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61. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Sławomir Łodziński Towards the Polish Nation-State. National Minorities in Poland Between 1945 and 1989
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of communist policies upon ethnic relations within a multinational state. I use the case of Poland in order to identify the general shifts and dynamics in nationalities polices in this country between 1945 and 1989. The study’s main focus is the processes by which Polish society was ethnically homogenized. I subsequently discuss the successive ways of building the Polish nation-state, from one phase of the communist regime to another, and the national mythologisation of historical memory, especially in relation to World War II. The paper also draws attention to a phenomenon, often ignored by scholarly literature, which took place in postwar communist societies within minority ethnic groups. I am referring to the preservation of minorities’ identities in the form of “a hidden ethnicity” in the context of group exclusion from the public sphere and of the disenfranchisement of specific ethnic historical memories within the wider societal narratives.
62. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Notes on contributors
63. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Call For Contributions 2013
64. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Marco Abram 20.Oktobar – Narratives of Identities in the Celebrations for Belgrade’s Liberation Day (1945-1961)
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The aim of this paper is to explore the relationships and interactions between socialist ideology and national narratives in Tito’s Yugoslavia, focusing on the peculiar case of Belgrade. Taking into account the representative role of the capital city, narratives of identity are analysed from the point of view of the ideology involved and displayed in the celebration of the post-war city’s holiday: the 20th of October, anniversary of Belgrade’s liberation during the Second World War. Using both archival material and reports published in different newspapers as primary sources, the research studies these celebrative practices as an extremely concentrated expression of the state’s ideology but also as occasions of tension and negotiation between different representative meanings: from the attempt of Sovietization of the country – reinforced also by the role of the Red Army in the liberation of the city – to the strengthening of the Yugoslav socialist patriotism after the split between Tito and Stalin and the permanence of Serbian and local identity’s narratives.
65. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Raluca Grosescu Vladimir Tismăneanu, Bogdan Iacob (éd.), The End and the Beginning. The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History
66. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Corina Doboş Raluca Grosescu, Les communistes dans l’apres-communisme. Trajectoires de conversion politique de la nomenklatura roumaine apres 1989
67. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Enis Sulstarova Constructing Albanian Communist Identity Through Literature: Nationalism and Orientalism in the Works of Ismail Kadare
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The communist regime in Albania considered literature to be one of the main ideological vehicles for the formation of the “New Albanian Man”. To this aim, a great part of literature in post-war Albania spoke of how not only did the Albanian people preserve their national identity throughout history, but also of how they fought on the side of European civilization and progress. In this process, a series of barbarian Others were constructed, because if national resistance and communism were to be linked together in a progressive tradition, then the Turks, counter-revolutionary social classes, capitalism and even “revisionist”betrayers of Marxism-Leninism represented the regressive tradition. By taking as a case study the literary works of Ismail Kadare, this paper argues thatKadare, in his depiction of the Turks as the Oriental other of the Albanian nation, employed the clichés and stereotypes borrowed from the European Orientalisttradition, in which the Turks largely are presented as the barbaric mirror to Europe. Later on, the danger coming from the “social-revisionism” of the Russianand Chinese communist states were portrayed in Kadare’s novels as the continuation of the “Asiatic threat”. The intended effect of Orientalism in Albanianliterature was to emphasize the modernity of Albanian socialist society and to culturally justify the lonely road of Albanian communism.
68. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Paul McNamara Competing National and Regional Identities in Poland’s Baltic “Recovered Territories”, 1945-1956
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The article analyzes the manner in which Poland’s Baltic “Recovered Territories”, the three provinces of Szczecin, Gdańsk and Olsztyn, were incorporated into a re-constituted Polish state following the Second World War. It shows how the organic formation of a regional identity in the three Baltic provinces faced continuous interference from a regime with little or no understanding of the effects its state-building policies had upon their specific ‘transnational’ social, cultural, and demographic particularities. Despite the internal divisions in what was a fledgling pioneer society, the communist state never allowed for settler and indigenous groups to iron out their differences at their own pace and in their own way. Between 1945 and 1956, Polish settlers and indigenous groups in the Baltic Recovered Territories managed to form only a weak common identity not due to the policies of Poland’s Communist regime but in spite of them.
69. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Aurelia Vasile L’industrie cinématographique roumaine au service de la nation. Les enjeux de la production des fi lms sur l’antiquité durant la période communiste
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L’objet d’analyse de cette étude est la production des films traitant l’antiquité et réalisés en Roumanie pendant le régime communiste. Il s’agit plus précisément de trois films : Les Daces (1965, Sergiu Nicolaescu), La Colonne (1968, Mircea Drăgan) et Burebista (1980, Gheorghe Vitanidis). Leur production témoigne des conditions politiques, idéologiques et économiques qui ont marqué le processus de reconstitution historique. Cet article tente de retracer le cheminement décisionnel dans la production de ces films, les objectifs des cinéastes et des autres professionnels du cinéma, le rôle du pouvoir politique dans leur évolution de 1960 jusqu’en 1970.
70. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Luciana Jinga Citoyenneté et Travail des Femmes dans la Roumanie Communiste
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Les pratiques de l’État définissent et légitiment les divisions de genre et les identités genrées. Le point central de l’article est la nature de la citoyennetédes femmes, en Roumanie, pendant le régime communiste. Pour construire ses sujets genrés, le régime communiste a utilisé a la fois le discours officiel et le cadre législatif. La recherche este construite autour une étude de cas, l’activité salariée, uncarrefour pour toutes les politiques de l’état communiste envers sa population féminine, génératrice de libertés et sources d’inégalité en meme temps. Il serait abusif d’affirmer que toutes les mesures prises par le régime communiste ont été vouées a l’échec. L’acces des femmes a l’éducation et l’entrée dans une activité professionnelle salariée ont été deux préoccupations majeures du régime communiste et la postérité de ces deux domaines mérite a etre soulignée. Car, si la présence politique des femmes apres 1989 a été insignifiante, sur le plan professionnel, les femmes ont maintenu et meme renforcé leurs positions. Le degré de réussite scolaire a tous les niveaux d’études et les revenus obtenus par les femmes en Roumanie montrent que les actions du régime communiste dans ces domaines ont déterminé un changement durable et profond des mentalités et des comportements sociaux. Dans cette postérité disparate et nuancée on peut trouver les arguments d’une interprétation plus nuancée, de ce qu’a été la citoyenneté des femmes pendant le communisme.
71. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Humberto Cucchetti Communism, French Patriotism, and Soviet Legitimacy in France: Social Trajectories and Nationalism (1945-1954)
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The following contribution analyzes the specific spaces for the legitimization of the defense of the “Soviet model” in France. To do so, rather than examining the policies of the Communist Party itself (often analyzed by French historiography), the paper approaches a vast set of organizational networks that have been commonly known as “transmission belts” of communism in France. Thus, the paper presents a universe of situations, individual trajectories, and associative frameworks that are deployed in defense of the Soviet Union, from 1945 until 1954. In all these different areas and situations the paper points out instances of an intense militancy. As a result, there was a non-contradictory overlap between French patriotism, nationalism and the justification of Soviet hegemony in the context of the communization of Eastern Europe and of the Cold War.
72. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Marius Stan Eric Voegelin, Religiile politice (The Political Religions)
73. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Dallas Michelbacher The Deportation of Ethnic Minorities to the USSR and the Romanian National Idea
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The article examines the general policies of the Romanian state in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War toward the German and Hungarian minority. The abuses of the human rights of ethnic minorities from 1944 until 1947 were some of the worst in the history of Romania. The massacres and deportations of German and Hungarian civilians remain a black mark on Romanian society. These actions were in keeping with the ideologicalpronouncements of Romanian nationalists from the interwar period. The rhetoric that legitimized these policies of ethnic cleansing continued to inform visions of the Romanian nation throughout the Communist period.
74. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 3
Bogdan C. Iacob The Paradoxes of European Postwar
75. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 4
Camelia Runceanu Le « procès du communisme » et les formes de la rhétorique de l’« anticommunisme » dans la presse intellectuelle roumaine audébut des années 1990
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Sous l’emprise de l’urgence, a la suite de la démission du communisme, des intellectuels autonomistes d’avant 1989 se mobilisent au nom de la morale. Le regroupement d’intellectuels permet de mettre en valeur le capital moral qu’ils cumulent et que certains ont obtenu avant 1989 et le volume du capital symbolique en procédant a une réévaluation du capital culturel acquis sous le communisme pour s’engager au nom des valeurs intellectuelles. L’affirmation collective des intellectuels suppose la construction d’une identité commune qui est en rapport avec l’évaluation du passé. Cet article présente une premiere étape dans le travail de construction d’une identité commune et de légitimation des engagements intellectuels qui consiste dans le recours a la mémoire individuelle au moment meme de la restructuration de l’espace politique et dans la formulation du « proces du communisme » comme proces « moral». Le témoignage est une forme prise par le travail de mémoire qui prend une place importante dans les stratégies discursives de légitimation de la position des intellectuels, des revendications d’un rôle politique par des intellectuels consacrés sous le communisme et des intellectuels autonomistes de la période communiste. Le travail de mémoire qui nous est présenté sous diverses formes s’inscrit et fonde l’objectif principal de ces intellectuels, a savoir faire le « proces du communisme ».
76. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 4
Dalia Báthory Transitional Justice: Between Political Myth and Civil Society Reality
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Transitional justice emerged as a working concept from the need to clarify the relationship between victims and perpetrators and the latters’ guilt, after the collapse of abusive regimes in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Since 1995 it has been defined in many ways, by many scholars, according either to its means and goals or to its actors. It has become a very broad concept, describing actions of justice, reparation, search for the truth and reform. While transitional justice policies should result in giving more coherence to a shuttered society, there are at least two threats that must be taken into consideration. One is to transform it into a political myth, by allowing the political factor to confiscate it, the other is to expand its area of concerns in order to cover aspects of daily social problems. The role of the civil society is very important to limit these threats, although what it is that we name “civil society” is still under scholarly debate. The analyses published in this issue of History of Communism in Europe cover these problems in their case studies which come from Latin America or the former Soviet bloc. Most of them stress on the very important role the grassroots actions of members of civil society have on “settling accounts” with the past, actions that seem to be born out of the inefficient “official” measures taken at state level.
77. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 4
Andrei Galiță Coleen Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation
78. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 4
Olivera Simić “The Day After”: Ex-Combatants Perform Live in Belgrade Theatre
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This paper addresses the organised civil society efforts to bring excombatants into the public sphere in Serbia, and investigates the potential for constructive use of ex-combatants’ war experiences in theatre. By staging the theatre performance Tanatos, the Group “Hajde da...” (the Group) from Belgrade aims to challenge negative views of this category of the Serbian population. So far, ex-combatants have been largely ignored, and as such, their capacities for contributing to transitional justice processes in the Serbian community have been neglected. Not only does the Tanatos bring four ex-combatants onto the stage to share their combat-related experiences with an audience, but it also gives the audience an opportunity to meet the ex-combatants after the performance in an open ‘question and answer’ session. As a qualitative case study, the paper draws from multiple sources: direct observation of the theatre performance in Belgrade in 2011, documentary research and fieldwork in Serbia undertaken during the summer of 2013, analysis of internal documents produced within the Group, and an interview with the dramaturge of the performance. The paper concludes that through Tanatos, the Group has opened public space for a dialogue about the recent past that acknowledges ex-combatants as an important factor in transitional justice processes in the region.
79. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 4
Notes On Contributors
80. History of Communism in Europe: Volume > 4
Gabriel Zamfir Gabriel Andreescu, Cărturari, opozanţi şi documente. Manipularea Arhivei Securităţii [Scholars, Opponents and Documents. Handling Securitate’s Archives]