Law as an Instrument and as a Mirror of Official Memory Politics: The Mechanism for Rehabilitating Victims of Communism in Serbia

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Đureinović

This article examines the mechanism for judicial rehabilitation in Serbia as a tool and as a reflection of state-sanctioned memory politics of the Second World War and Yugoslav state socialism. The mechanism of rehabilitation seeks to accommodate victims of unfair trials by revising them or declaratively and collectively rehabilitating victims of political persecution. In the case of Serbia, the legislation enables rehabilitation of persons responsible for collaboration and crimes during the Second World War as long as it can be argued that political and ideological grounds were also involved in their judicial or extrajudicial persecution. Acknowledging that individuals were unjustly persecuted in the postwar period, the article is primarily concerned with prominent military and political actors of the Second World War. Discussing rehabilitation in the context of the relation of history, memory and law, the article represents a perspective of history and memory studies rather than a purely legal-dogmatic analysis.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Weesjes

Informed by oral history and memory studies, this chapter draws on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists and is dedicated to the impact of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the events of 1956 – the year of Khrushchev’s secret speech and the Soviet invasion of Hungary – on the Dutch and British communist movements. This chapter particularly examines how cradle communists in the Netherlands and Britain experienced the contrast between the communist movement’s zenith during the Second World War and its nadir in 1956. Within this context, it discusses the Dutch communist resistance during the German occupation, parental war trauma and transgenerational communication, and the impact of anti-communist measures in Britain and the Netherlands on participants’ lives.


2006 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK MORT

ABSTRACT Historians of the sexual and cultural changes associated with the ““permissive”” moment of the 1960s have tended to emphasize a progressive narrative of reform focused on national policies and their social outcomes. This article explores a diffierent dynamic, highlighting the ways in which a series of scandalous and transgressive events, associated with particular networks of metropolitan culture in London, played a significant role in reshaping sexual beliefs and attitudes within English society during the postwar period.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
PURMER MICHIEL ◽  
HENK BAAS

Threatened ruins. Castle remains in the Dutch landscape anno 2019 In The Netherlands, around 80 castle ruins are preserved. In 1997, a book was dedicated to the castle ruin. A year later, one of the authors of this paper investigated castle remains as part of a historical geographical inventory. In 2012, the Dutch State Heritage Agency wrote a practical guide for the conservation and development of castle ruins. In this article, the authors describe the development of ruins in the past 20 years. They tried to investigate the development of the castle ruins since the late nineties and tried to categorize this. Rebuilding of the castle, partly or totally, appeared in almost 10% of all ruins. In other cases, there was attention for the touristic infrastructure around the ruin. In most cases however (68%), the ruins stayed more or less intact, with sometimes careful consolidation or restoration. Sometimes, the surroundings of the ruin changed dramatically with the development of housing, infrastructure or other forms of urbanization. In other examples, historical gardens were restored or reconstructed. There are however several plans for the rebuilding or reconstruction of ruins. These plans often provide the new castle with functions, from wedding location to hotel or office-space. This could be a good development for castles destroyed relatively short ago, i.e. in the Second World War or in de postwar period. Many ruins are however destroyed centuries ago. Given the limited amount of ruins in The Netherlands and the sometimes centuries old development of the landscape and the ruin itself, the authors plea for more attention for the castle ruins as such.


Modern Italy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-330
Author(s):  
Giorgia Priorelli

At the dawn of the Second World War, the successes of the Axis seemed to herald the realisation of a new anti-Bolshevik and anti-democratic European order dominated by Nazi-fascist powers. Italian Fascists and Spanish Falangists enthusiastically welcomed plans for the ‘new civilisation’ in which they were determined to participate as protagonists. This article sheds light on the roles projected for the respective countries in the New European Order in the postwar period, according to the black and the blue shirts. It also investigates the ideological and cultural foundations of the Fascist and Falangist projects related to the new continental configuration, identifying similarities and differences between them. Considering the scarcity of comparative writings about fascist movements in the Mediterranean area, the present research fills a historiographic gap.


2020 ◽  
pp. 69-102
Author(s):  
Steven Fielding ◽  
Bill Schwarz ◽  
Richard Toye

This chapter focuses on the way in which political actors of different stripes have used the idea of Churchill as a means of self-validation. It explores how, in the decades after his death, Churchill became a key point of reference in Anglo-American relations, a theme which intensified after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The chapter also examines how Churchill has been used by those on both sides of the long-running debate about British membership of the European Union. Although Remainers invoked the memory of the 1946 ‘United States of Europe’ speech, they struggled to sell Churchill as a complex figure who was prepared to make concessions on British sovereignty in the interests of future peace. The ingrained, bulldog image remained hegemonic—even though Churchill’s popular reputation had shifted in subtle but significant ways since the end of the Second World War.


1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Author(s):  
Gill Plain

The ‘golden age’ of clue-puzzle detective fiction is usually considered to end in 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War. Yet Agatha Christie, the most high-profile and successful exponent of the form, continued to produce bestselling novels until her death in 1976. This essay examines three novels from the immediate postwar period to consider how she adapted her writing to negotiate a changing world and evolving fashions in genre fiction. Engaging with grief, demobilisation, gender, citizenship and the new fears of the atomic age, Christie proves unexpectedly attentive to the anxieties of a new modernity.


2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Patricia Clarke

There have been several anecdotal accounts of the literary scene in Brisbane during World War II and numerous references in more general works. In 2000,Queensland Reviewpublished some reminiscences of writers Estelle Runcie Pinney, Don Munro, Val Vallis and David Rowbotham, under the title ‘Writing in Brisbane during the Second World War’. Some of the more important general works include Judith Wright's ‘Brisbane in Wartime’, Lynne Strahan's history ofMeanjinand Judith Armstrong's biographical work on the Christesens,The Christesen Romance. My interest in this subject arose from editing Judith Wright's autobiography,Half a Lifetime, published in 1999, and recently in editing, with her daughter, letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney which were mainly written in Brisbane in the later years of the war and the immediate postwar period. Initially my purpose was to gather information to elucidate people or events mentioned in these writings, but my interest widened to embrace more general information about the period. My research led me to the conclusion thatMeanjinand its editor Clem Christesen were catalysts for many of the literary activities in Brisbane during World War II, not just among resident Australians, but among troops temporarily stationed in Brisbane — particularly Americans, whom Christesen cultivated and published. This article records a few glimpses of literary life in Brisbane, and incidentally in the rest of the country, during a period described by Patrick Buckridge as never having been researched ‘in enough detail’.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-135
Author(s):  
Julie Fedor

This article explores a key claim underpinning Russian official memory politics, namely, the notion that Russia’s past (and especially the role it played in the Second World War) is the object of a campaign of “historical falsification” aimed at, among other things, undermining Russian sovereignty, especially by distorting young people’s historical consciousness. Although “historical falsification” is an important keyword in the Kremlin’s discourse, it has received little scholarly attention. Via an analysis of official rhetoric and methodological literature aimed at history teachers, I investigate the ideological functions performed by the concept of “historical falsification.” I show how it serves to reinforce a conspiratorial vision of Russia as a nation under siege, while simultaneously justifying the drive toward greater state control over history education.


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