Historical Policy of the Roh Moo-hyun’s Government in South Korea: Seeking Reconciliation with the Past

Historical policy was one of the main directions of the domestic policy of the Roh Moo-hyuns government (2003-2008). The ideological justification of revising the 20th century history of Korea was the idea of building a new Korean society based on the principles of democracy and the rule of civil rights and freedoms. Through the implementation of a new historical policy the Roh Moo-hyuns government tried to prove that the creation of such a society was impossible without revealing the truth about the historical past, in which the state repeatedly neglected civil rights and committed crimes. Increased attention to issues of restoration of the historical justice is typical for the current government of Moon Jae-in, the political successor of Roh Moo-hyun. Based on the analysis of the governmental documents, legislation this paper reveals the main disagreements between political parties of the Republic of Korea around the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, identifies the key results of its activities.

Solving Cases of Historical Justice: How Lithuanians Defended Their Tribe

The article raises the problem of the distinction between the law and laws arising from changes in legal order or other fundamental social changes. The legal doctrine and case-law relating to cases of historical (transit) justice are examined in the context of the examples of Germany and Lithuania. Under investigation is the model of punishment of persons who collaborated with Soviet occupiers and contributed to the elimination of participants of the resistance movement, implemented in Lithuania, revealing the factors influencing the change in this model.

К спорным вопросам истории Бурят-Монголии: позиция В. Ф. Аханянова

The aim of the present study is to examine the report “On controversial issues in the history of Buryat-Mongolia” made by V. F. Akhanianov at the Institute of History of the Communist Academy. Its focusis on thequestions raised during the discussions in Verkhneudinsk in July 1934 that Akhanianov’s report deals with. The source for the study is the transcript of the report, dated September 7, 1934,that is kept in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Results. The scholarpresented his criticisms of some participants’ opinions but, also, his own views of the issues on the agenda, such as feudalism in the historical context of Buryat-Mongolia, the Russian Empire’s colonial policy, Prussian or American ways of development, forms of exploitation that existed before 1917, October Revolution and Civil War in Buryat-Mongolia, and land reform. Also, the report includes a significant number of ideological statements, which was typical of public speeches in the mid-1930s. The report shows Akhanianov’s expertise in the history of Buryat-Mongolia and his genuine interest in restoring historical justice in the assessment of individual stages in the Republic’s development. In terms of the studies of the historical past of Buryatia, of relevance is also the discussion of the report that followed and the speaker’s concluding remarks. Conclusion.The material presented in the paper contributes to the database in the field of research and is of interest for further studies.

Realising Roma rights through a high-stakes history test: Secondary school students narrating the Swedish Roma past, present and future

Building on theories of historical justice, reconciliation and transformative change, this article investigates how 293 secondary school students make sense of the difficult past, present and future of the Romani in a national history test. Using qualitative and quantitative text analysis, this study seeks to explore whom students foreground as agents of change in regard to the Roma past, present and future. Considering the past and looking to the future, the inquiry led students to narrate four scenarios: no change; a regression to a past state of no rights; a development for the better; a future free from oppression. While the students underscored the importance of a shared responsibility for Roma rights, they stressed the nation state as the single most important agent of change for Roma rights in the present and future. Against the backdrop of justice and change, this study argues that while students realise and recognise Roma rights through their narrational practices, and thus may become empowered to act for a just future, these narratives also re-establish historical cultural and ethnic group boundaries which potentially may disempower young learners.

Kharkiv school of international law. Establishment and traditions

Problem setting. Without knowledge of previous achievements, scientific achievements and conclusions of international scientists, it would be impossible to master the modern realities of the science of international law. Forgetting the names of researchers and their ideas on the ideological principle, which we encountered in Soviet times, caused great damage to domestic science. The process of restoring historical justice is gradually underway, and the works of past centuries are returning to scientific circulation. This also applies to the history of domestic science of international law. Analysis of recent researches and publications. The problem of formation and development of schools of Ukrainian international law was studied by scientists N. Ulyanov, Y. Baskin, D. Feldman, V. Semenov, K. Savchuk, A. Dmitriev, U. Butler. Fundamental research in the area of Kharkiv school of international law was conducted by V.A. Yastrzhembsky, M.P. Chubinsky, D.I. Bagatiy, O. V. Butkevich, M. V. Buromensky, O. V. Tarasov. Target of research. To analyze the history of formation and development of the Kharkiv School of International Law, to study the activities of its representatives and process their scientific works, to generalize and systematize the knowledge about the science of international law as one of the most important branches of law taught in Ukrainian universities during XIX-early XX centuries. Article’s main body. In the article, the author analyzes certain periods of the existence of the Kharkiv School of International Law, examines in detail both the Faculty of Law as a whole and the Department of International Law. It is also shown how the Department of International Law developed, what positions existed, who were the first teachers of the department, what were their main works on the topic of international law. Also the article provides a comprehensive study about the activities and merits of the main representatives of the Kharkiv school of international law, their main scientific works were briefly described. Conclusions. The science of international law began to develop in Ukrainian universities in the first half of the 19th century. In Kharkiv, the Faculty of Law and the Department of International Law were first formed at the Kharkiv National University of V. N. Karazin. Representatives of the Kharkiv School of International Law made a contribution to the development of the doctrine of international law in Ukraine, especially V.P. Danevsky, D.I. Kachenovskogo, T.F. Stepanova, V.A. Yastrzhembsky, who broke up the original and advanced ideas for the master of international law and laid the foundation for the modern legal science.

