Official History in Eastern Europe

doi:10.3790/978-3-88640-433-9

Read now Download (PDF)

BOOK

Cite BOOK

Style

Amacher, K., Portnov, A., Serhiienko, V. (Eds.) (2021). Official History in Eastern Europe. fibre Verlag. https://doi.org/10.3790/978-3-88640-433-9

Format

BIBTEX

ENDNOTE

RIS

Download

Official History in Eastern Europe

Editors: Amacher, Korine | Portnov, Andrii | Serhiienko, Viktoriia

Einzelveröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau, Vol. 40

(2021)

Read now Download (PDF)

Additional Information

Book Details

Publisher Name: fibre Verlag
ISBN: 978-3-88640-433-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3790/978-3-88640-433-9
Edition: 1
Language: English
Pages: 362
License: Open Access https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Collections: NBE D&H
NBE HIST
Subjects: European history

Abstract

Unter »Official History« wird eine staatlich geförderte und ideologisch motivierte Auslegung der Vergangenheit verstanden, die politischen Zielen meist nicht-demokratischer Regime dient. Der optimistische Glaube, dies würde mit dem Zerfall der Sowjetunion ein Ende nehmen, stellte sich als naiv heraus. Pierre Nora behauptete, dass in den letzten 30 Jahren eine »allgemeine Politisierung von Geschichte« - die Ideologisierung der Arbeit von HistorikerInnen - beobachtet werden konnte.

Wie wird die Arbeit von HistorikerInnen heute von den langjährigen Erfahrungen des 20. Jahrhunderts in Osteuropa beeinflusst? Was könnte eine »offizielle Geschichte« für staatenlose Nationen oder selbsternannte »Republiken« bedeuten? Wie wurde die ukrainische Geschichtswissenschaft sowjetisch oder ihr die Sowjetisierung auferzwungen? Welche Räume für individuelle Forschungsinitiativen oder sogar minimalsten Dissens mit den vorgeschriebenen Forschungsplänen wurden in den offiziellen Geschichtsinstitutionen der Sowjetunion und des sozialistischen Polens geboten? Wie wurden russische Geschichtsbücher in der postsowjetischen Zeit umgeschrieben? Welche Rolle spielen Literatur, Film, Denkmäler, Tourismus oder Rituale in der Geschichtspolitik? Wie wurde das Gedächtnis an den Zweiten Weltkrieg im gegenwärtigen russisch-ukrainischen Konflikt instrumentalisiert und wie beeinflussen die Bilder des Krieges im Donbas die geschichtspolitischen Debatten in benachbarten postsowjetischen Staaten?

Diesen Fragen wird in den interdisziplinären Beiträgen dieses Bandes von ForscherInnen aus Österreich, Frankreich, Deutschland, Großbritannien, Litauen, Polen, der Schweiz und der Ukraine nachgegangen. Der Großteil der Artikel entstand im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes »Divided Memories, Shared Memories. Ukraine/Russia/Poland (20th-21st centuries): An Entangled History« (gefördert durch den Schweizerischen Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung) an der Universität Genf und wurde erstmals im Juni 2018 auf der Konferenz »Official History in Eastern Europe. Transregional Perspectives« am Deutschen Historischen Institut in Warschau präsentiert.»Official history« is generally understood as state-sponsored and ideologically inclined construction of the past which serves certain political aims of mostly non-democratic regimes. The optimistic believes that it will end up with the collapse of the Soviet Union proved to be rather naive. As Pierre Nora argued, over the last thirty years we have experienced a »general politicization of history« - the process of transforming what historians produce into an ideology.

How are the intellectual choices made by historians today influenced by the long twentieth-century experiences of Eastern Europe? What could »official history« mean for a stateless nation or a self-proclaimed »republic«? How did Ukrainian historiography become or how was it forced to become Soviet? What spaces for individual research initiatives or even for modest disagreement with obligatory planned research existed in the official history institutions of Soviet Ukraine and socialist Poland? How were Russian textbooks on history re-written during the post-Soviet years? What role do literature, film, monuments, holidays or rituals play in the politics of history? How have memories of the Second World War been instrumentalised in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict and how have images of the ongoing war in the Donbas influenced memory debates in neighbouring post-Soviet states?

