scholarly journals Historical Consciousness and Ideology at Turning Points in Russian History

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-35
Author(s):  
Natalia NAROCHNITSKAYA
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
World War ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Historical Education

The evolution of the historical consciousness of Russian society over two centuries shows its potential to play a destructive or a saving role in dramatic moments of history, when out the prime value of the national statehood continuum is challenged by outer or inner attacks. The Russian intelligentsia's maximalist “reception” of Marxism resulted into total nihilism and a zeal to sacrifice the statehood for the sake of world revolution. However, having started in 1917 with a radical overthrow of Russian history, the authorities reincorporated it into the Soviet doctrine on the eve of the World War II, which resurrected national feeling and unity and enabled victory in the mortal fight. New ideological but equally nihilistic maxims once again prevailed and lead inter alia to the second collapse of the state in 1991. Historical consciousness of contemporary society, especially of young generations, is particularly prone to rapid changes and alternative extremes in the era of information technologies, which confirms the crucial importance of historical education to maintain spiritual sovereignty and national conscience as its core.

Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-195
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M.F. Grasmeder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Multimethod Approach

Abstract Why do modern states recruit legionnaires—foreigners who are neither citizens nor subjects of the country whose military they serve? Rather than exclusively enlist citizens for soldiers, for the past two centuries states have mobilized legionnaires to help wage offensives, project power abroad, and suppress dissent. A supply-and-demand argument explains why states recruit these troops, framing the choice to mobilize legionnaires as a function of political factors that constrain the government's leeway to recruit domestically and its perceptions about the territorial threats it faces externally. A multimethod approach evaluates these claims, first by examining an original dataset of legionnaire recruitment from 1815 to 2020, then by employing congruence tests across World War II participants, and finally by conducting a detailed review of a hard test case for the argument—Nazi Germany. The prevalence of states’ recruitment of legionnaires calls for a reevaluation of existing narratives about the development of modern militaries and provides new insights into how states balance among the competing imperatives of identity, norms, and security. Legionnaire recruitment also underscores the need to recalibrate existing methods of calculating net assessments and preparing for strategic surprise. Far from being bound to a state's citizenry or borders, the theory and evidence show how governments use legionnaires to buttress their military power and to engineer rapid changes in the quality and quantity of the soldiers that they field.

Evolution and Normalization: Historical Consciousness in Germany

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Philipp Lutz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Strong Continuity ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Era

German political culture has been undergoing gradual but significant changes since unification. Military engagements in combat missions, the introduction of a professional army, and a remarkable loss of recent historical knowledge mostly within the younger generations are hallmarks of the new millennium. Extensive education about the Holocaust is still prevalent and there is a strong continuity of attitudes and orientations toward the Nazi era and the Holocaust reaching back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, a lack of knowledge about history-not only the World War II period, but also about East and West Germany-in the age group of people under thirty is staggering. The fading away of the generation of victims who are the last ones to tell the story of persecution during the Holocaust and a parallel rise of new actors and technologies, present challenges to the educational system and the current political culture of Germany.

Rite of Redemption.

Paragrana ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-85
Author(s):  
Hisako Omori
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
War Dead ◽  
Canadian Citizenship ◽  
Japanese Canadian

Abstract Across Canada, people commemorate the lives of fallen soldiers by wearing red poppy flower pins for Remembrance Day on November 11. In recent years, Canadians have increasingly taken pride in the symbols used in Remembrance Day, such as poppy flowers and a poem called In Flanders Fields. The day celebrates the notions of sacrifice, belonging, and the nation state of Canada. Japanese Canadians also celebrate this holiday by wearing poppies and remembering the war dead. World War II, however, marked a turning point for the lives of second generation Japanese Canadians. The majority of them were interned in the “relocation camps” during the war years as “enemy aliens” irrespective of their Canadian citizenship status. This paper will describe a present-day Remembrance Day service held in a Japanese Canadian Christian congregation in Ontario, in which its veterans are remembered. The article argues that this ritual of remembrance reverses the historical and social location of Japanese Canadians from those who were the victims of the war to those who were contributors to it, enabling Japanese Canadians to assert their rightful position in Canadian society. This paper also includes a discussion of the author’s personal transformation of historical consciousness about World War II and being Japanese in Canada during this research.

scholarly journals Violent Memory: Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
Netty Mattar
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
World War ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Symbolic Resources ◽  
Mnemonic Devices ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World

