Przemysław Łukasik - Böcker

The Role of Memory in War Politics and Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Historical Memory in Crisis explores how memories of war, trauma, and national identity shape politics, diplomacy, and reconciliation across Europe and beyond. Spanning from the Second World War to the current Russia–Ukraine war, the book examines how governments and societies choose to remember – or forget – their past.How do states use history to justify current policies? Why do certain events become national myths while others are erased? And how can memory be used to promote peace instead of conflict? Through case studies from the UK, Poland, Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Austria, and the Czech Republic, the book explores how war memorials, education systems, and media shape public opinion and foreign policy. Part 1 looks at past conflicts and their commemoration, while part 2 focuses on the Russia–Ukraine war as a living example of memory in action. Special attention is given to young people’s perspectives and the role of cultural memory in their views on war and identity. Bridging history, politics, and culture, the book shows that memory is not static – it is a battleground. Whether manipulated by elites or reclaimed by citizens, how we remember the past deeply affects our present choices and future peace.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, history, international relations, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and media studies.

In his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century the historian Yuval Noah Harrari wrote that man had the possibility to conquer the world precisely because he could create fictional stories and believe in them. People created more and more complex stories about themselves that served and continue to serve, according to the professor of the University of Jerusalem, building unity, social harmony and gaining power. A narrative about past, in which memory fragmentation and victimisation play a large role, may be a temptation to instrumentalise the past. This is especially true in relation to the events of the twentieth century, when a series of bloody war conflicts occurred. As shown in the following post-conference volume, today the wars of the past (World War I and World War II, Indian-Pakistani war) and current conflicts (Russo-Ukrainian war, war in Sudan or Nagorno-Karabakh) are also a catalyst for the process of instrumentalisation. This process can be analysed both at the level of the evolution of the language of conflict, including the erosion of the values of democratic dialogue, and the use of specific means of commemorating the past (monuments, museums, the Internet).