A Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Memory Politics: Spanish Contemporary Memory Politics, Populism Studies, and Argumentative Dialectics

This paper establishes a dialogue between populism studies, typologies of reconstruction of the past, and argumentative dialectics. The paper analyzes what types of argumentative strategies are employed in the context of the discussions regarding Spanish memory politics and how those strategies can be associated with typologies of re-elaboration of the past (Caramani and Manucci 2019). Building from argumentative dialectics (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004), the paper studies argumentation structures uttered after the endorsement of the 2007 Spanish Historical Memory Law and the proposal of the 2021 Draft Democratic Memory Law. Departing from the distinction between diverse strategies of re-elaboration of the past, namely, heroization and cancellation (Caramani and Manucci 2019), the paper questions if Spanish decision-makers’ rhetorical strategies and political decisions in the field of memory politics disclose the adoption of particular types of populist behavior. The paper claims that the argumentative tactics used, in the domain of memory politics, by Spanish left-wing leaders reveal the adoption of a heroization strategy. In contrast, the rhetoric of Spanish right-wing leaders favors a strategy of cancellation. The paper also claims that, in the Spanish case, mainly from 2018 onwards, the adoption by Spanish left-wing leaders of a heroization strategy had two consequences. First, it did not reduce the cultural opportunity structure for right-wing populism. Second, it fostered a cultural opportunity structure for the affirmation of left-wing populism. The paper selected argumentative dialectics as a methodological framework (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004). The paper discusses the scientific significance of analyzing memory politics through the lenses of populism studies.

The Politics of Identity and Regional Integration – Updating Global Perspectives

Regional integration (RI) is an essential part of the discourse on the global economy, viewed often as a “stumbling block” or “building block.” However, little research exists that connects RI in the context of a politics of identity (PoI), which can be used to describe the evolving tensions between national sentiment and regional economic cooperation. This paper performs a Web of Science and Google Scholar review of 136 articles to determine how RI is discussed in the context of PoI. Our review demonstrated that the conceptual frameworks normally used to think about PoI are underexpressed in the context of RI. We discuss why this is the case and identify themes to illustrate the connection. We then suggest conceptual frameworks to enhance the discussion of PoI as it relates to RI, particularly as it relates to the teaching of RI across learning groups.

Do Praguers differ from Czechs? Selected topics of recent intergroup antagonism attempts

Due to the recent attempts to divide Czech society based on the antagonism between Prague and the countryside, this study researches some of the aspects of this division—basic human values and the national identity of the inhabitants of Prague. These very basic level sources of the antagonism are researched via a combination of ISSP (National identity III module) and ESS (Round 8) surveys and two focus groups with Prague inhabitants. The results show that there are no real, or wrongly interpreted, differences between Praguers and people in the countryside with respect to both basic human values and Czech national identity. Regarding the basic human values of the two groups, only the conservation value dimension is stronger outside Prague. However, this value dimension is inherently ambiguous because its value of security is stronger within Prague, which is in contrast to values of conformity and tradition that are stronger outside Prague. In addition to this, conservation is still the stronger dimension within Prague compared with the openness to change value dimension. Praguers are rather compelled to be open and they are capable of adapting, even if their values are more conservative. The same values prevail among people within and outside Prague, which has been confirmed in the focus groups. There are also more similarities between the two groups in their national identities, e.g., when they are less nationalistic than patriotic. Both groups are of similar strength for patriotism and nationalism. The sources of national pride among the two groups are very similar and Praguers are those who can be labeled as being prouder in a few of the aspects of the Czech nation. The division between Praguers and non-Praguers seems to be rather artificial and based on inaccurate perceptions and/or interpretations.

The City of Solidarity's Diverse Legacies: A Framework for Interpreting the Local Memory of the 1963 Skopje Earthquake and the Post-earthquake Urban Reconstruction

On July 26, 1963, a calamitous tremor struck Skopje, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, the southernmost Yugoslav federal unit. The politically nonaligned Yugoslav government immediately issued a call for help for its third-largest city. The call was initially picked up by the Yugoslav republics, who were then followed by more than 80 states across the globe and a high number of international organizations, all providing help to Skopje and Skopjans in the aftermath of the catastrophe—an episode of human solidarity many contemporaries described as unprecedented. This paper aims to provide an overview of commemorative activities held in Skopje from 1964 to 2020 related to the 1963 Skopje earthquake. I aim to reconstruct both the commemorative events and commemorative narratives about the 1963 Skopje earthquake in Skopje as well as its major memory agents and agencies by triangulating archival materials, media and institutional discourses, and secondary literature. I identify and discuss three commemorative phases, 1963–81, 1981–2000, and 2001–20, and I structure the argument on the multidirectionality of the notion of solidarity in the public domain.

Lessons on Communism: Party Schools in Italy in the 20th Century

The Italian Communist Party created the most effective political school—and the only one in Italy—aimed at creating cadre leaders. The first schools were in Rome and Milan, and over the following decades the school system spread throughout the country, eventually counting about a hundred schools active throughout Italy until 1989. The school in Rome, which was the only one to remain open for a further four years, was the main model for the others. Called the Frattocchie School, it was a residential school in the hills of Rome and was in operation from 1944 to 1993. The students attended classes from six months to a year; they studied historical materialism and the history of Bolshevism but also experienced collective life, group identity, and the theoretical and practical values of communism. The Frattocchie model began with an initial period in which training consisted of the organization and acculturation of the working classes, starting with workers and peasants, according to a schema influenced by the Soviet schools but where the socializing bent of the Italian institutes mitigated the sectarianism and dogmatism of Moscow. The aim of the training was to build the careers of future politicians capable of embodying the ideals of a party that demanded control, preparation, and discipline. For this reason, the Italian Communist Party schools represented an original example in teaching methods and curricula, handing down the memory of communism over time. The diaries, questionnaires, and testimonies of the students who attended the Frattocchie School in its 50 years of activity are important sources and a precious heritage to understand how the Communist “faith” became a vehicle of recognition and belonging. Even today the name Frattocchie is associated with a model of party school to be imitated in order to teach methods and principles to those who want to pursue a political career.

