Institutes of trauma re-production in a borderland: Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania
ENOver the past few decades, we have observed a new trend across Europe: “memory laws,” aimed at regulating the writing of history. In several countries these have been accompanied by governmental organizations set up to shape, form and police what is referred to as “national memory.” This phenomenon is prevalent in those states of east-central Europe, where signifcant eforts have been vested in controlling the representation of Soviet and Nazi legacies. This essay focuses on one transnational space, the former eastern borderlands of interwar Poland, known as Kresy Wschodnie, a region exposed to some of the most brutal aspects of both National Socialist and communist rule. The area is now part of four independent states: Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. This essay aims at discussing some of the problems associated with the legislated “national” memory in those countries. It is intended as a cursory overview of some of the institutions and some key issues, to be further explored in the hereafter following contributions from each of those four countries. [Extract, p. 55]
- A Comparison of the armed struggles for independence in the Baltic states and Western Ukraine / Arvydas Anušauskas. Anti-Soviet resistance in the Baltic states. Vilnius: Pasauliui apie mus, 2006. P. 63-70.
- Legislated history in Post-Communist Lithuania / Tomas Balkelis, Violeta Davoliūtė. Palgrave handbook of state-sponsored history after 1945 / edited by Berber Bevernage and Nico Wouters. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2018. P. 121-136.
- Points of memory in the narrative of a "Mnemonic Warrior": gender, displacement, and the anti-Soviet war of resistance in Lithuania / Dovilė Budrytė. Journal of Baltic studies. 2016, vol. 47, no. 4, p. 473-496.
- Taming nationalism? Political community building in the Post-Soviet Baltic states / Dovile Budryte. Aldershot ; Ashgate, 2011. 248 p.
