Past in the Making
Historical revisionism in Central Europe after 1989
Edited by
Michal Kopeček, Research Fellow
at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague
Historical revisionism, far from being restricted
to small groups of ‘negationists,’ has galvanized
debates in the realm of recent history. The studies
in this book range from general accounts of the background
of recent historical revisionism to focused analyses
of particular debates or social-cultural phenomena in
individual Central European countries, from Germany
to Ukraine and Estonia.
Where is the borderline between legitimate re-examination
of historical interpretations and attempts to rewrite
history in a politically motivated way that downgrades
or denies essential historical facts? How do the traditional
‘national historical narratives’ react to
the ‘spill-over’ of international and political
controversies into their ‘sphere of influence’?
Technological progress, along with the overall social
and cultural decentralization shatters the old hierarchies
of academic historical knowledge under the banner of
culture of memory, and breeds an unequalled
democratization in historical representation. This book
offers a unique approach based on the provocative and
instigating intersection of scholarly research, its
political appropriations, and social reflection from
a representative sample of Central and East European
countries.
Contents
Preface, Tucker: Historiographic Revision
and Revisionism: The Evidential Difference; Petrović:
From Revisionism to “Revisionism”: Legal
Limits to Historical Interpretation; Hahn
: The Holocaustizing of the Transfer-Discourse: Historical
Revisionism or Old Wine in New Bottles?; Loose
: The Anti-Fascist Myth of the German Democratic Republic
and Its Decline after 1989; Kopeček: In
Search of “National Memory”: Politics of
History, Nostalgia and the Historiography of Communism
in the Czech Republic and East Central Europe; Kocourek:
White Spaces are also Grey Spaces in Historical Revisionism:
The Czech Right, 1939-1948 and the Battle against the
Beneš Doctrine in Czech Historiography; Johnson:
Begetting & Remembering: Creating a Slovak Collective
Memory in the Post-Communist World; Laczó:
The Many Moralists and the Few Communists. Approaching
Morality and Politics in post-Communist Hungary;
Mink: The Revisions of the 1956 Hungarian revolution;
Stobiecki: Historians Facing Politics of History.
The Case of Poland; Kasianov: Revisiting the
Great Famine of 1932-1933: Politics of Memory and Public
Consciousness (Ukraine after 1991); Wulf:
The Struggle for Official Recognition of ‘Displaced’
Group Memories in Post-Soviet Estonia, About the Authors,
Index
"'Far from being restricted to a small group
of 'deniers', historical revisionism seems to
feature strongly in the public historical discourses
of many countries and regions nowadays': states the
editor of this publication Michal Kopecek. Especially
central and eastern Europe has a long-time experience
with this concept and its changes. The various tendencies
appearing (or enduring) after the 1989, are only giving
new meanings to this notion.
The publication is based on the conviction that the
problem of revisionism in post-communist countries is
a research subject that deserves a proper analysis.
Although written mainly as case studies, most of the
articles are proving the striking resemblances in the
historiographic developments in post-communist European
countries." - H-Soz-u-Kult
"Historical revisionism has a number of different
meanings. In this context the term provides a peg for
discussing a variety of reinterpretations of tha past
among professional historians and politicians, and in
a more general collective memory. A major merit of the
book is its demonstration of the extent to which re-evaluations
of history are bound up with changes in politics and
society". - Europe-Asia Studies
2008
274 pages
ISBN 978-963-9776-02-9 cloth $41.95 / €29.95 /
£28.00
ISBN 978-963-9776-04-3 paperback $24.95 / €17.95
/ £16.99
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