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Foils and Mirrors: The Soviet Intelligentsia and German Atonement

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Replicating Atonement

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

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Abstract

Gabowitsch discusses how references to a supposedly exemplary German model of atonement for National Socialism became a staple of Soviet and post-Soviet debates about Stalinist terror even though the details of the German experience remain unknown. In the 1960s, early West German publications about the Nazi past indirectly influenced Soviet Aesopian narratives that hinted at similarities between fascism with communism, such as the documentary film Ordinary Fascism and the Hitler biography Criminal Number One. The idea of successful German atonement was introduced in dissident samizdat debates in the 1970s as a foil for Russia’s own moral failures and has been used in similar comparative fashion well into the post-Soviet period. It is only recently that German commemorative practices have been adapted in more creative ways.

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Acknowledgements

This paper grew out of a research project titled “The (Post-)Soviet Condition: An Ethical Inquiry,” which I undertook in April–August 2007 in Caputh (Germany) as the Einstein Forum’s first Albert Einstein Fellow. I would like to thank the Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius Zeit Foundation and the Einstein Forum for their generous financial and intellectual support (and especially Susan Neiman and Thomas Schubert for many inspiring discussions). I am also grateful to participants in the Berlin workshop “Fascination and Enmity” on 1–2 June 2007 for their insightful comments on a rudimentary first draft of this paper, particularly Dietrich Beyrau, who encouraged me to look more closely at the role of Soviet historians of Germany. Thanks are also due to discussants at talks given at the Einstein Forum, the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. I have also greatly profited from discussions with Iurii Basilov, Aleksandr Dmitriev, Alexander Etkind, Ilia Kukulin, and Kevin Platt. Funding from the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture allowed me to resume work on the text after a long hiatus.

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Gabowitsch, M. (2017). Foils and Mirrors: The Soviet Intelligentsia and German Atonement. In: Gabowitsch, M. (eds) Replicating Atonement . Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65027-2_11

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