All those questions are reflected in the interdisciplinary contributions to the volume by scholars from Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Lithuania, Poland, Switzerland and Ukraine. The majority of research papers were developed within the research project Divided Memories, Shared Memories. Ukraine/Russia/Poland (20th-21st centuries): An Entangled History (supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation) at the University of Geneva, and were first presented at the conference Official History in Eastern Europe. Transregional Perspectives at the German Historical Institute Warsaw in June 2018.

Section Title	Page	Action	Price
Table of Contents	5
Introduction	9
Constructing Official Histories: Institutions and Personalities	13
Viktoriia Serhiienko: ‘Official History’ for a Stateless Nation. Mykhaǐlo Hrushevs’kyǐ’s Illustrated History of Ukraine	15
Hrushevs’kyǐ’s Idea and its Competitors	16
The Art Collector Who Publishes History Books	21
The IHU and the Russian–Ukrainian Historical Debate	26
Kyïvan Rus’ and Prince Volodymyr	26
Hetman Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyǐ and his Uprising	28
The Figure of Hetman Ivan Mazepa	31
Hrushevs’kyǐ Among Friendly Critics and Grateful Readers	33
Andrii Portnov: How History Writing Became ‘Official’. Soviet Ukrainian Historiography Reconsidered	39
The Collectivization of the Academy of Sciences	40
The Institute of the History of Ukraine	43
Another Academic Tradition and Its Limitations	48
The Soviet University in Ukraine	50
The Higher Attestation Commission and the Granting of Academic Degrees	53
The Singularity of Ukraine in the Soviet Historiography of the 1960s–1980s	56
The Social Status of the Historian and the Non-Conformist Arena	57
The Challenges of Perestroika	61
Éric Aunoble: “To Reflect the History of the Party as It Was”. The Ukrainian Branch of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Critical Times (1945–1949)	65
A Ukrainian Soviet Post-War Institution	67
The Soviet Organization of Work	69
The Historians’ Method	70
Historiographical Debates	73
Publications and Activities	74
Career Strategies	77
The Individual’s Role in Historiography	79
Estelle Bunout: Embedded Revisions? Past Relations with Eastern Europe at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) (1947–1965)	87
Establishing a New Norm on the History of Polish Foreign Relations After 1948	88
Embedded Revisions: A Cautious Opening of the Polish Eastern Question (1959)	93
The Tribulations of Stanisław Zabiełło on the Discussion of the Eastern Border of Poland (1950–64)	98
Embedded Revisions: Three Paths Towards a New Discourseon Polish Relations with Eastern Europe	102
Korine Amacher: History Textbooks in Russia (1992–2019). Between Multisided and Imperial Perspectives	105
I. From Pluralism to a Single View? Russian History Textbooks (1992–2019)	107
From the Single History Book of the Soviet Period to the Freedom for History Textbooks in the 1990s	107
The Slow Return of the State’s Firm Hand (2000–16)	111
A Smaller Market, But No Single Textbook	114
II. Imperial Model(s) (1992–2019)	118
The Russian Empire in Post-Soviet Textbooks (1992–2015)	118
A United Multi-Ethnic Russian State (2016–19)	124
The USSR’s Protective Hand	128
Conclusion	131
Literature as a History’s Playground	133
Miriam Kruse: Martyrs, Traitors, Healing Housewives. The Representation of Female War Experiences in Boris Gorbatov’s Taras’ Family (1943)	135
Gender Roles in Soviet Politics and Culture Before, During, and After the War	136
Close Reading: Gender Roles and Female Images in Taras’ Family	140
Nastia	141
Lizka / Luisa	143
Antonina	146
