Melnikova E.A. The Local Memory of the World War II in Provincial Museums: the Northern Ladoga Case Study, in Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europa. München: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. P. 111-130 (original) (raw)
Related papers
World War II Memories and Local Media in the Russian North: Velikii Novgorod and Murmansk
David Hoffmann (ed.), The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, Routledge 2021, pp. 202-228; , 2021
Research on national discourses and official commemorative politics of World War II in post-Soviet Russia tends to underestimate the importance of local war memory, which is often more emotional and tangible, and at the same time blended into everyday routines. A war history section in a local museum, a nearby war memorial visited by newlywed couples to lay flowers, a monument to a local hero in the city park animated by playing children-most of the time these remain unremarkable and unnoticed elements of the urban landscape and yet contribute to the feeling of belonging to a local community ("being from here") (see Figure 9.1). It is usually twice a year-on Victory Day and on the local "day of liberation from the Nazi occupation"-that these "sites of memory" are incorporated into formal rituals and commemorative ceremonies and thus reinvested with their initial meaning. This mnemonic landscape representing the local dimension of World War II is largely inherited from the Soviet era. At the same time, during the last decades, new actors-such as local ethnic communities, professional associations, and the Russian Orthodox Churchinitiated new war memorials which do not challenge the existing narrative of the Great Patriotic War but add to it. Similarly, some Soviet-era clichés in the form of undisputed "historical facts" (e.g., "Belgorod is the city of the first military salute," "apart from Stalingrad, Murmansk was the city most heavily bombed by the Germans") are routinely reproduced in local historical narratives and serve as markers of local identity for the new generations of city dwellers who did not experience World War II. These narratives inherited from the Soviet era have undergone significant transformations in the last decades, and yet there is a remarkable continuity with the Soviet myth of the "Great Patriotic War." My hypothesis is that this continuity, especially its discursive dimension, to a large extent has been provided by the local media. But the same media are also mediators and agents of cultural innovation and social change. In this chapter, I am going to reflect on the role of the local media in reproducing and renegotiating collective memories of World War II and in reshaping respective commemorative cultures in two northern Russian cities (regions): Murmansk and Velikii Novgorod. This chapter is based on my research conducted in these two cities in 2012-2013 under the auspices of the project Russian Identity in the Media and Identity Politics in Eastern Europe based at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki. During
History, Memory, and the Second World War in Belarus*
Australian Journal of Politics & History, 2012
The paper examines the role of the German-Soviet war in nation-building in Alyaksandr Lukashenka's Belarus through the medium of contemporary popular narratives (media, movies, documentaries), monuments, and historical sites. After highlighting some examples in the former two categories, it focuses specifically on myth-making at three key historic sites-the Brest Hero Fortress, the Liniya Stalina museum, and the Khatyn historic complex-outlining the correlation between the official interpretation of wartime events at these sites and construction of modern-day Belarusian civic nationalism and nation building; the forging of links between veterans and youth for the evolution of memory into post-memory; and the elimination all vestiges of what is termed "historical revisionism". The author would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding this paper, which is part of a larger project on Memory and the Great Patriotic War in Belarus. He would also like to recognize the help of his research assistants
Plural. History. Culture. Society, 2022
The incorporation of new territories into the Ukrainian SSR during World War II required reconstructing the local community's identity and shaping its historical memory through Stalinist ideology. This article examines the features of Soviet memory politics in Ukrainian territories through the examples of Southern Bessarabia and Northern Bukovyna, which were annexed in 1940 due to the military campaign against Romania. The study's objectives were to determine the influence of Soviet ideology on the representation of the past, characterize the ways that the official memory was shaped during World War II, and analyze historical myths that spread throughout the official and historical discourse. The main historical images, which Soviet ideologists formulated in official statements, historical works, and propaganda in periodicals, have been extracted using historical discourse analysis. Comparative historical analysis has identified similarities and differences in interpreting the abovementioned regions' pasts. It is pointed out that the historical arguments and concepts used by the Soviet power to justify the annexations became the foundation for the historical discourse. The article analyzes the introduction of the myth of "longsuffering lands" into historical narratives, which interpreted the Soviet territorial conquests as the liberation of oppressed peoples. It has been established that the representation of Southern Bessarabia and Northern Bukovyna's pasts corresponded to the Soviet concept of "Ukrainian people's reunification. " However, the distinction between these regions' ethnic composition and historical development influenced the politics of shaping historical memory.
Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, and Tatiana Zhurzhenko (eds), War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2017
This introductory essay begins with a discussion of World War II memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, in light of the recent and ongoing war in Ukraine. It outlines the main contours of the interplay between “memory wars” and real war, and the important “post-Crimean” qualitative shift in local memory cultures in this connection. Next, the essay sketches out the specifics of the war memory landscapes of the region, and then of each of the three individual countries, before moving on to introduce the key organizing themes and findings of the book.
Soviet Manipulation of the Memory of the Lithuanian Guerrilla War
Polish Political Science Review, 2015
The paper analyses the transformation of the collective memory of the Lithuanian guerrilla war (1944-1953) during the Soviet occupation. The problem that arises on observation of the collective memory of Guerrilla war period is the disparity between the sense and meaning of the guerilla war as it was happening and the shapes of its memory that emerged at the beginning of the perestrojka and the reestablishment of the independence. The shift from the high support for the resistance and it's goals in the 50's to the ignorance of it can be observed, as well as the changing of the perception of it as the fight between two sovereign countries (Lithuania and the SSRS) towards the internal conflict in Lithuanian society. The paper raises the question about the reasons for this transformation and the impact of Soviet propaganda (expanding it to the scope of "historical culture" in Jorn Rüsen terms). The research of one peculiar sphere of soviet historical culture, that is, the building of monuments and carrying out of the related memorial practices, proved, that the forms and the intensity of the development of the soviet narrative of the Lithuanian Guerrilla war were poor and inconsequential. Such a results support the hypothesis that the soviet historical culture was not decisive in transformation of a collective memory, and that suggests to pay more attention not to the actions of the regime, but to sociological, sociohistorical and anthropological research of Lithuanian soviet society.
2010
This paper discusses the complicated nature of social memories about World War II in the Baltic States, as reflected in the texture of memory which relates to monuments that have been established therein. The intensity of the past has promoted a wealth of monuments, and motivations for the establishment of monuments have differed. There are monuments which exist thanks to initiatives on the part of memory communities, while others were established at the instruction of the totalitarian regime. The texture of memory in the Baltic States is complex. It is dictated by the fact that different memory communities exist in terms of views about the past. For one community, the end of World War II in Europe meant the triumph of the USSR, while for the other it meant the institution of the Soviet occupation and its attendant repressions. The author has analysed this aspect of the social memory of the Baltic States. Future research will be devoted to solutions for the issues that remain in place. Keywords: the texture of memory, the sites of memory, Baltic, Latvia, Word War II, memory politics, monuments, local memory map
Europe-Asia Studies, 2018
Focusing on Smolensk Oblast', one of the fiercest battlegrounds of both World War II and the Napoleonic War of 1812, this study analyses small-town responses to the Russian government's 'City of Military Glory' war commemoration project implemented in 2006. By examining the ways in which local authorities and local residents redefined identities in the former wartime front region by reinventing local war symbols and reinterpreting local war memories, the article focuses on the central government's success at mobilising local patriotism from below and the success of local authorities in consolidating local identity using war memories. ONE OF THE PROMINENT FEATURES OF THE PUTIN ADMINISTRATION has been its exploitation of World War II memories and discourses as symbols in consolidating national identity. Since the early 2000s, the Russian Federation has been actively building on the legacy of war memory, including bestowing certain Russian cities with the title of 'City of Military Glory' (Gorod voinskoi slavy) and establishing a dedicated monument in the city commemorating this honour. In May 2006, President Putin announced a decree, 'On the Honorary Title of the Russian Federation "City of Military Glory"', following which the government would confer this title on certain 'cities located in or near territories of the Russian Federation that were involved in fierce battles during which defenders of the fatherland [that is, inhabitants of those cities] showed fortitude, endurance, and mass heroism'. 1 In locations designated as 'Cities of Military Glory', monuments have been erected resembling the Alexandrine Column on Palace Square in St Petersburg. As of January 2018, a total of 45 cities had received the title (see the Appendix).