Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

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The present danger: consent between history and politics Bearing in mind the historical legacy of the twentieth century, we should be aware of the danger that historiography might once again be overwhelmed by politics. History does not just repeat itself. The most important danger today is not the well known conflict between history and politics, but a structural and institutionalised consensus. The generation of historians to which I belong has successfully fought against secrecy and the dismissal of the Nazi past, as well as against a nationalist ideology that sought to suppress the remembrance of political guilt for the Holocaust as a national shame. The remarkable International Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust held in January 2000 with participants from 45 countries, including numerous heads of government, demonstrated that our common historical culture has moved from one of pride and national continuity, to a remembrance culture of shame, of learning, of distance to super historical values of state and nation. Contrasting a mimetic and a cathartic approach to historical culture, we find the most important cultural border line between those who claim to be Europeans and those who are not Europeans. That is the source of criticism of Putin’s view that the task of historians is to encourage Russian pride and Russian identity, and why many consider the question of the Armenian genocide as a benchmark for Turkish membership of the European Union. It is not a question of merging politics and history – Turkish politicians who compare the recently abolished law that they believe stood for so long to safeguard Turkish national honour with the French law against genocide denial argue from a strong position. It is not the alliance between politics and history that makes up for the difference, but the underlying paradigm of remembrance: heroicising versus victimisation, belief in continuity or discontinuity of history, identification with national and imperial traditions or identification with overcoming those traditions. They are the dividing lines that determine the poles of tension, the camps, and the contradictions within historical awareness between the West and East of our present mental map. 101 Martin Sabrow
In Germany, public historical culture and professional historiography by and large follow the same guidelines and modalities in their approach to representing the past. They are shaped by the demands of the Erinnerungskultur (remembrance culture) with its emphasis on contemporary witnesses, their memories of victimhood, and mental compensation for human suffering. It would be wrong to marginalise the great advantages and achievements of this approach that no longer honours the general with a monument of him on horseback, but instead compels us to remember the desperate Jewish citizen deported from his home to Auschwitz with a golden Stolperstein in the sidewalk. The conjunction of professional history and the politics of remembrance has helped to lay bare the mechanisms of seduction during two dictatorships. It helped to establish a mental caesura after 1945 and again after 1989, and it has contributed to a historical awareness which privileges the critical questioning of the past instead of the uncritical affirmation of historical myths. The German term for the unity achieved in coming to terms with the past is Aufarbeitung. The term replaced Vergangenheitsbewältigung which contains a hidden allusion to the Freudian concept of psychological recovery by working through trauma. The era of Aufarbeitung has brought contemporary history back to the attention of the public and at the same time has challenged the historians’ monopoly on professional expertise. Today historians compete with the mass media, contemporary witnesses and a political interest in sharing the burden of Aufarbeitung. Professional contemporary history in Germany is linked more and more to political initiatives in this domain. Instead of following the benchmarks of scholarly discussion there is a tendency towards the demands of a culture of historical events that concerns itself with the anniversary of 1956 in 2006, the anniversary of 1968 in 2008, and of 1989 this year. We must be aware not only of the open and brutal politicisation of history but we should also fear for its scholarly independence in the context of this friendly political embrace. The basic definition of the science of history is that it has to challenge common perceptions and overcome views. The present paradigm of Aufarbeitung tends instead to codify mainstream interpretations and commonly accepted principles of coming to terms with the past. The laws 102
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Twenty years after the end of the C
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Dedicated to Bronisław Geremek Bro
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Table of contents Preface: Never Ag
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Preface Never again 7 Martin Schulz
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Preface The Past Does Not Go Away A
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Introduction by the Editors In 2008
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about the tense and ambivalent rela
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another debate formulated by Richar
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theoretical and practical impossibi
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History and national identity Histo
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the subject of much controversy, th
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everything on Stalin and communism:
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Prague Spring: “In the mid-1950s,
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Literature Arendt, Hannah (1951) Th
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Common Memory and European Identity
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cried the Ossies as the Berlin Wall
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the first phase of negotiations aft
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eference to a common destiny, and t
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The ‘enlargement fatigue’ obser
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on each other. The only way of chan
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“The Word Concentration Camp mean
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I think history is essential to thi
