War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus

1. Local Cases

   1. On Victims and Heroes: (Re)Assembling World War II Memory in the Border City of Narva

      • Elena Nikiforova

      Pages 429-463

   2. War Memorials in Karelia: A Place of Sorrow or Glory?

      • Aleksandr V. Antoshchenko, Valentina V. Volokhova, Irina S. Shtykova

      Pages 465-493

2. Back Matter

   Pages 495-506

   PDF

This edited collection contributes to the current vivid multidisciplinary debate on East European memory politics and the post-communist instrumentalization and re-mythologization of World War II memories. The book focuses on the three Slavic countries of post-Soviet Eastern Europe – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – the epicentre of Soviet war suffering, and the heartland of the Soviet war myth. The collection gives insight into the persistence of the Soviet commemorative culture and the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the post-Soviet space. It also demonstrates that for geopolitical, cultural, and historical reasons the political uses of World War II differ significantly across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, with important ramifications for future developments in the region and beyond.
The chapters 'Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus', ‘From the Trauma of Stalinism to the Triumph of Stalingrad: The Toponymic Dispute over Volgograd’ and 'The “Partisan Republic”: Colonial Myths and Memory Wars in Belarus' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. 



The chapter 'Memory, Kinship, and Mobilization of the Dead: The Russian State and the “Immortal Regiment” Movement' is published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license at link.springer.com.  

• Soviet Eastern Europe
• memory politics
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Belarus
• post-Soviet

“As information war and political fiction blurs the boundaries between past, present, and future, we are very fortunate to have this collection of sober and precise studies from noted historians and social scientists. As we are beginning to understand, in matters concerning the exploitation of the past, trends are now moving from east to west, and so a study of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus is also of great interest in the contemporary West.” (Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale University, USA and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria)

“This book gives convincing answers to the question how World War II is remembered in the three East Slavic countries and how this memory is instrumentalized in politics of history, both on the national and regional level. It is based on an impressive array of new sources and previous research on the topic in English, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and German.“ (Stefan Troebst, Leipzig University,Germany

• The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

  Julie Fedor

• University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

  Markku Kangaspuro

• Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Helsinki, Finland

  Jussi Lassila

• Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, Austria

  Tatiana Zhurzhenko

Julie Fedor is Lecturer in Modern European History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Markku Kangaspuro is Professor and Research Director at the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Jussi Lassila works as a Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Finland.

Tatiana Zhurzhenko is Research Director of the Ukraine and Russia Programs at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria.




   

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