{"id":77,"date":"2014-05-09T17:33:23","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T21:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=77"},"modified":"2015-10-08T14:38:25","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T18:38:25","slug":"war-and-memory-in-eastern-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2014\/05\/09\/war-and-memory-in-eastern-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"War and Memory in Eastern Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stepan_Bandera_in_Lviv\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Caroline Johnson<\/p>\n

The lecture series organized as part of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies recently welcomed Dr. Karen Petrone of the University of Kentucky to present on the war memory of WWI and WWII in relation to the Late Soviet and Post-Soviet identities of Russia and Ukraine.\u00a0 She specifically touched on how these memories constitute feelings of citizenship and belonging and how such memories are produced or promoted by the Russian government.<\/p>\n

In her recent work entitled \u201cNow Russia Returns its History to Itself\u201d: Russia Celebrates the Centenary of the First World War<\/i>, Petrone discusses how the Centenary of the First World war is being used by the state to \u201cbring interpretations of the war into alignment with nationalist Russian narratives that seek to build a positive national identity, reassert Russian national pride, and affirm Russia\u2019s status as a European power\u201d (Petrone 2).\u00a0 This intersection of the Late Soviet and Post-Soviet history and its current memory is crucial to understanding modern day notions of national identity within Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In order to frame her discussion, Petrone began the lecture by briefly discussing the ideas of what she deemed \u201cThe Analytical Trio\u201d as well as the linguistic turn and cultural turn. According to Petrone, the Analytical Trio incorporates ideas of race, class, and gender in order to determine the full social impact of these ideas on memory formation.\u00a0 Additionally, the linguistic turn supports the notion that the past does not exist outside textual representations while the cultural turn looks beyond the political and economic views of history.\u00a0 In her lecture, Petrone attempted to navigate between these two ideas.\u00a0 These frameworks allow Petrone to navigate shaky ground between history and memory.<\/p>\n

To support her ideas, Petrone focused heavily on the idea of memory and how she believes \u201call memory is contested memory\u201d (Petrone 3).\u00a0 She suggests that memory acts a source of power: those who wield memory are often those who have the political and social power to promote it.\u00a0 She asserts that, since the Soviet Union did not embrace World War I as a glorious one, they did not promote it in the archival record.\u00a0 Not until ten years after the war did elements of the war appear in literature, yet they were censored by publishing houses and other institutions.\u00a0 For example, real account of soldiers \u201cdisappeared\u201d as to promote the heroic tale of the war, rather than a grim picture of reality.<\/p>\n

In both her writing and in her lecture, Petrone uses monuments to show the relationship between war memory and national identity in Russia and Ukraine.\u00a0 One example she gave was the statue of Stepan Bandera.\u00a0 In Russia, the celebration of this figure is deeply offensive, whereas in Ukraine, he acts as a cornerstone of independence.\u00a0 Petrone uses several monuments such as this to show the disconnect between history and memory in varying post-Soviet locations.<\/p>\n

Petrone closed her lecture by clearing asserting national identity as a top-down clash.\u00a0 She believes citizens had a form of agency in accepting or rejecting national identities while historical accounts are often shaped through the state and official records.\u00a0 As the Russian state seeks to promote a national narrative of heroism and pride with the anniversary of the Centenary, this is important to keep in mind.\u00a0 The state can promote a particular history, but it is the public who will need to embrace this as national memory.<\/p>\n

Caroline Johnson is a senior history major at Miami<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Caroline Johnson The lecture series organized as part of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies recently welcomed Dr. Karen Petrone of the University of Kentucky to present on the war memory of WWI and WWII in relation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-lecture_reviews","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}