Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:41:10.046Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Politics of Memory and Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2021

Olga Malinova*
Affiliation:
HSE University, Moscow, Russia; Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: omalinova@hse.ru

Abstract

Scholars of nationalism knew about the role of memory and forgetting in nation building long before the contemporary boom of memory studies. Still, they can learn a lot from this relatively new research field. This article offers an overview of the literature on the politics of memory, focusing on different patterns of dealing with a dark past of genocides, civil wars, and political repressions, on the one hand, and on the observations derived from the recent so-called “memory wars” in Europe, on the other. Both issues elucidate a persistent role of nationalism in the contemporary world.

Type
State of the Field
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aguilar, Paloma, and Humlebæk, Carstein. 2002. “Collective Memory and National Identity in the Spanish Democracy: The Legacies of Francoism and the Civil War.” History & Memory 14(1/2): 121164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C., Eyerman, Ron, Giesen, Bernhard, Smelser, Neil J., and Sztompka, Piotr. 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Art, David. 2006. The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ash, Timothy G. 2004. “Trials, Purges and History Lessons: Treating a Difficult Past in Post-Communist Europe.” In Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, edited by Müller, Jan-Werner, 265282. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Assmann, Aleida. 2010. “The Holocaust – A Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community.” In Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices, Trajectories, edited by Assmann, Aleida and Conrad, Sebastian, 97117. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Assmann, Aleida. 2014. Dlinnaia ten’ proshlogo. Memorial’naia kul’tura i istoricheskaia politika. Translated by Boris Khlebnikov. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoie obozrenie.Google Scholar
Assmann, Jan. 2008. “Communicative and Cultural Memory.” In Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, edited by Erll, Astrid and Ansgar, Nünning, 109118. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bell, Duncan S.A. 2003. “Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology and National Identity.” British Journal of Sociology 54 (1): 6381.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bell, Duncan S.A. 2006. “Introduction: Memory, Trauma and World Politics.” In Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship between Past and Present, edited by Bell, Duncan, 129. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berger, Stefan. 2004. “Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Europe.” Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 12 (1): 7396.Google Scholar
Bernhard, Michael, and Kubik, Jan. 2014. Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogumił, Zuzanna, Moran, Dominique, and Harrowell, Elly. 2015. “Sacred or Secular? ‘Memorial’, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Contested Commemoration of Soviet Repressions.” Europe – Asia Studies 67 (6): 14161444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Carolyn P. 2008. “The Politics of History and Memory in Democratic Spain.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617:133148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bull, Anna C., and Hansen, Hans Lauge. 2016. “On Agonistic Memory.” Memory Studies 9 (4): 390404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bull, Anna C., and Hansen, Hans Lauge. 2020. “Agonistic Memory and the UNREST Project.” Modern Languages Open 20 (1): 17.Google Scholar
Cardus i Ros, Salvador. 2000. “Politics and the Intervention of Memory: For a Sociology of the Transition to Democracy in Spain.” In Disremembering the Dictatorship: The Politics of Memory in the Spanish Transition to Democracy, edited by Resina, Joan Ramon, 1728. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Coakley, John. 2007. “Mobilizing the Past: Nationalist Images of History.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 10 (4): 531560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coakley, John. 2012. Nationalism, Ethnicity and the State: Making and Breaking Nations. Los Angeles: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Courtney E. 2018. “Commemorating Mass Violence: Truth Commission Hearings as a Genre of Public Memory.” Southern Communication Journal 83 (3): 149166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Confino, Alon. 1997. “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method.” American Historical Review 102 (5): 13861403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Jennifer M. 2018. Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Dreyer, Nicolas. 2018. “Genocide, Holodomor and Holocaust Discourse as Echo of Historical Injury and as Rhetorical Radicalization in the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict of 2013–18.” Journal of Genocide Research 20 (4): 545564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edele, Mark. 2017. “Fighting Russia’s History Wars: Vladimir Putin and the Codification of World War II.” History & Memory 29 (2): 90124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edkins, Jenny. 2003. Trauma and the Memory of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Encarnación, Omar G. 2008. “Reconciliation after Democratization: Coping with the Past in Spain.” Political Science Quarterly 123 (3): 435459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epplée, Nikolay. 2020. Neudobnoe proshloe: Pamiat’ o gosudarstvennykh prestuplenijakh v Rossi ii drugikh stranakh [Uncomfortable past: The memory about state crimes in Russia and other countries]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.Google Scholar
