IEŚ Policy Papers 4/2025
Redakcja: Hanna Bazhenova
ISBN: 978-83-67678-93-3
Liczba stron: 96
Format: 140x230
Wydanie: Lublin 2025
Opis:
Since the collapse of communism in 1989–91, competing interpretations of the past have become powerful instruments in domestic and international politics in Central and Eastern Europe. In what scholars call “mnemonic battles”, “memory wars”, and “mnemonic security” strategies, states and political actors instrumentalise memory to secure national unity, marginalise opponents, and define friend and foe. The Russo–Ukrainian War has significantly intensified these processes in the region, demonstrating that memory has increasingly become a battlefield where historical narratives are mobilised not only to settle the past but also to wage battles in the present. In Lithuania, this dynamic is evident in the politicisation of historical memory, which has shifted from the “occupation paradigm” towards the “collaboration paradigm”. This reorientation moves attention away from foreign perpetrators and national heroes to local agents of Sovietisation, thereby broadening the notion of collaboration. Current public debates centre on issues such as Lithuanians’ involvement in the Holocaust and Soviet repression, the scope and content of de-Sovietisation, and the contemporary use of independence narratives. Exploiting public demands for truth and justice, politicians instrumentalise these sensitive topics to consolidate their popularity and discredit opponents. As a result, polarisation within Lithuanian society continues to deepen. In Belarus, by contrast, the interpretation of history is gradually losing its prominence in the official discourse. Since a flurry of initiatives in 2021–22, when policies such as the recognition of the genocide of the Belarusian people were introduced, historical politics has largely continued in an inertial fashion. Memory practices have become increasingly ritualised. At the same time, the rhetoric has shifted: the current confrontation with the West has fostered a new framing of the Great Patriotic War, presenting the “collective West” as an eternal enemy. This narrative allows Belarusian authorities to demonstrate support for Russia while avoiding deeper involvement in the war.
In Ukraine, the ongoing military conflict has resulted in the reinforcement of nationalist narratives in memory politics, particularly through the glorification of Stepan Bandera. Promoted by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, intellectuals, and nationalist forces, this retrotopian image of Bandera as a fighter against Russian imperialism bears little resemblance to the historical figure and discourages critical scholarship of his biography. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda exploits this image to discredit Ukraine as a “Bandera state”. However, the heroisation of Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has become deeply embedded in Ukraine’s wartime narrative of resistance, making it difficult for the authorities to revise this stance, despite the challenges it poses for Polish–Ukrainian relations and for integration into the European culture of remembrance.
Pełny tekst publikacji: PDF
