a bifurcated approach to German memory politics during the Cold War, a central premise of Socialist Laments is that music was a medium that facilitated the coexistence of mourning and commemoration in the GDR. To demonstrate, the Introduction articulates a theory of musical mourning that combines psychological understandings of grief work with site-specific hermeneutics, arguing that embodied practices are crucial for understanding how mourning took place within the memorial spaces of former East Germany.

Danish Cold War Historiography

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 180-211
Author(s):  
Rasmus Mariager
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Attention ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History ◽  
Security Affairs

For decades, little research on Danish Cold War history was conducted either inside or outside Denmark. The relevant archives were closed, and generations of Danish contemporary historians were primarily interested in what happened during World War II. This is no longer the situation. Over the past 35 years, especially since the end of the Cold War, researchers have scrutinized Danish Cold War history in great depth. By now, scholarly research in Denmark on the Cold War, especially in the area of Danish national security affairs and foreign policy, has reached a level that merits international attention, and this survey article provides an overview. The article encourages Danish Cold War scholars to promote comparative research that incorporates Danish Cold War history into the wider international Cold War scholarship, to the benefit of both Danish and international research.

Inglorious Judgment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Nadolny
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Cold War

It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke, to ask what Stanley Kramer’s 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg and Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious Basterds have in common. One film is a lengthy black and white, Oscar‐winning courtroom drama, the other a recently released, blood‐soaked World War II fantasy. Yet in an essay for a Law and Literature seminar with Dr. Scott last semester, I sought to explore the similarities between these two films in light of their approaches to themes of justice and legality. Despite initial appearances the two films are remarkably alike. Both Kramer and Tarantino use casting in noteworthy ways ‐ choosing their actors not only for their considerable talents but also theircultural cache. Judgment and Basterds also use the framework of Germany and the war to comment not only on the past, but also on the present; Kramer makes an interesting commentary on the dangers of McCarthyism, and Tarantino carefully allies his audience with a character whose actions clearly can be seen as terrorism. Kramer and Tarantino further highlight their views on justice by using language in interesting, and revealing ways.  By looking at a film from the past, as well as the present, this essay examines the ways in which filmmakers combine historical events with aspects of the present to raise questions about important current issues; specifically, imposed justice and legality within the context ofboth the Cold War and the War on Terror.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Global Governance in a World of Change

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World War ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modes Of Governance

Global governance has come under increasing pressure since the end of the Cold War. In some issue areas, these pressures have led to significant changes in the architecture of governance institutions. In others, institutions have resisted pressures for change. This volume explores what accounts for this divergence in architecture by identifying three modes of governance: hierarchies, networks, and markets. The authors apply these ideal types to different issue areas in order to assess how global governance has changed and why. In most issue areas, hierarchical modes of governance, established after World War II, have given way to alternative forms of organization focused on market or network-based architectures. Each chapter explores whether these changes are likely to lead to more or less effective global governance across a wide range of issue areas. This provides a novel and coherent theoretical framework for analysing change in global governance.

scholarly journals Style and ideology: The cold war 'blend' in Greece

Muzikologija ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Keti Romanu
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Western World ◽  
World War ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Iannis Xenakis ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Cold War

This paper describes cultural policy in Greece from the end of World War II up to the fall of the junta of colonels in 1974. The writer's object is to show how the Cold War favoured defeated Western countries, which participated effectively in the globalisation of American culture, as in the Western world de-nazification was transformed into a purge of communism. Using the careers of three composers active in communist resistance organizations as examples (Iannis Xenakis, Mikis Theodorakis and Alecos Xenos), the writer describes the repercussions of this phenomenon in Greek musical life and creativity.

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