Gelinada Grinchenko - Böcker

The first twenty-five years of life in post-socialist Europe have seen vast political, economic, and cultural changes, as societies that lived under communist rule struggle with the traumas of the past and the challenges of the future. In this context, oral history has acquired a unique role in understanding the politics of memory and the practice of history.Drawing on research conducted in Belarus, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, Reclaiming the Personal introduces theory and practice in this vital and distinctive area to a global audience. Focusing on issues such as repressed memories of the Second World War, the economic challenges of late socialism, and the experience of the early post-socialist transition, the essays underscore the political implications of oral history research in post-socialist Europe and highlight how oral history research in the region differs from that being conducted elsewhere.

Spanning oral history, ethnology, memory studies, social anthropology, and cultural sociology, this open access book pursues a twofold ambition. On the one hand, it seeks to enrich the field of oral history with newly gathered and thoughtfully curated oral historical testimonies and empirical material stemming from the Russian war against Ukraine. On the other hand, to date, various collections of testimonies from the war have been published, with only few academic studies approaching them analytically; addressing this gap in scholarship, this contributed volume works towards the conceptual advancement of witnessing as a necessary part of the historical record and larger democratic debate.

This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to shaping and imposition of “formulas for betrayal” as a result of changing memory politics in post-war Europe. The contributors, who specialize in history, sociology, anthropology, memory studies, media studies and cultural studies, discuss the exertion of political control over memory (including the selection, imposition, silencing or ideological “twisting” of facts), the usage of “formulas for betrayal” in various cultural-political contexts, and the discursive framing of the betraying subject for the purpose of legitimizing various memory regimes and ideologies.