Introduction: Remembering the Socialist Past

This text focuses on qualitative research of the past when it comes to the communist regimes in Europe, particularly Slovakia (as part of former Czechoslovakia). The authors introduce the ongoing research project Current Images of the Socialism as well as its methodological and theoretical frames. They present the findings and challenges, as also articulated during the international conference Memory of the Communist Past (2020) and introduce selected articles included in this special issue.

Trauma and Community

This article presents an example of trauma recovery and post-traumatic growth in the story of three generations of a family that lost five sons in World War II and post-war mass killings, experienced the imprisonment of one son and the emigration of two daughters, expropriation of their possessions, and post-war communist harassment. With the help of the village community, the connection between family members, and because of their inherent faith, the pain of trauma has been transformed through three generations into national awareness, courage, emotional vulnerability, and creativity. In Slovenia, there are a few examples of villages that resisted partisan violence against the population and held out against the communist revolution but paid for it with several people who were killed, abducted, or imprisoned. These villages became a source of national consciousness and political social activity and strongly supported Slovenia in 1990 in the process of gaining independence from Yugoslavia. In most of these villages, affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church, the connection between the village community, and the connection between the younger generations and the older ones are also strong. We will present the stories of three women, a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter, and through their narration illustrate the process of moving from PTSD to post-traumatic growth.

Reconciliation: The Institutionalization of Memory in Post-Yugoslav Slovenia

For Slovenian society the turning point in 1989 meant many things: the making of a new state, a transition to a new political and economic system, but also a new dimension of remembrance. The democratization process that started in the late 1980s and continued in the 1990s was deeply interwoven with the reconfiguration of public remembrance and the legitimation of the nascent Slovenian state. This resulted in a long and still ongoing project of reconciliation (sprava), a process of surpassing the divisions in society caused by the injustices and crimes committed by the Communist leadership in the previous decades. Its goal seems simple: to reach a point where history will no longer be a source of division in politics and where a relative unity could be established within the society. As it moves away from the discussion of the disputed past itself, this article focuses on the history of the concept of reconciliation and the state's subsequent memorial policy of the last three decades. The development of the concept entails changes in the understanding of the past after two major political shifts: after 1990, when Slovenia became an independent state; and again after 2004, when it joined the European Union (EU). The identification of these shifts is based on the changes in the content of political and public debates. I propose that the Slovenian reconciliation between 1990 and 2004 be regarded as a specific element of the period from the end of communism until the Slovenian accession to the EU (transition), during which the political system changed.

The Stalinist Past in Contemporary Russian TV Serials: Reconfigurations of Memory

The two main issues that continue to be in the focus of hot public discussions in Russian society are the Great Patriotic War (the German–Soviet war of 1941–1945, as part of World War II) and the tragedy of Stalinism. While the Great Patriotic War was widely reflected in Soviet literature and cinema, the Stalinist issue was seldom represented in Soviet art. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a period when Soviet and post-Soviet art contributed much to the debates on the Soviet past, and several significant anti-Stalinist films and literary works were created. Since the early 2000s, the cultural situation in Russian society has changed and nostalgia of the Soviet past has spread in the mass consciousness. The purpose of this research is to analyze how the Stalinist past is reconstructed in public memory in contemporary cinema narratives. We arrive at the conclusion that since the 2000s, public interest has drifted from images of war heroism to ordinary people’ lives under Stalin; the contemporary public interest is not the war heroes and famous victims of repressions, but the everydayness of ordinary Soviet citizens who tried to build their private lives, careers, friendships, and family relations under the conditions of pressure from the authorities, spreading fear in the society, shortage of goods, and loss of loved ones. We concentrate on several representative Russian TV serials, such as “Liquidation” (2007), “Maryina Roscha” (2012), and “Leningrad, 46” (2014–2015), because all of them are devoted to the first year of the Soviet peaceful life in different Soviet cities, such as Odessa, Moscow, and Leningrad.

Visitor Books and Memory – Evaluating the Bautzner Straße Dresden Memorial Site's Significance for Former Stasi Prisoners’ Individual Memories

Memorial sites document aspects of history. Thus, they represent a historical past deemed relevant by the initiators in the public sphere. The former Stasi detention center and district administration in Dresden Bautzner Straße is a memorial site that is dedicated to a critical representation of the communist dictatorship in East Germany. This does, however, not tell much about the historical site's meaning to the visitors. In order to get an impression of the visitors’ spontaneous reactions and thoughts, I systematically examine and categorize the memorial site's visitor books. Through these books, memorial sites offer visitors the opportunity to write down their thoughts thereby enabling an open channel of communication. My focus is on entries by persons who explicitly identify as former inmates of the very detention center they visited. They make up roughly 10 percent of all entries. I examine which thoughts former Stasi prisoners wrote down having visited their place of ordeal. What feelings and thoughts emerge after the visit? My aim is to shed light on the memorial site's significance and importance for the prisoner's individual memory by analyzing the entries’ type and content. The visitor books offer an authentic and intriguing access to former political prisoners’ mental world and their individual memory. This contribution connects the media representation of the communist dictatorship and its meaning for the former prisoners’ individual memory.