A Study of Memory Politics as a Research Program for a Transnational History of Communism in East-Central Europe

Abstract

The Authors' aim is to discuss and evaluate research possibilities offered by the study of memory politics (a part of memory studies) in order to provide a model for comparative and/or transnational study of post 1945 East-Central European History. In every country of the region that fell under the communist yoke, the new rulers attempted to remodel the sphere of social imaginary. Images and ideas of the past were the first among those to be rebuild. So, the sphere of memory politics seems to be an area where the basic community of historical fates and experiences of societies is most clearly visible. This encourages to make comparisons, opens the possibility of posing similar research question and testing the same theoretical model on empirical materials referring to various countries. The authors develop such a model (based on idea of memory politics understood as a kind of social practice), identify major areas of research and specify source materials suitable for them. In the course of their argument they explain why it could become a basis of an approach suitable for the study of East-Central European regional history on transnational level. In this context the authors discuss the great synthesizing potential for writing modern history inherent in the study of practices related to the creation, modification and preservation of historical memory