Chapter 6 New Cold War and EU Memory Politics

This paper discusses and compares two national versions of memory politics (Soviet/Russian and American versions) in the context of the Caribbean crisis, one of the most resonant events of the Cold war. The paper describes how each country interprets the Caribbean crisis in the context of the changes that took place in the international arena and in domestic political life. The main methods of memory politics implementation that are typical for each of the parties to the conflict are analyzed. An attempt is made to identify common approaches to memory politics implementation and distinctive features specific to each of the parties. The authors pay special attention to the coverage of the Caribbean crisis in schoolbook, in declassified archival documents, in museum exhibitions and memorials dedicated to the history of geopolitical and ideological confrontation between the two superpowers. The paper describes the areas where the policy in question is most often applied. The issue of how the memory politics was related to the evolution of the identities of the two states during the Cold war and after its end is also touched upon.

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Introduction

Socialist Laments ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197546321.003.0001 ◽

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.

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Memory Wars in the ‘New Europe’

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560981.013.0036 ◽

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.

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