Description
Book SynopsisThe Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe discusses the âœmemory warsâ in the course of the post-Communist re-narration of history since 1989 and the current authoritarian backlash.
The book focuses specifically on how âœmnemonic warriorsâ employ the âœHolocaust templateâ and the concept of genocide in tendentious ways to justify radical policies and externalize the culpability for their international isolation and worsening social and economic circumstances domestically. The chapters analyze three dimensions: 1) the competing narratives of the âœuniversalization of the Holocaustâ as the negative icon of our era, on the one hand, and the âœdouble genocideâ paradigm, on the other, which focuses on âœour ownâ national suffering under â allegedly âœequallyâ evil â Nazism and Communism; 2) the juxtaposition of post-Communist Eastern Europe and Russia, reflected primarily in the struggle of the Baltic states and Ukraine to challenge Russian propaganda, a struggle that runs the risk of employing similarly distorting and propagandistic tropes; and 3) the post-Yugoslav rhetoric portraying oneâs own group as âœthe new Jewsâ and oneâs opponents in the wars of the 1990s as (akin to) âœNazisâ. Surveying major battle sites in this âœmemory warâ: memorial museums, monuments, film and the war over definitions and terminology in relevant public discourse, The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe will be of great interest to scholars of genocide, the Holocaust, historical memory and revisionism, and Eastern European Politics.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe Ljiljana Radonić 1. Limits of Universalization: The European Memory Sites of Genocide Éva Kovács 2. From “Double Genocide” to “the New Jews”: Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence in Post-Communist Memorial Museums Ljiljana Radonić 3. A Baltic Struggle for a “European Memory”: The Militant Mnemopolitics of The Soviet Story Maria Mälksoo 4. Genocide, Holodomor and Holocaust Discourse as Echo of Historical Injury and as Rhetorical Radicalization in the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict of 2013–18 Nicolas Dreyer 5. Talking Past Each Other: Language and Post-World War II Killings in Slovenia Gregor Kranjc 6. Defending the “Good Name” of the Polish Nation: Politics of History as a Battlefield in Poland, 2015–18 Jörg Hackmann 7. Liberty Square, Budapest: How Hungary Won the Second World War István Rév
