Media memorial discourses and memory struggles in Slovenia: Transforming memories of the Second World War and Yugoslavia

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-450
Author(s):  
Maruša Pušnik
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The radical break between two national contexts in 1991, when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia, and Slovenia’s integration into the European Union in 2004, has brought changes to the collective memory of the Slovenian nation. In this article, I investigate how Delo, a major Slovenian daily newspaper, has been involved in memory struggles to present new memorial discourses that are in accordance with the new national politics. A large part of the common Yugoslav past has been reinvented for the present political and ideological purposes of European integration, whereby the Second World War and the Partisan movement, which once signified a common Yugoslav life, have become a contested issue. The focus of the critical narrative analysis is put on those general narrative templates that underlie specific news narratives about the Second World War and socialist Yugoslavia. Over the last 25 years, dominant media have strengthened memory struggles in the Slovenian public realm and have created revisionist narratives of the Second World War and the post-war past.

Non-Alignment: Its Continued Relevance

1986 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-449
Author(s):  
Rama Rao
Keyword(s):  
Economic Condition ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Body ◽  
World War ◽  
Precise Shape ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
The Common ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The concept of non-alignment, as it is understood by the vast majority of people who wish to live in peace with their neighbours and the world at large, originated in India in the pre-Independence era. Indian national leaders had visualised that the Second World War would end Western colonialism in Asia and Africa and that India would regain its independence after two centuries of alien domination and exploitation. They had rightly judged that the Second World War, despite its ideological overtones of democracies versus dictatorships, was essentially a war initiated by one group of powers to regain, and of the other to retain their colonies. Whatever the precise shape of the post-War world, Indian national leaders were clear in their minds that their most important tasks on regaining independence would be to improve the economic condition of the mass of our people, secure social justice, and provide for minimum public health and educational needs. That after four decades of prodigious effort and expense, we seem to be standing still like the proverbial toiler trying to ascend a treadmill, is a different issue. The fact remains that Indian leaders, aware of the paramount and urgent need for improving the lot of the common man, wanted to be left alone to attend to their problems. They wanted no part in Great Power rivalries. They also saw the need, in the larger interests of all and especially of the poor and newly liberated countries, for the latter to recognise the virtues of non-alignment as well as its practical utility in a world torn by strife. The argument that the larger the body of non-aligned countries, the larger the area of peace and to that extent, the less the arena of conflict is irrefutable. Basically the concept of non-alignment is sound. It was very relevant when the idea first took shape in India and remains equally relevant and valid today.

scholarly journals Euro-Centrism vs. International Thinking

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 24-27
Author(s):  
Josephine Liebl
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Economic Community ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
European Economic ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
Second World

The idea of a united Europe is generally believed to be something positive, especially as it represents values like democracy and tolerance. The practical construct resulting from this idea, the former European Economic Community (EEC), has been created in reaction to the moral, political and economic destruction Europe went through during the Second World War and therefore embodies the “concept of a long-lasting peace (Wallström, 2004). As the EEC has developed from a unity based on economical cooperation into the European Union (EU), a political construct with growing influence on national politics, the question arises whether it is legitimate at all (Obradovic, 1996, p.191).

Memory Politics in the Former Yugoslavia

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-32
Author(s):  
Vjeran Pavlaković
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
War Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Second World

This article provides an overview of some of the most prevalent topics in post-Yugoslav memory politics as well as on some of the scholars working on these issues, focusing on the commemorative practices of the Second World War and the wars of the 1990s. Thirty years after the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, the discourse of post-war memory politics continues to dominate nearly all of the successor states, even though two of them have seemingly left the past behind to join the European Union. While the wars of the 1990s created an entirely new memoryscape in the region, they also radically transformed the way in which each country commemorated the Second World War. Although the article examines in-depth the collective remembrance of sites of memory, such as Jasenovac, Bleiburg, and Knin, trends across the broader region are also addressed. The work of young scholars, as well as experienced researchers, who have introduced innovative approaches in memory studies in the former Yugoslavia, is highlighted to show how new studies focus on the cultural reproduction of dominant narratives in addition to top-down political discourse.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

Western Ethnic Borderlands in the Influence of Russian-Soviet Propagangda Before and in the Years of the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (46) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
Russian Identity

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics

“Product Not Available in Pre-War Quantities – but Quality Remains the Same”: Remarks on Advertisements as Historical Sources

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Press ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The article focuses on advertisements as visual and historical sources. The material comes from the German press that appeared immediately after the end of the Second World War. During this time, all kinds of products were scarce. In comparison to this, colorful advertisements of luxury products are more than noteworthy. What do these images tell us about the early post-war years in Germany? The author argues that advertisements are a medium that shapes social norms. Rather than reflecting the historical realities, advertisements construct them. From an aesthetical and cultural point of view, advertisements gave thus a sense of continuity between the pre- and post-war years. The author suggests, therefore, that the advertisements should not be treated as a source for economic history. They are, however, important for studying social developments that occurred in the past.

scholarly journals SPIRITS, POWER AND THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN LATE-COLONIAL GABON

Africa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Cinnamon
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Political Imagination ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTThrough narratives of an anti-‘fetish’ movement that swept through north-eastern Gabon in the mid-1950s, the present article traces the contours of converging political and religious imaginations in that country in the years preceding independence. Fang speakers in the region make explicit connections between the arrival of post-Second World War electoral politics, the anti-fetish movements, and perceptions of political weakening and marginalization of their region on the eve of independence. Rival politicians and the colonial administration played key roles in the movement, which brought in a Congolese ritual expert, Emane Boncoeur, and his two powerful spirits, Mademoiselle and Mimbare. These spirits, later recuperated in a wide range of healing practices, continue to operate today throughout northern Gabon and Rio Muni. In local imaginaries, these spirits played central roles in the birth of both regional and national politics, paradoxically strengthening the colonial administration and Gabonese auxiliaries in an era of pre-independence liberalization. Thus, regional political events in the 1950s rehearsed later configurations of power, including presidential politics, on the national stage.

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