Heroes and Victims

Maria Bucur is John W. Hill Chair in East European History and Associate Professor of History at Indiana University Bloomington. She is author of Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania and editor (with Nancy M. Wingfield) of Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (IUP, 2006).

An engaging read, written in an elegant style accessible to both academics and non academics, this volume will be of interest to historians, scholars of Romanian history and politics, as well as anthropologists and sociologists alike.Volume 16 Issue 2 2011(European Legacy) [Bucur] is to be congratulated on a superb piece of scholarship which both sheds light on existing questions and raises important new ones. As such it can be recommended to teachers and researchers alike.(European History Quarterly) In this impressive study of Romanian memory from 1877-78 to 2007, historian Bucur demonstrates that Western-centric narratives cannot adequately explain eastern European experiences. . . . Highly recommended.(Choice) [A] historical tour de force, compellingly written and powerfully demonstrated. . . . Bucur's truly illuminating study explores the Romanians' tortuously dramatic efforts to accomplish a long-delayed coming to terms with their past.(Slavic Review) [T]this is an ambitious book that effectively straddles disciplines, historical eras, and analytical levels. The data are remarkably comprehensive for such a difficult theme. Bucur's narrative tells a complex story that few historians of Eastern and Central Europe could handle in such a sophisticated manner.(Canadian American Slavic Studies) This is an ambitious and important contribution to the field of European memory studies and the study of war and its commemoration in the twentieth century.33.5 Sept-Oct 2010(Women's Studies Intnl Forum)

• ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Memory Traces: On Local Practices of Remembering and Commemorating1. Death and Ritual: Mourning and Commemorative Practices before 19142. Mourning, Burying, and Remembering the War Dead: How Communities Coped with the Memory of Wartime Violence, 1918-19403. Remembering the Great War through Autobiographical Narratives4. The Politics of Commemoration in Interwar Romania, 1919-1940: Dialogues and Conflicts5. War Commemorations and State Propaganda under Dictatorship: From the Crusade against Bolshevism to Ceausescu's Cult of Personality, 1940-19896. Everyone a Victim: Forging the Mythology of Anti-Communism Counter-Memory7. The Dilemmas of Post-Memory in Post-Communist RomaniaNotesSelected BibliographyIndex