Collective Memories in War

This edited collection offers an empirical exploration of social memory in the context of politics, war, identity and culture. With a substantive focus on Eastern Europe, it employs the methodologies of visual studies, content and discourse analysis, in-depth interviews and surveys to substantiate how memory narratives are composed and rewritten in changing ideological and political contexts. The book examines various historical events, including the Russian-Afghan war of 1979-89 and World War II, and considers public and local rituals, monuments and museums, textbook accounts, gender and the body. As such it provides a rich picture of post-socialist memory construction and function based in interdisciplinary memory studies.

Elena Rozhdestvenskaya works as Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation. Victoria Semenova is Professor and Head of the Department of Qualitative Research at the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Federation. Irina Tartakovskaya works as Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Federation. Krzysztof Kosela is Dean of the Department, Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Poland.

Introduction Part I: Policy of History and Memory in Different Socio-Cultural Contexts 1.The Politics of History in Poland and Germany, Michal Luczewski, Paulina Bednarz-Luczewska, Tomasz Maslanka 2. Collective memory and its Cultural Antecedents in Russia, Michail Chernysh 3. Between Past and Present: The forming of views on history in the Czech Republic, Jirí subrt Part II: Cultural Memory Through School Textbooks 4. Discourse Analysis of School History Textbooks in Russia: Representation of the Afghanistan War, Elizaveta Polukhina, Alexander Malyugin 5. Between Memory and History - cultural memory in Polish school history books in the years 1945-2011. Analysis of three historical events, Ilona Golebiewska 6. From Soviet to Ukrainian History Textbooks: Conflicts of interpretation, Oksana Danilenko Part III: Memory Representations in Social Space 7. The Space of Memory in Afghanistan War Museum, Irina Tartakovskaya, Elena Rozhdestvenskaya 8. War After War. The WWII memorials as memory sites - the case of Warsaw, Krystyna Ewa Siellawa-Kolbowska 9. Local Authorities, Memory Sites and the City Space, Anna Strelnikova Part IV: Narrating Memory 10. Wounded Memory and Collective Identity, Victoria Semenova 11. Afghan Veterans: Resonance of memory, Elena Rozhdestvenskaya 12. Veteran Web Sites as Mirrors for a Forgotten War, Irina Ksenofontova Part V: Memory and Gender 13. Constructing Masculinity from the War Spirit, Irina Tartakovskaya 14. Body, Memory and Emotions of Male Members of the Army with Direct Experience of War, Alexandrina Vanke