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

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My Personal Encounters with History 229 Hannes Swoboda We all have our different encounters with history. The times and places in which we grow up and live are steeped in history. Perhaps it is very Eurocentric of me to assume that Europe, and Central Europe in particular, has been especially shaped over the past hundred years by conflicts that have subsequently become historic. I was to some extent a conscious witness of this for around half of the twentieth century. I was born in 1946 in a small town on the Danube, closer to Bratislava than to Vienna. Part of my family on my mother’s side came from Hungary and my father’s family from Moravia. My father’s job brought them to the region in which I was later born. The area was once home to a famous Roman military and civil encampment and this fact has also contributed to my sense of historical awareness. We visited the excavations and museum which today still bear witness to this Roman past. My home town was in the Soviet occupied zone until the withdrawal of occupying forces at the end of 1955. The troops were part of our everyday lives. Wartime tales of the advance of the Soviet troops were not unusual at home. One consequence of the war was, of course, the Iron Curtain which hung not far from my home town. Ironically crossing this border during the occupation was easier than it later became. I remember well a school trip organised by the Russians, as we called the occupying forces, on the Soviet Danube steamer Caucasus. Although Bratislava – which we knew by its German name of Pressburg and which for many years bore the name of Pozsony, capital city of Hungary – lay only a few kilometres away, it was inaccessible to us after the strengthening of the Iron Curtain. There were two district capitals. The principal capital was Vienna, about 45 kilometres away, divided into four zones until the withdrawal of Hannes Swoboda is Vice-President of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament.
occupying forces. Leaving the Soviet zone of occupation to the west of Vienna, however – as we often did on our trips down the Danube – required an identity document. The State Treaty of 1955 and the withdrawal of all allied forces at the end of October that same year brought independence and neutrality. The Neutrality Act did not formally become law until the day after the last troops had withdrawn and was deliberately not included in the international treaties. The Act was rather an implicit precondition for the withdrawal of troops, particularly Soviet troops. I directly and immediately experienced the consequences of the Second World War in my home town and its surrounding area. My upbringing and education were firmly anti-Nazi. We were exposed to films and exhibitions that attempted to impart the terror and brutality of the Nazi regime and the horror of the Holocaust. I think I absorbed these dramatic historical events more than many others through first-hand experience and through my education. They have continued to leave their mark on me to this day. Bruno Kreisky, who first became Secretary of State then Foreign Minister and subsequently Chairman of the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and Chancellor, had a formative influence on me. Together with Olof Palme and Willy Brandt, he was one of the pillars of international and European social democracy. I am not alone in my fascination with his belief in the policy of détente without accommodation with Communism and also by his Middle East policy, revolutionary for that time in accepting the Palestinians as partners in dialogue. At a time of increasing, albeit not uncritical, movement towards Bruno Kreisky’s active foreign policy, various crises and wars were taking place. The wars I witnessed in the media in Algeria, Congo and Vietnam have had a great impact on me, but I would like to concentrate in this contribution on the European conflicts that have directly affected me. A year after the withdrawal of allied forces from Austria, an uprising against the occupation in neighbouring Hungary was crushed by Soviet troops. Many refugees came to Austria and some of them stayed on. Two refugee children joined my class at school and I was asked to learn German with them. 230
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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
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Q: In Germany there is a strong fee
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the 17 th century so that the South
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forests near Minsk. I was taken the
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harmonious and prosperous, with the
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were doing and why they were doing
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an explanation. I told him that I e
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This movement once had a big meetin
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guests of Imre Pozsgay, minister of
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HISTORICAL DILEMMAS
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National myths Every society has a
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confessions. The culmination of thi
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First, few countries undertake a th
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Finally, confronted with the experi
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no better placed than governments t
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compartments, and that one must som
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Such an approach certainly has its
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History and Politics: Recommendatio
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The tension between academic histor
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oth a collective and individual exo
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Europe’s responsibilities It is c
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egimes provides a deeper understand
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and accounts for professionals deal
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This shift later inspired the devel
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In Germany, public historical cultu
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Historical Bias in Poland: Lustrati
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The Polish United Workers’ Party
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The right’s criticism of the meth
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epresents one more step in the broa
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European Social Democracy and 20 th
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the KPD - even now - is not about p
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esisted them in many cases. The ove
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turned some of them against the SPD
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The Interpretation of the Soviet Un
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the result of a war of liberation a
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Molotov-Ribbentrop protocol? How di
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pen in Lithuania. The idea was adva
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and politician Giovanni Amendola to
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The most influential analytical mod
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2. A single mass party consisting o
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their differences. Most comparative
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communism are legal heirs of the En
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the world war and to exculpate the
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They also criticized “revisionist
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seen above, after careful scrutiny
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The Real Problem Latvians Have with
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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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Page 182 and 183: A Common Past, a Divided History 18
Page 184 and 185: nearly seven hundred kilometres of
Page 186 and 187: It is extremely important to note,
Page 188 and 189: historical public opinion and self-
Page 190 and 191: thousands of Hungarian and Slovak c
Page 192: enewed historiography will also be
Page 195 and 196: we shall turn our attention to two
Page 197 and 198: In response to these questions, two
Page 199 and 200: While more than 80% of the oldest a
Page 201 and 202: Table 2 Opinions of respondents of
Page 203 and 204: 6,0 5,5 5,0 4,5 4,0 3,5 3,0 2,5 ▼
Page 205 and 206: we consider the trends suggested be
Page 208 and 209: Resistance and Exile Miguel Angel M
Page 210 and 211: it was necessary to formulate socia
Page 212 and 213: degree of generosity, activism and
Page 214: the ICFTU. There my work focused on
Page 217 and 218: After Stalin’s death, most of the
Page 220 and 221: Moscow versus Prague 219 Boris Orlo
Page 222 and 223: Of all the problems that my country
Page 224 and 225: Social Democracy and the Prague Spr
Page 226 and 227: comprehend the overwhelming contrad
Page 228 and 229: Renaissance of Socialism Observatio
Page 232 and 233: Over a decade later, political chan
Page 234 and 235: monument, its location and particul
Page 236: Minister, Dimitri Rupel, I founded
Page 239 and 240: people exactly know what actually w
Page 241 and 242: tablished democracies. What was the
Page 244 and 245: Memory is a Loaded Gun An Epilogue
Page 246 and 247: Post office, Gdansk
Page 248 and 249: Solidarność Memorial
Page 250 and 251: Krzysztof Pomian, a well known Poli
Page 252 and 253: effective and positive factor in gi
Page 254: Martin Schulz, leader of the PSE Gr
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