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What does it mean to tell a life story? How is one's memory of communism shaped by family, profession, generation and religion? Do post-communist Baltic states embrace similar memories? The Baltic states represent not only a geographical but also a mnemonic region. The mental maps of people who live on this territory are shaped by memories of Soviet socialism. Baltic Socialism Remembered captures the workings of the memory of diverse groups of people who inhabit the region: teachers, officials, young people, women, believers. It comes as no surprise that their memories do not overlap, but often contradict to other groups and to official narratives. Baltic Socialism Remembered is a rare attempt to engage with the mnemonic worlds of social groups and individuals rather than with memory politics and monumental history. The contributors try to chart unpredictable ways in which public and national memory affect individual memory, and vice versa. Understanding complexity and diversity of memory workings in such compact region as the Baltic states will enable a more nuanced policy-making. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Baltic Studies.
Revisiting the process of political community building in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, this book analyzes the roles that international actors have played in these processes and assesses the unintended consequences of this involvement. The study differs from other works on ethnic minorities and nationalism in the former Soviet Union by exploring the use of minority rights discourse and the salience of historical memory. Case studies examine the transformation of nationalism in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - all former Soviet republics - which have experienced Soviet nationalities policy first-hand. Primarily intended for an academic audience and practitioners interested in promoting tolerance in multi-ethnic societies, the book's historical narrative will also appeal to readers with a general interest in the former Soviet Union and post-Communism.
After a short period of independence, Estonia was occupied in World War II by the Red Army, then Nazi Germany, and again, for a lasting occupation, by the Soviets. No wonder that a greater part of the roughly one million Estonians had harshly eventful lives. This anthology contains 25 selected life stories collected from Estonians who lived through the tribulations of the 20th century, and describe the travails of ordinary people under numerous regimes. The autobiographical accounts provide authentic perspectives on events of this period, where time is placed in the context of life-spans, and subjects grounded in personal experience. Most of the life stories reveal sufferings under foreign (Russian) oppression. The product of a large-scale national project to record history by collecting autobiographical accounts, and a process of engaged selection for publication which followed. The variety of life-experiences recorded offers comparison across cultures, as well as an overview of the powerful neighbors as they relinquish and strengthen their hold on Estonia.
Die Beiträge des Bandes beschäftigen sich im Schwerpunkt mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg aus der Gender-Perspektive, wobei das komplexe Verhältnis zwischen Front und Heimatfront ebenso thematisiert wird wie die Erfahrungen von Gewalt, die Formen der Visualisierung und Literarisierung des Ersten Weltkrieges sowie die Auswirkungen des Krieges auf Konzepte von Soldatentum und Bürgertum. Ergänzt wird dieser Schwerpunkt durch die von William D. Erhart besorgte Edition eines Erinnerungsberichtes eines US-Bomber-Piloten des Zweiten Weltkrieges sowie einen Essay von Franz Karl Stanzel zum Zusammenhang zwischen »Nemesis« und dem Untergang von Schlachtkreuzern im Zweiten Weltkrieg.
Folklore in the Baltic History: Resistance and Resurgence is about the role of folklore, folklore archives, and folklore studies in the contemporary history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—together called the Baltic countries. They were occupied by Russia, by Germany, and lastly by the USSR at the end of the Second World War. They regained freedom in 1991. The period under the rule of the USSR brought several changes to their societies and cultures. Individuals and institutions dealing with folklore—archives, university departments, and folklorists—came under special control, attack, and surveillance. Some of the pioneer folklorists escaped to other countries, but many others witness...
Survival as Victory is the first anthropological study of daily life in the Soviet forced labor camps as experienced by Ukrainian women prisoners. Oksana Kis pulls from the written and oral histories of over 150 survivors to bring to life the gendered strategies of survival, accommodation, and resistance to the dehumanizing effects of the Gulag.
In 1948, a small ship carrying Estonian refugees arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax. In this absorbing work, anthropologist Lynda Mannik analyzes the refugee experience through the photographic record of those who made that harrowing voyage. Drawing on a collection of photographs taken during the voyage and at Pier 21, Mannik asks surviving passengers to describe their journey, their reception in Canada, and to what extent the photos reflect their experiences as they remember them. The photographs in the SS Walnut collection, she argues, bear witness to the refugee experience even as the meanings attached to them have changed over time and in shifting contexts.
This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsi...
This handbook brings together recent and emerging research in the broad areas of women and gender studies focusing on pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet Russian Federation. For the Soviet period in particular, individual chapters extend the geographic coverage of the book beyond Russia itself to examine women and gender relations in the Soviet ‘East’ (Tatarstan), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). Within the boundaries of the Russian Federation, the scope moves beyond the typically studied urban centres of Moscow and St Petersburg to examine the regions (Krasnodar, Novosibirsk), rural soc...
Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook thta brings out the best scholarship in the filed of interdisciplinary women's and gender history focused on - and produced in - Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. In this region the field of women's and gender history has developed unevenly and has remained only marginally represented in the "international" canon.