Of Red Dragons And Evil Spirits: Post-Communist Historiography Between Democratization And New Politics Of History

Description

The collection of well researched chapters assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. As opposed to the emphasis on the recovery of memory or revival of national histories that seemed to be the prevelant historiographical approaches of the 1990s, the last decade has seen a particular set of narratives equating Nazism and communism and so providing opportunities to exonerate wartime collaboration, cast the nation as victim even when its government was allied with Germany, and acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust while obfuscating its meaning and significance. In their comparative analysis the authors are also interested in new practices of performing ‘Europeanness'. Therefore their presentations of Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian post-communist memory politics move beyond the common national myths in order to provide a new insight into transnational interactions and exchanges in Europe in general. The juxtaposition of these politics, the processes in other parts of Europe, the modes of remembering shaped by displacement and the transnational memory practices enable a close encounter with the divergences and assess the potential of the formation of common, European memory practices. Cover ......Page 1 Title page ......Page 4 Copyright page ......Page 5 CONTENTS......Page 6 PREFACE......Page 8 INTRODUCTION: Oto Luthar: “Red Dragon and the Evil Spirits”......Page 10 CHAPTER 1: Daniela Koleva: On the (In)convertibility of National Memory into European Legitimacy: The Bulgarian Case......Page 20 CHAPTER 2: Ljiljana Radonić: Equalizing Jesus’s, Jewish, and Croat Suffering—Post-Socialist Politics of History in Croatia......Page 42 CHAPTER 3: Michael Shafir: Wars of Memory in Post-Communist Romania......Page 68 CHAPTER 4: Todor Kuljić: Reflections on the Principles of the Critical Culture of Memory......Page 96 CHAPTER 5: Miroslav Michela: The Struggle for Legitimacy: Constructing the National History of Slovakia After 1989......Page 124 CHAPTER 6: Ferenc Laczó: Victims and Traditions: Narratives of Hungarian National History After the Age of Extremes......Page 148 CHAPTER 7: ŠaĊir Filandra: Instrumentalization of History in Bosnia and Herzegovina......Page 168 CHAPTER 8: Oto Luthar: Post-Socialist Historiography Between Democratization and New Exclusivist Politics of History......Page 196 AUTHORS......Page 218 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 220 INDEX......Page 254 Back cover ......Page 258