Modern information technologies have radically transfigured human experience. The extensive use of mnemonic devices, for instance, has redefined the subject by externalizing aspects of inner consciousness. These transformations involve the incorporeal but deeply felt, violent dislocations of human experience, traumas that are grounded in reality but which challenge symbolic resources because they are difficult to articulate. I am interested in how the unseen wounding of mnemonic intervention is registered in the “impossible” language of speculative fiction (SF). SF is both rooted in the “real” and “estranged” from reality, and thus able to give form to impossible injuries. This paper argues that Haruki Murakami uses the mode of SF in his novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, to explore how mnemonic substitutes interfere with the complex process of remembering World War II in Japan. I will demonstrate how, through SF, Murakami is able to give form to an unseen crisis of memory in postwar Japan, a crisis marked by the unspeakable shock of war and by the trauma that results from the intrusion of artificial memories upon one’s consciousness of history.

Being in Parentheses

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sanos
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
World War ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Finding Meaning ◽  
May 68 ◽  
Grand Public ◽  
Jeune Fille

AbstractDiane Kurys is known in French cinema for her popular, seemingly apolitical and “sentimental” films. Kurys's early films, however, chart a mode of historical consciousness, memory, and temporality that alerts us to both the origins and afterlives of May ’68. In the widely celebrated 1977 Diabolo menthe, set in 1963 just after the end of the Franco-Algerian War, and the 1980 commercial and critical flop Cocktail Molotov, which took May ’68 as its subject, Kurys fictionalizes a meditation on the ways gender, sex, and Jewishness have been at the heart of these events' politics for her. Through the figure of the jeune fille at the heart of her films, Kurys traces an ambivalent memory linking the specters of the Franco-Algerian war to those of World War II to map an ambivalent and gendered post-Holocaust French Jewish identity. For Kurys, finding meaning in May ’68 means revealing how only sex constitutes a politics that can rearrange the ordering of bodies in a community.Si les films de Diane Kurys sont connus du grand public, son cinéma est généralement absent du champ des représentations et des mémoires de Mai 68. Pourtant, ses premiers films sont l'occasion pour elle d'imaginer un rapport au passé mettant en lumière les origines et héritages de « l'événement Mai 68 ». Avec Diabolo Menthe (1977) qui met en scène la vie de l'adolescente Anne en 1963 et Cocktail Molotov (1980) où la même Anne connaît l'émancipation à l'orée de Mai 68, Kurys fait émerger une vision de l'histoire en marge : dans ces marges et ces débordements se mêlent les après‐coups de la guerre d'Algérie, les échos d'un monde inquiet et d'une identité juive après la Shoah. L'imaginaire de Kurys ne propose cependant aucune radicalité politique. Trouver du sens à Mai 68 pour Kurys, c'est d'abord se préoccuper de la manière dont la sexualité est la seule politique qui puisse réagencer l'ordre des corps dans la communauté.

Islam: A Rising Tide in Tropical Africa

1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-461
Author(s):  
William H. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Modem World ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Independent States

Africa, an area of contrasts and contradictions, is beginning to assume new importance in Western eyes. Its more than 200 million people, in many stages of economic and political evolution, are evincing a new vitality and demonstrating a growing consciousness of Africa's place in the modem world. The rapid changes on this vast continent are most fully reflected on the political plane. Since World War II, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, the Sudan, and the Gold Coast (Ghana) have become independent states. Former Italian Somaliland, Nigeria, and Uganda are taking uncertain strides in that direction. France is offering the hope of a new political future to its remaining African possessions. In addition, new and modern cities have been carved out of jungles, diversified skills imparted to Africans, and the values of a scientific age made more comprehensible.

scholarly journals The Winter War: Preparation and Technology of War

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 5052-5055
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Russian History ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The World ◽  
Armed Violence ◽  
Winter War

The theme of the World War II held in the period of 1941-1945 never loses its relevance because the threat of armed violence and military aggression in present days is too great. Therefore, the historical experience should become the property of the younger generation, so it does not repeat the mistakes of the past. Without speaking against the pluralism of scientific approaches and assessments in the study of the past in general, it is impossible to agree with the bias in the description of historical processes that take place today in Russian history. With the coming to power of the new political forces, many historical events concerning the past of the country are rethought, there is a rewriting of historical facts in favor of politicians, to justify their actions

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