The Structural Injustice Turn, the Historical Justice Dilemma and Assigning Responsibility with the Canadian TRC Report

This article addresses the historical justice dilemma: although critical memory is indispensable for accountability, efforts to use it are often hampered by the unjust relations and systems that caused the wrongs to which historical justice is compelled to respond in the first place. Contemporary authors tackle this problem by focusing on collective responsibility for structural injustice. This article takes a different tack. Studying closely the 2009–2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report, it argues that the structural turn may come at the expense of a focus on agency and may thus provide unwitting anonymity for wrongdoers while crimping our thinking about leadership and responsibility. Although this article strongly criticizes the TRC report, it tries to work constructively with it, developing an analysis that compensates for the report's unwitting invisibilization of perpetrators. Distilling portraits and analyses of wrongdoer agency that are latent in the TRC's postwar history volume, this article shows how we can develop the report as a resource of what I call retributive social accountability.

Doing Justice to History

As communities—both local and international—have struggled to make sense of mass atrocity situations, expectations have increasingly been placed on international criminal courts to render authoritative historical accounts of the episodes of mass violence that fall within their purview. Taking these expectations as its point of departure, Doing Justice to History seeks to understand international criminal courts through the prism of their historical function—critically examining how such courts confront the past by constructing historical narratives concerning both the culpability of the accused on trial and the broader mass atrocity contexts in which they are alleged to have participated. The book argues that international criminal courts are host to struggles for historical justice, discursive contests between different actors vying for judicial acknowledgement of their preferred interpretations of the past. By examining these struggles within different institutional settings, the book surfaces the legitimating qualities of international criminal judgments—illuminating, in particular, what tends to be foregrounded and included within, as well as marginalised and excluded from, the narratives of international criminal courts in practice. What emerges from this account is a sense of the significance of thinking about the emancipatory limits and possibilities of international criminal courts in terms of the historical narratives that are constructed and contested both within and beyond the courtroom in different institutional and societal contexts.

The Struggle for Historical Justice

This chapter situates the book within existing scholarship concerning the historical function of international criminal courts and introduces the book’s analytical perspective, namely the characterisation of international criminal courts as confrontational terrains that are host to struggles for historical justice—intense contests in which a range of different actors vie for judicial acknowledgement of their preferred interpretations of the past. In order to facilitate a critical examination of these struggles, the chapter elaborates a framework for exploring how the situated choices of different actors have influenced the scope and content of judicially constructed historical narratives in different institutional contexts. The framework identifies the actors involved in struggles for historical justice, the questions around which such struggles tend to be structured, and the practices through which such struggles are conducted.

“Satisfied with the Ruins of Berlin”: The German Capital’s Image in Soviet Graphics of 1945

An artist who finds themselves in the last days of a war in the enemy’s defeated capital may not just fix its objects dispassionately. Many factors influence the selection and depicturing manner of the objects. One of the factors is satisfaction from the accomplished retribution, awareness of the historical justice triumph. Researchers think such reactions are inevitable. The article offers to consider from this point of view the drawings created by Soviet artists in Berlin in the spring and summer of 1945. Such an analysis of the German capital’s visual image is conducted for the first time. It shows that the above reactions were not the only ones. The graphics of the first post-war days no less clearly and consistently express other feelings and intentions of their authors: the desire to accurately document and fix the image of the city and some of its structures in history, the happiness from the silence of peace, and the simple interest in the monuments of European art.The article examines Berlin scenes as evidences of the transition from front-line graphics focused on the visual recording of the war traces to peacetime graphics; from documentary — to artistry; from the worldview of a person at war — to the one of a person who lived to victory. In this approach, it has been important to consider the graphic images of Berlin in unity with the diary and memoir texts belonging to both artists and ordinary soldiers who participated in the storming of Berlin. The combination of verbal and visual sources helps to present the German capital’s image that existed in the public consciousness, as well as the specificity of its representation by means of visual art.