Etkind, Alexander. 2004. “Hard and Soft in Cultural Memory: Political Mourning in Russia and Germany.” Grey Room 16 (3): 3659.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferretti, Maria. 2003. “Memory Disorder: Russia and Stalinism.” Russian Politics and Law 41 (6): 3882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forest, Benjamin, and Johnson, Juliet. 2011. “Monumental Politics: Regime Type and Public Memory in Post-Communist States.” Post-Soviet Affairs 27 (3): 269288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, Graeme. 2013. Symbolism and Regime Change: Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, Karl. 2014. “Memory Politics and Ontological Security in Sino-Japanese Relation.” Asian Studies Review 38 (1): 7186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Juliet. 2018. “The ‘Monumental Politics’ of Post-Soviet Russia: Taking Symbolic Politics Seriously in Political Science.” Paper presented at the Yale Conference on “Regime Evolution, Institutional Change, and Social Transformation in Russia: Lessons for Political Science,” New Haven, CT, April 27–28.Google Scholar
Heisler, Martin O. 2008a. “The Political Currency of the Past: History, Memory, and Identity.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617:1424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heisler, Martin O. 2008b. “Challenged Histories and Collective Self-Concepts: Politics in History, Memory, and Time.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617:199211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himka, John-Paul. 2008. “Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives.” Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 50 (3/4): 359372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himka, John-Paul. 2014. “Interventions: Challenging the Myths of Twentieth-Century Ukrainian History.” In Convolutions of Historical Politics, edited by Miller, Alexei and Lipman, Maria, 211238. Budapest: CEU Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hroch, Miroslav. 1985. Social Conditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona. 1994. Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Judt, Tony. 1992. “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe.” Daedalus 121 (4): 83118.Google Scholar
Kalashnikov, Antony. 2017. “Strength in Diversity: Multiple Memories of the Soviet Past in the Russian Communist Party (CPRF), 1993–2004.” Nationalities Papers 45 (3): 370392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalinin, Ilya. 2011. “Nostalgic Modernization: The Soviet Past as ‘Historical Horizon.’Slavonica 17 (2): 156166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasianov, Georgiy. 2014. “The ‘Nationalization” of History in Ukraine.” In Convolutions of Historical Politics, edited by Miller, Alexei and Maria, 140174. Budapest: CEU Press.Google Scholar
Kattago, Siobhan. 2009. “Agreeing to Disagree on the Legacies of Recent History: Memory, Pluralism and Europe after 1989.” European Journal of Social Theory 12 (3): 375395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khapaeva, Dina. 2016. “Triumphant Memory of the Perpetrators: Putin’s Politics of Re-Stalinization.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 49 (1): 6173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khlevnyuk, Daria. 2019. “Narrowcasting Collective Memory Online: ‘Liking’ Stalin in Russian Social Media.” Media, Culture & Society 41 (3): 317331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Elisabeth. 2010Memory Controversies in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Implications for Peacebuilding.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 5 (3): 293309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kissane, Bill. 2020. “On the Shock of Civil War: Cultural Trauma and National Identity in Finland and Ireland.” Nations and Nationalism 26 (1): 2243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koposov, Nikolai E. 2011. Pamiat’ strogogo rezhima: Istoria i politika v Rossii [The high security memory: History and politics in Russia]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.Google Scholar
Koposov, Nikolai. 2018. Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Langenbacher, Eric. 2008. “Twenty-First Century Memory Regimes in Germany and Poland: An Analysis of Elite Discourses and Public Opinion.” German Politics and Society 26 (4): 5081.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langenbacher, Eric. 2010. “Collective Memory as a Factor in Political Culture and International Relations.” In Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations, edited by Langenbacher, Eric and Shain, Youssi, 1349. Washington, DC: George Town University Press.Google Scholar
Lim, Jie-Hyun. 2010. “Victimhood Nationalism in Contested Memories: National Mourning and Global Accountability.” In Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices, Trajectories, edited by Assmann, Aleida and Conrad, Sebastian, 138162. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Littoz-Monnet, Annabelle. 2012. “The EU Politics of Remembrance: Can Europeans Remember Together?West European Politics 35 (5): 11821202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luxmoore, Matthew. 2019. “‘Orange Plague’: World War II and the Symbolic Politics of Pro-state Mobilization in Putin’s Russia.” Nationalities Papers 47 (5): 822839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinova, Olga. 2018a. “The Embarrassing Centenary: Reinterpretation of the 1917 Revolution in the Official Historical Narrative of Post-Soviet Russia (1991–2017).” Nationalities Papers 46 (2): 272289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinova, Olga. 2018b. “Constructing the ‘Usable Past’: The Evolution of the Official Historical Narrative in Post-Soviet Russia.” In Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia, edited by Bernsand, Niklas and Törnquist-Plewa, Barbara, 85104. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Mälksoo, Maria. 2009. “The Memory Politics of Becoming European: The East European Subalterns and the Collective Memory of Europe.” European Journal of International Relations 15 (4): 653680.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mälksoo, Maria. 2014. “Criminalizing Communism: Transnational Mnemopolitics in Europe.” International Political Sociology 8 (1): 8299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mälksoo, Maria. 2015. “‘Memory Must Be Defended’: Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security.” Security Dialogue 46 (3): 221237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Alexey. 2020. “Russia and Europe in Memory Wars.” NUPI Working Paper 890. https://www.nupi.no/nupi_eng/Publications/CRIStin-Pub/Russia-and-Europe-in-memory-wars. (Accessed December 8, 2020.)Google Scholar
