scholarly journals “Historical Falsification” as a Master Trope in the Official Discourse on History Education in Putin’s Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-135
Author(s):  
Julie Fedor
Keyword(s):  
History Education ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Second World War ◽  
State Control ◽  
World War ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Second World ◽  
Scholarly Attention

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.

scholarly journals The forgotten Eastern Front: dealing with the social and archaeological legacies of the Battle of the Rawka and Bzura Rivers (1914–1915), central Poland

Antiquity ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Anna I. Zalewska ◽  
Grzegorz Kiarszys
Keyword(s):  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Poland ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The Social ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
Heritage Policy ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

While the Western Front of the Great (or First World) War is deeply engrained in the European historical consciousness, memories of the Eastern Front are less prominent. Here, events have been repressed, obscured by the subsequent experience of the Second World War and by heritage policy in the region. The authors present the results of archaeological investigations of a battlefield in central Poland, where static trench warfare was fought between December 1914 and July 1915. A unique landscape palimpsest was formed, the present neglected state of which is a material expression of contemporary attitudes to the legacy of the forgotten Eastern Front. The study illustrates the wider intersection of warfare, identity and memory.

Vom Nachkrieg zum Vorkrieg

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

The historical consciousness of the peoples of Europe is still being shaped by their own national histories. The question of the political order that prevailed during the interwar years has remained a perennial issue among historians. The dominant hallmark of this prelude to the Second World War was the rise of dictatorships and the question of whether we can characterise this period as one of uninterrupted crisis. This collection of studies examines the quest for a new European order and the interconnections between domestic and foreign policy during the 1920s and 1930s. It collates different national perspectives in a single volume and asks searching questions about the consequences of the decisions made during the period under examination. With contributions by Dragan Bakić, Maciej Górny, Kurt Hager, János Hóvári, Georg Kastner, Miklos Lojko, Markus Meckel, Ulrich Schlie, Christian Schmidt, Thomas Weber and Werner Weidenfeld.

Civilian Disarmament: Public Order and the Restoration of State Authority in Italy’s Postwar Transition, 1944–6

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200942090916
Author(s):  
Marco Maria Aterrano
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Public Order ◽  
State Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Control Structures ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Postwar Italy ◽  
Legitimate Violence ◽  
Second World

Despite its impact on the breakdown of public order and on the rise of armed violence, the role of civilian disarmament in post-Second World War transitions is yet to be properly investigated. This article argues that the disarmament of the population was a key passage in two critical aspects of the normalization of postwar Italy: the reaffirmation of State authority and the reconstruction of control structures in response to the delegitimization of established authorities that followed their collapse in September 1943. Specifically, the article focuses on the intersection between the proliferation of war weapons, public order policing, and the recovery of Italian sovereignty in the aftermath of the Second World War. This article will demonstrate that disarmament was instrumental in reshaping Italian institutions according to the imperative of regaining control over the national territory in a context marked by foreign occupation, conflicting claims of legitimacy and the inversion of the monopoly on legitimate violence. The urgency to disarm incentivized both Italian and Allied authorities to rebuild the State control system in accordance to the pre-existing model of a centralized, authoritative administration. This led toward the preservation - in the sphere of public security - of agencies and individuals strongly compromised with the Fascist regime.

Policing, Ill-Discipline, and Crime in the American–Australian Alliance, 1942–1945

2019 ◽  
pp. 096834451985838
Author(s):  
Liam Kane
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Second World ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This article analyses policing, ill-discipline, and crime in the Australian–American alliance during the Second World War. Though these topics have received considerable scholarly attention, previous studies have been narrowly focused both geographically and thematically. Providing a broad analysis of these subjects, this article places these issues within their wider political and legal context, and examines the nature of cooperation between Australian police (both military and civil) and their US allies. It also traces general patterns of ill-discipline and crime in Australia and its territory of Papua and mandate of New Guinea, highlighting policies that successfully limited inter-Allied violence.

‘Travelling is a Pleasure …’ Leisure Control, Tourism and Images of the Other in the Iberian Fascist Dictatorships

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Daniel Lanero Táboas
Keyword(s):  
Leisure Time ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
National Image ◽  
Neighbouring Country ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This article examines the relationship between Francoism and the Portuguese Estado Novo in the context of state control of workers’ leisure time. The two Iberian Fascist dictatorships reacted to the international political isolation they were experiencing by seeking to strengthen their mutual ties during a period extending from the end of the Second World War until the mid-1950s. In the sphere of leisure, this was accomplished by means of two social tourism programmes: hosting workers from the neighbouring country in state holiday centres, and organizing trips in order to get to know the monuments and culture of the other country. These trips and vacations were used by the Franco Regime and the Estado Novo as a means of political and ideological indoctrination of workers. They were also intended to improve the perception of the national identity among the visitors, thus projecting a certain national image abroad.

‘The sweet tang of rape’: Torture, survival and masculinity in Ian Fleming’s Bond novels

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Adams
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Body ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Literary Meaning ◽  
Second World ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Little scholarly attention has been paid to the torture scenes in Ian Fleming’s canon of Bond novels and short stories (1953–1966), despite the fact that they represent some of the most potent sites of the negotiations of masculinity, nationhood, violence and the body for which Fleming’s texts are critically renowned. This article is an intersectional feminist reading of Fleming’s canon, which stresses the interpenetrations of homophobia, anticommunism and misogyny that are present in Fleming’s representation of torture. Drawing on close readings of Fleming’s novels and theoretical discussions of heteronormativity, homophobia and national identity, this article argues that Fleming’s representations of torture are sites of literary meaning in which the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity are policed and reinforced. This policing is achieved, this article argues, through the associations of the perpetration of torture with homosexuality and Communism, and the survival of torture with post-imperial British hegemonic masculinity. Fleming’s torture scenes frequently represent set pieces in which Bond must reject or endure the unsolicited intimacy of other men; he must resist their seductions and persuasions and remain ideologically undefiled. Bond’s survival of torture is a metonymy for Britain’s survival of post-Second World War social and political upheaval. Further, the horror of torture, for Fleming, is the horror of a hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity in disarray: Bond’s survival represents the regrounding of normative heterosexual masculinity through the rejection of homosexuality and Communism.

scholarly journals ‘Our’ vs. ‘Inherited’ Museums. PiS and Fidesz as Mnemonic Warriors

Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Polish and the Hungarian governing party, PiS and Fidesz, are mnemonic warriors who had already tried to enforce their memory politics during their first government terms, as their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum, opened in 2004, and the House of Terror in Budapest, opened in 2002, show. In museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors, the current governments either change content, as PiS at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, or ‘only’ battle against the directors in office, as happened at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. Yet even mnemonic warriors cannot ignore international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’. As the author shows, the Polish and the Hungarian governments favored opening new museums over changing existing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, including those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum in southeastern Poland, the House of Fates in Budapest, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and uplifting messages of Polish and Hungarian heroism.

scholarly journals “Carry our colours and defend our interests under the skies of other Continents”. Argentinian Commercial aviation policy in the Peronista decade (1945–55)

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61
Author(s):  
Melina Piglia
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Second World War ◽  
State Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Commercial Aviation ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
Aviation Policy ◽  
Single State ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

In the context of the challenges posed by the end of the Second World War and the early post-war period, the Argentinian governments foresaw aviation as a pillar of its national and international presence. Argentina created the Air Force, nationalised ground aerial infrastructures, placed domestic flights under state control and in 1950, all Argentinian airlines were nationalised and merged into a single state-owned enterprise: Aerolíneas Argentinas. Meanwhile, Argentinian leadership aggressively negotiated bilateral agreements. This paper analyses aviation policy (both domestic and international) of the first Peronista decade from 1945 to 1955, framing it as a response to limit USA expansion into South America, building Argentinian hegemony in the region and consolidating the ongoing process of industrialisation and economic autonomy.

The transnational mythscape of the Second World War

2019 ◽  
pp. 175069801986315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoav Galai
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Second World ◽  
Made In

Since the early 2000s, the study of European Memory politics has proliferated, but has come to mean different things. It focuses either on the emergence of Holocaust remembrance as a shared cultural memory, disputes within European Union institutions over what the European collective memory should be, or diplomatic standoffs between Russia and its former satellites. I argue that while such complex multi-level memory politics defy an overarching theoretical categorisation, they can be understood through a comprehensive approach, which is achieved by considering the different narratives of the past to be interpretations of a common historical occurrence. This article argues that European Memory Politics as a whole occurs within a transnational mythscape of the Second World War, in which international actors promote their interpretations as simplified myths while warding off competing myths that negatively depict their mythical selves. An emergent narrative alliance between Russia and Israel, made in response to European memory politics, is used to illustrate the utility of the transnational mythscape framework for understanding memory politics beyond the national sphere.

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