Reflection of national suffering and freedom fighting in museums of occupation

• Leidėjo tinklalapis: knygos tekstas

ENThe wave of museification of traumatic memory and anti-Soviet resistance that swept across the post-socialist and some post-Soviet countries of Central-Eastern Europe made it possible to consolidate the narrative of the “occupation” for the purposes of domestic historiographical politics and for a foreign audience. The American social psychologist James V. Wertsch describes narrative templates that schematise and summarise the structures of knowledge and are filled with symbolic meaning. These are narratives with a distinctive structure characterised by traits of “cognitive narcissism” and reflecting a desire to perceive the past as one’s own – “our”. The museum narrative becomes an instrument for the materialisation of these “narrative templates”, which creates a “narrative truth” that serves to affirm and consolidate the official version of history. Such narrative templates can be such concepts as “occupation”, “genocide”, “terror”, and “resistance”, which, as we have seen, are often used in the names of the above-mentioned institutions of memory and in the descriptions of their exhibitions. However, their impact on visitors remains ambiguous and not always in line with what their curators wish to convey. The displayed Soviet artefacts can evoke not only reactions of rejection or disgust, but also vague and confused feelings of recognition and nostalgia. On the other hand, we can also talk about the abundance of “visual templates” typical of museums of occupation, which only become apparent in a comparative perspective. Their emergence is the result of shared experience: for example, deportation is everywhere best represented by images of cattle cars or suitcases, and repression by displays of forensic documents or wounds inflicted on the victims. [Extract, p. 107-108]