Mink, Georges. 2008. “Between Reconciliation and the Reactivation of Past Conflicts in Europe: Rethinking Social Memory Paradigms.” Czech Sociological Review 44 (3): 469490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mink, Georges, and Neumayer, Laura, eds. 2013. History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Memory Games. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mock, Steven. 2012. Symbols of Defeat in the Construction of National Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Müller, Jan-Werner. 2004. “Introduction: The Power of Memory, the Memory of Power and the Power over Memory.” In Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, edited by Müller, Jan-Werner, 135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Neumayer, Laure. 2015. “Integrating the Central European Past into a Common Narrative: The Mobilizations around the ‘Crimes of Communism’ in the European Parliament.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23 (3): 344363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neumayer, Laure. 2017. “Advocating for the Cause of the ‘Victims of Communism’ in the European Political Space: Memory Entrepreneurs in Interstitial Fields.” Nationalities Papers 45 (6): 9921012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olick, Jeffrey. 1999. “Collective Memory: Two Cultures.” Sociological Theory 17 (3): 333348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olick, Jeffrey K. 2007. The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Onken, Eva-Clarita. 2007. “The Baltic States and Moscow’s 9 May Commemoration: Analyzing Memory Politics in Europe.” Europe-Asia Studies 59 (1): 2346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Probst, Lothar. 2003. “Founding Myths in Europe and the Role of the Holocaust.” New German Critique 90:4558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renan, Ernest. 1990. “What Is a Nation?” In Nation and Narration, edited by Bhabha, Homi K., 822. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Resende, Erica, and Budryte, Dovile, eds. 2013. Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousso, Henry. 1991. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rumelili, Bahar. 2018. “Breaking with Europe’s Pasts: Memory, Reconciliation, and Ontological (In)security.” European Security 27 (3): 280295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rusu, Mihai Stetian. 2017. “Transitional Politics of Memory: Political Strategies of Managing the Past in Post-Communist Romania.” Europe-Asia Studies 69 (8): 12571279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Lorrein. 2016. “Memory, Transnational Justice, and Recession in Contemporary Spain.” European Review 25 (2): 295306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Claudia. 2008. “The Japanese History Textbook in Eastern Asia Perspective.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617:107122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schöpflin, George. 1997. “The Functions of Myth and a Taxonomy of Myths.” In Myths and Nationhood, edited by Hosking, Geoffrey and Schöpflin, George, 1935. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schmid, Ulrich. 2016. “The Competition for Victimhood in Europe.” In Melodrama after the Tears: New Perspectives on the Politics of Victimhood, edited by Loren, Scott and Metelmann, Jörg, 281293. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherlock, Thomas. 2007. Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: Destroying the Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherlock, Thomas. 2016. “Russian Politics and the Soviet past: Reassessing Stalin and Stalinism under Vladimir Putin.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 49 (1): 4559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shevel, Oxana. 2011. “The Politics of Memory in a Divided Society: A Comparison of Post-Franco Spain and Post-Soviet Ukraine.” Slavic Review 70 (1): 137164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siddi, Marco. 2017. “The Ukraine Crisis and European Memory Politics of the Second World War.” European Politics and Society 18 (4): 465479.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sierp, Aline. 2014. History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity: Unifying Divisions. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sierp, Aline, and Wüstenberg, Jenny. 2015. “Linking the Local and the Transnational: Rethinking Memory Politics in Europe.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23 (3): 321329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solís, Fernando León. 2003. “The Transition(s) to Democracy and Discourses of Memory.” International Journal of Iberian Studies 16 (1): 4963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Anthony D. 1999. Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Kathleen E. 2002. Mythmaking in the New Russia; Politics and Memory during the Yeltsin Era. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. 2015. “European Mass Killing and European Commemoration.” In Remembrance, History, and Justice: Coming to Terms with Traumatic Pasts in Democratic Societies, edited by Tismaneanu, Vladimir and Jacob, Bogdan C., 2343. Budapest: Central European University Press.Google Scholar
Steele, Brent J., 2008. Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Subotic, Jelena. 2018. “Political Memory, Ontological Security, and Holocaust Remembrance in Post-Communist Europe.” European Security 27 (3): 296313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Charles J. 2013. “Breaking Down the Man of Steel: Stalin in Russia Today.” Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des slavistes 55 (3/4): 449480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor, and Kennedy, Michael D., eds. 1999. Intellectuals and the Articulation of Nation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tismaneanu, Vladimir, and Jacob, Bogdan C., eds. 2015. Remembrance, History, and Justice; Coming to Terms with Traumatic Pasts in Democratic Societies. Budapest: Central European University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torbakov, Igor. 2011. “History, Memory and National Identity: Understanding the Politics of History and Memory Wars in Post-Soviet Lands.” Demokratizatsiya 19 (3): 209232.Google Scholar
Toth, Mano. 2015. “The Myth of the Politics of Regret.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 43 (2): 551566 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wüstenberg, Jenny, and Art, David. 2008. “Using the Past in the Nazi Successor States from 1945 to the Present.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617:7287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar