Handbook on the Politics of Memory, Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2023

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2008

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In this article we will try to point out the differences between historical and individual memory. This distinction is found in memorial culture as one of the major media which assists the institutionalization of individual memories. We will see how history continually uses individual memories and puts them in the service of dominant ideology. At the same time, the rhetoric of government and educational system shapes collective memory and promotes specific versions of the past. Monumentalization of individual memories will be discussed as a first step in the politics of forgetting.

International Journal of Military History and Historiography, 2018

In the anniversary years of 2018 and 2019, it is important to take a close look at the war cemeteries commemorating the world war conflicts. These sites are crucial places for sustaining and even creating transnational, collective memory. By studying the memory work the war cemeteries accomplish, scholars have increased their knowledge of and understanding about these driving, foundational power structures. The following essays focus on the construction, design and reception of war cemeteries, and together the essays reveal complex layering of social, political and cultural contexts of these crucial sites of war memory.

War memorials are amongst the oldest memorials in the world. This paper provides a brief history of the way their function has evolved, focusing in particular on European war memorials constructed after the First and Second World Wars. It argues that, generally speaking, war memorials before the First World War were celebratory in character and served to underpin the authority of victorious leaders or nations. After 1918, they functioned often as crystallization points for collective mourning and remembrance. But the political interest in constructing celebratory war memorials remained, not least after the Second World War, as the example of the many Soviet war memorials erected in Eastern European countries demonstrates. However, this paper warns against understanding war memorials as immutable statements. Many memorials have undergone rededication, alteration, removal and reconstruction, and relocation during their history. This makes them significant as markers of political and cultural change.

There can be powerful reasons for one group to keep its sense of victimhood: if it becomes part of its identity or if there are resistances in changing one group’s perception of another, usually neighboring, group. By focusing on how a group reacts to some monuments that honor the dead and recall the trauma, I hope to have a look at the complicated psychology that exists between large groups. This may tell us not to make the concepts of “apology” or “forgiveness” magical tools in international relationships without first considering the slow and complicated mourning processes associated with them.

The constructed knowledge about the past could be often visible through different memorial sites and monuments. Their role and function had undergone many changes. During the second half of the 19 th century all over Europe plenty of monuments were erected which connected the symbols of the mythical past to defined places in the context of the modern nation state. After the WWI new practice unfolded among the warfaring countries in the name of the cult of the soldier heroes. In the second half of the 20th century the in Eastern Europe communist regimes had been constructing their own memorial sites, which were often used to exercise power in a symbolic way. However, memorial culture has undergone significant changes in the Western Europe in that time as well. After the collapse of communism the memorial practices had been taking new forms, but at the same time many social conflicts emerged.

WAR MONUMENTS AS VEHICLES OF MEMORY AND ACTIVATORS OF SOCIAL ACTIONS, 2019