Contexts

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Istorinė politika; Ukraina; Europos kontekstas; Postkomunizmas; Atmintis. Keywords: Historical politics; Ukraine; European context; Post-communism; Memory.Reikšminiai žodžiai: 20 amžius; Tapatybė; Tarptautiniai santykiai; Žiniasklaida; Muziejai; Nacionalizmas; Postkomunizmas; Identity; International relations; Media; Museums; Nationalism; Postcommunism; 20th century.

ENThis chapter describes and analyzes the all-European context—political, cultural, and social—related to the formation of historical politics in Ukraine. Understanding these contexts will help locate Ukraine on the European map of historical politics and discover both its similarities to some general tendencies and its national peculiarities. The phrase “all-European context” should not be misleading: it only became “common” when states’ historical politics had similar dynamics and orientations (for instance, ideological) or when they were produced by the purposeful action of either national governments that agreed on common politics or transnational and supranational European entities. Of course, any community also rests on certain universally adopted basic values. Since 1945, Europe has thrice found itself in a “post-” phase: postwar (when the memory of war and its legacy were the main topic of historical politics); postcommunism (the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s), when concerns about the postwar arrangement of Europe were amplified by the need to handle its communist past and legacy; and, finally, after the “reunification” of Europe in 2004–2007, when history and memory, viewed by promoters of historical politics as integration instruments, suddenly became counterproductive. Today, after the collapse of the Yalta-Potsdam system, the mass migration crisis, the rapidly mounting political crisis of the European Union, and the crumbling of monuments in the trans-Atlantic space, we might be standing at the threshold of a new “post-” phase. [From the publication]