Soviet-era monuments in Poland and Estonia: mnemonic security after Russian invasion of Ukraine
2023-11-07
– 2023-11-07
09:30
– 11:00
- ONLINE
- English
We kindly invite you to a seminar with Alexandra Yatsyk (Université de Lille, Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion (IRHiS), CNRS UMR-8529) on "Soviet-era monuments in Poland and Estonia: mnemonic security after Russian invasion of Ukraine" moderated by Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper.
Please register in order to participate:
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/.../tJEsd...
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/.../tJEsd...
Abstract:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 intensified the debate on the issue of mnemonic security, that has been manifested with the new “war” against the “red” monuments in Baltic countries and Poland. In words of Mälksoo (2015: 221), securitization of memory implies “making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimizing…or criminalizing others”, which reveals a “sense of insecurity among the contesters of the “memory” in question” (Ibid.:221). Undoubtedly, any war deepens the existing social ruptures and enforces antagonistic policies of memory, of which the recent mass demolishing the Soviet monuments in Estonia and Poland are lucid examples.
The paper analyses this issue as displayed by Polish and Estonian media discourses of 2022-2023. I aim to reveal the strategies of mnemonic security in countries, which, on the one hand, have a similar traumatic experience of the Soviet occupation, and which are different in terms of ethnic coherency, on the other hand. In contrast to Poland, which demonstrates some sort of social consensus regarding the Soviet past, Estonian population includes of a sizable group of Russian speakers, who consider the Soviet symbols constitutive for their identity. The paper raises a question whether the identity-making of Estonian Russophones could be understood not in terms of antagonistic, but agonistic mnemonic security. To develop my argument, I refer to Polish nation-building narratives stemmed from the national agonistic memory on the Soviet (Głowacka-Grajper – Łukianow 2023).
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 intensified the debate on the issue of mnemonic security, that has been manifested with the new “war” against the “red” monuments in Baltic countries and Poland. In words of Mälksoo (2015: 221), securitization of memory implies “making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimizing…or criminalizing others”, which reveals a “sense of insecurity among the contesters of the “memory” in question” (Ibid.:221). Undoubtedly, any war deepens the existing social ruptures and enforces antagonistic policies of memory, of which the recent mass demolishing the Soviet monuments in Estonia and Poland are lucid examples.
The paper analyses this issue as displayed by Polish and Estonian media discourses of 2022-2023. I aim to reveal the strategies of mnemonic security in countries, which, on the one hand, have a similar traumatic experience of the Soviet occupation, and which are different in terms of ethnic coherency, on the other hand. In contrast to Poland, which demonstrates some sort of social consensus regarding the Soviet past, Estonian population includes of a sizable group of Russian speakers, who consider the Soviet symbols constitutive for their identity. The paper raises a question whether the identity-making of Estonian Russophones could be understood not in terms of antagonistic, but agonistic mnemonic security. To develop my argument, I refer to Polish nation-building narratives stemmed from the national agonistic memory on the Soviet (Głowacka-Grajper – Łukianow 2023).
Bio:
Alexandra Yatsyk is a researcher at the Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion (IRHiS) of the French Academy of Sciences (CNRS) at the University of Lille, and a lecturer at Sciences Po, France. She has served as a researcher, a visiting fellow and a lecturer at Free Russia Foundation (USA), Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu (Estonia), the University of Warsaw and the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (PIAST), the Uppsala Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Sweden), the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (Austria), the University of Tampere (Finland), George Washington University (DC, USA) as well as at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe at Lviv (Ukraine).
Her expertise covers post-Soviet nation-building, sports and cultural mega-events, biopolitics and art. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including - co-authored with Andrey Makarychev - the Critical biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Population to Nation (Lexington, 2019), Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), and co-edited Mega-Events in Post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), New and Old Vocabularies of International Relations After the Ukraine Crisis (Routledge, 2016), and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Ibidem Verlag & Columbia University, 2018).
Alexandra Yatsyk is a researcher at the Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion (IRHiS) of the French Academy of Sciences (CNRS) at the University of Lille, and a lecturer at Sciences Po, France. She has served as a researcher, a visiting fellow and a lecturer at Free Russia Foundation (USA), Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu (Estonia), the University of Warsaw and the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (PIAST), the Uppsala Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Sweden), the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (Austria), the University of Tampere (Finland), George Washington University (DC, USA) as well as at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe at Lviv (Ukraine).
Her expertise covers post-Soviet nation-building, sports and cultural mega-events, biopolitics and art. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including - co-authored with Andrey Makarychev - the Critical biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Population to Nation (Lexington, 2019), Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), and co-edited Mega-Events in Post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), New and Old Vocabularies of International Relations After the Ukraine Crisis (Routledge, 2016), and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Ibidem Verlag & Columbia University, 2018).
