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

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Krzysztof Pomian, a well known Polish philosopher and historian who for political reasons had to leave his country in 1968 to continue his studies and academic career in France and now serves as chair of the Scientific Committee of the coming Museum of Europe in Brussels, made very clear in his contribution that one should make a distinction between memory and history. We all have memories and we all have a history and so we feel tempted to equate the two. But memory is subjective, as Jan Marinus Wiersma, Dutch member of the European Parliament and one of the organisers of the event, commented. History should become at least intersubjective, as impartial as possible. Memory, as Pomian said and as the inscription already forecasted, works emotionally and thus has a relation with daily political life and action. Memory does not belong to the field of professional historians, but to artists and maybe to educators. It is their task to show how memories can be pacified to play their role as political factors, disembarrassed of their emotions and too subjective connotations and arguments. Victims This was exactly the moment where Józef Pinior joined into the discussion. Pinior, Polish social-democrat and member of the European Parliament, has a past as a Solidarność leader, activist and prisoner. He was even twice Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. He made his name saving the trade union’s moneybox containing 80 millions zlotys from confiscation by the Service a few days before Martial Law was imposed in Poland. Wanted after this day of 13 December 1981, he lived in hiding until he got arrested. Józef Pinior, for whom as a left winger it was self evident to join Solidarność and to be in opposition to the communist regime, keeps raising his voice to what he calls the colonization of history. Conservative forces try to use, or it is even better to say abuse, history to show they are right. They claim it was only their group that had always fought against dictatorship and totalitarianism. Just as the extreme rightists around the Kaczyński brothers in Poland claim that they are the only heirs of the opposition against communism and in this way implying not too silently that all the others were at 249 Hannes Swoboda and Camiel Hamans
least collaborators. The extreme right in the whole of Europe is rewriting history, which should clearly be called a modern form of the colonization of history. From his own experience, Józef Pinior testified that it was a working class resistance supported by intellectual forces that decided about the democratic future of Poland. For that reason he invited the group of European social democrats, the political family with the closest ties to the working classes, to come to Gdansk, the home ground of the organised opposition against communist dictatorship. This meeting, the first visit of a political group of the European Parliament to the native soil of Solidarność, should be seen as a symbol against the manipulation of the public opinion by partisan history. History should be taken away from politicians and be given back to the hands of historians and there should come an end to the degradation of the public debate. As there are again and again accusations against social democrats as having been soft on communism and its suppression of democracy, we should defend ourselves. First by making clear as Bernd Faulenbach, professor in history at the Ruhr University in Bochum and chairman of the Historical Committee of the SPD, did during the debate by showing there is one essential and principal difference between communism in all forms and social democracy: the fight for democracy. That is why Hitler sent the German social democrats to his concentration camps and why from the early Soviet days on, the Bolshevists persecuted the social democratic Mensheviks. Communism aims at people’s dictatorship whereas social democracy’s highest priority is democracy. Secondly, we should stress the role social democracy had in the fight against fascism, Nazism and communism. It may be true, as professor Pomian said, that Western European social democrats with their Ostpolitik of detente and rapprochement tried to keep good relations with Moscow where the key for the German question was to be found. In consequence, one tried to have also reasonable relations with the ruling communist parties of Eastern Europe and for this reason they felt at unease in contacts with dissidents movements. But at the same time their policy, professor Faulenbach stressed, was really instrumental in weakening the ties of the oppressive systems and in this way turned out to be a very 250
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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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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
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 230 and 231: My Personal Encounters with History
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 252 and 253: effective and positive factor in gi
Page 254: Martin Schulz, leader of the PSE Gr
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