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denying it is like saying evil does
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Soviet camp, not because he had don
Page 52 and 53: Q: In Germany there is a strong fee
Page 54 and 55: the 17 th century so that the South
Page 56 and 57: forests near Minsk. I was taken the
Page 58 and 59: harmonious and prosperous, with the
Page 60: were doing and why they were doing
Page 63 and 64: an explanation. I told him that I e
Page 65 and 66: This movement once had a big meetin
Page 67 and 68: guests of Imre Pozsgay, minister of
Page 70: HISTORICAL DILEMMAS
Page 73 and 74: National myths Every society has a
Page 75 and 76: confessions. The culmination of thi
Page 77 and 78: First, few countries undertake a th
Page 79 and 80: Finally, confronted with the experi
Page 81 and 82: no better placed than governments t
Page 83 and 84: compartments, and that one must som
Page 85 and 86: Such an approach certainly has its
Page 88 and 89: History and Politics: Recommendatio
Page 90 and 91: The tension between academic histor
Page 92 and 93: oth a collective and individual exo
Page 94 and 95: Europe’s responsibilities It is c
Page 96: egimes provides a deeper understand
Page 99 and 100: and accounts for professionals deal
Page 101: This shift later inspired the devel
Page 106 and 107: Historical Bias in Poland: Lustrati
Page 108 and 109: The Polish United Workers’ Party
Page 110 and 111: The right’s criticism of the meth
Page 112 and 113: epresents one more step in the broa
Page 114 and 115: European Social Democracy and 20 th
Page 116 and 117: the KPD - even now - is not about p
Page 118 and 119: esisted them in many cases. The ove
Page 120 and 121: turned some of them against the SPD
Page 122 and 123: The Interpretation of the Soviet Un
Page 124 and 125: the result of a war of liberation a
Page 126 and 127: Molotov-Ribbentrop protocol? How di
Page 128: pen in Lithuania. The idea was adva
Page 131 and 132: and politician Giovanni Amendola to
Page 133 and 134: The most influential analytical mod
Page 135 and 136: 2. A single mass party consisting o
Page 137 and 138: their differences. Most comparative
Page 139 and 140: communism are legal heirs of the En
Page 141 and 142: the world war and to exculpate the
Page 143 and 144: They also criticized “revisionist
Page 145 and 146: seen above, after careful scrutiny
Page 148 and 149: The Real Problem Latvians Have with
Page 150 and 151: not see it as something important e
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structures Latvian domestic politic
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the language of instruction in scho
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Diversity in Historical Education:
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and sometimes in adjustment and ada
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For the Record: PSE MEPs react 159
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F. especially the Nazi- and the Sta
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having always been victims, trying
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SPECIAL REPORT: SLOVAKS AND HUNGARI
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Much has happened in the last two y
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The conference concentrated, as the
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aristocratic, Estates-based ‘nati
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A person’s identification with a
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ians to evaluate the extent to whic
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more intensive part in forming the
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A Common Past, a Divided History 18
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nearly seven hundred kilometres of
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It is extremely important to note,
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historical public opinion and self-
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thousands of Hungarian and Slovak c
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enewed historiography will also be
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we shall turn our attention to two
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In response to these questions, two
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While more than 80% of the oldest a
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Table 2 Opinions of respondents of
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6,0 5,5 5,0 4,5 4,0 3,5 3,0 2,5 ▼
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we consider the trends suggested be
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Resistance and Exile Miguel Angel M
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it was necessary to formulate socia
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degree of generosity, activism and
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the ICFTU. There my work focused on
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After Stalin’s death, most of the
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Moscow versus Prague 219 Boris Orlo
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Of all the problems that my country
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Social Democracy and the Prague Spr
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comprehend the overwhelming contrad
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Renaissance of Socialism Observatio
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My Personal Encounters with History
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Over a decade later, political chan
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monument, its location and particul
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Minister, Dimitri Rupel, I founded
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people exactly know what actually w
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tablished democracies. What was the
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Memory is a Loaded Gun An Epilogue
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Post office, Gdansk
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Solidarność Memorial
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Krzysztof Pomian, a well known Poli
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effective and positive factor in gi
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Martin Schulz, leader of the PSE Gr
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