Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits: Post-Communist Historiography between Democratization and the New Politics of History

The collection of well-researched essays assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. As opposed to the revival of national histories that seemed to be the prevailing historiographical approach of the 1990s, the last decade has seen a particular set of narratives equating Nazism and Communism. This provides opportunities to exonerate wartime collaboration, casting the nation as victim even when its government was allied with Germany. While the Jewish Holocaust is acknowledged, its meaning and significance are obfuscated. In their comparative analysis the authors are also interested in new practices of ‘Europeanness’. Therefore their presentations of Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian post-communist memory politics move beyond the common national myths in order to provide a new insight into transnational interactions and exchanges in Europe in general. The juxtaposition of these politics, the processes in other parts of Europe, the modes of remembering shaped by displacement and the transnational enable a close encounter with the divergences and assess the potential of the formation of common, European memory practices.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction. “Red Dragon and the Evil Spirits” Oto Luthar Chapter 1 On the (In)convertibility of National Memory into European Legitimacy: The Bulgarian Case Daniela Koleva Chapter 2 Equalizing Jesus’s, Jewish and Croat Suffering—Post-Socialist Politics of History in Croatia Ljiljana Radonić Chapter 3 Wars of Memory in Post-Communist Romania Michael Shafi Chapter 4 Reflections on the Principles of the Critical Culture of Memory Todor Kuljić Chapter 5 The Struggle for Legitimacy: Constructing the National History of Slovakia After 1989 Miroslav Michela Chapter 6 Victims and Traditions: Narratives of Hungarian National History After the Age of Extremes Ferenc Laczó Chapter 7 Instrumentalization of History in Bosnia and Herzegovina Šačir Filandra Chapter 8 Post-Socialist Historiography Between Democratization and New Exclusivist Politics of History Oto Luthar Authors Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Oto Luthar is professor at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Review :
"Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits proves comparative research to be relevant and exciting. With the overarching aim to contribute to surmounting the ‘bloc division of Europe, which still persists in viewing the East as a monolith’, this edited volume sets about to a) point out divergences in the memory cultures in postsocialist countries, and b) assess the potential to form common European memory practices. It thus analyses the changing mnemonic landscapes on two levels: within Eastern Europe and in Europe as a whole. With nationalist historical revisionism as a common thread running through the bulk of the case studies, the message is in fact one of a shared postcommunist memory culture. The authors identify the road to EU membership as the catalyst of how the attempt to establish a European memory canon failed. In combination, the case studies provide the reader with a nuanced view on ‘all- Europeanness’ when it comes to memory. Even in the absence of a shared European historical narrative, common mnemonic practices have developed over time. In sum, trying to overcome the ‘bloc division of Europe’ this edited volume contains highly relevant insights into the divergences in the memory cultures in postsocialist countries as well as into common European memory practices." "The volume surveys eight national contexts from East Central and Southeastern Europe in an attempt to reconstruct the defining features of the contemporary politics of the past. As the authors suggest, falling short of the hopes and expectations of many in the aforementioned two regions, instead of a process of democratizing the narratives about the past, there is a return to or rather no change in the dominance of nation-centered narratives. Of Dragons and Evil Spirits as a whole has the virtue of addressing some time-specific aspects of contemporary politics of history. Scholars and policy makers may learn important lessons from the cases presented." https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26571615