Conclusions	148
Oleksandr Zabirko: The War in Neverland. The History of Novorossiia as Literary Project	151
1.	151
2.	154
3.	159
4.	163
5.	165
6.	170
(Re-)Inventing Memorial Spaces	171
Tatiana Zhurzhenko: The Monumental Commemoration of St. Volodymyr / St. Vladimir in Ukraine, Russia, and Beyond. The Nationalization of the Past, the Orthodox Church, and ‘Monumental Propaganda’ Before and After the Annexation of Crimea	173
Introduction	173
1. Understanding the New Monumental Cult of St. Vladimir / St. Volodymyr	175
1.1. Re-Bordering Russia and Ukraine	176
1.2. Local Memory Politics, Diverse Mnemonic Actors	178
1.3. Between the Public and the Sacred: Making Use of Monuments to St. Vladimir / St. Volodymyr	180
2. The Proliferation of Monuments to St. Vladimir / St. Volodymyr	186
2.1. St. Volodymyr in Kyïv (1853)	186
2.2. The Millennium of the Christianization of Rus’ in 1988	188
2.3. The Collapse of the USSR and the Proliferation of Statues of St. Vladimir in Russia	192
2.4. Monuments to St. Volodymyr in Post-Soviet Ukraine (1991–2013)	200
2.5. The Annexation of Crimea and the Russian–Ukrainian Conflict	207
Conclusion	216
Paul Zalewski / Oleksandra Provozin: Construction and Destruction. How St. George’s Square in L’viv Became a Battlefield	219
The History of St. George’s Square: A Brief Overview	220
The Monument Competition (and the Chronology of the Dispute)	221
Conclusions	230
Živilė Mikailienė: Memory Culture and Memory Politics in Lithuania (1990–2018). The Case of Lukiškės Square in Vilnius	237
Lukiškės Square as a lieu de mémoire	241
The Problem of Creating a Historical Narrative in the First Decade After Independence	244
Lukiškės Square – Only Urban or Memorial Space?	246
Lukiškės Square Issues in the Context of the Millennium Celebrations of the State of Lithuania	248
Battles for Memory	252
Some Conclusions	261
The Euromaidan, the Donbas War, and Its Trans-Border Dimensions	265
Alexandr Osipian: World War II Memory Politics in Russia and Ukraine and Their Uses During the Conflict in the Donbas (Spring–Summer 2014)	267
Competing War Memories in Post-Communist Europe	269
From Controversies to Memory Wars	271
‘The Great Patriotic War’ Reinterpreted and Instrumentalized as Russia’s Primary Myth and Instrument of Soft Power Abroad	273
Competing Narratives of the Second World War in Ukrainian Politics	275
Inventing the ‘Ukrainian Fascist’ Threat, Drawing the Dividing Lines, Performing the Battles	278
From Memory War to Proxy War: WWII Performed During the Military Conflict in the Donbas	282
Conclusions	288
Felix Ackermann: History as a Means of Hybrid Warfare? The Impact of the Ongoing War in Eastern Ukraine on Historical and Political Discussions in Lithuania	291
The Public Representation of State-Driven Public History	292
The European Neighbourhood Policy on Trial	295
Euromaidan from a Lithuanian Perspective	297
Lithuanian Reactions to the War in Eastern Ukraine	298
Changing Public Debates and the Transformation of Memory Politics	299
Totalitarianism and the Ideology of the Double Genocide	303
Holocaust Debates as Part of Hybrid Warfare?	307
Conclusion: The Heightening and Relativizationof Historical Arguments	316
Ursula Woolley: The Securitization of Entangled Historical Identity? Local and National History Discourses in Dnipro During the Poroshenko Presidency	319
Introduction	319
Local Actors and Public History Initiatives	322
Four Major Public History Initiatives	327
A Common Historical Narrative: National-Local Intersubjectivity	333
Historical Politics: Focuses of Dispute	336
Competing Modifications of Key Historical Tropes	340
Conclusion	345
List of Contributors	349
Index of Persons	355