Serguei GLEBOV. Our first question concerns the problem of historical narrative and the relationship between history as a formalized account of the past and memory as an alternative to such an account. How do you perceive the genre of your study: is it, from your point of view, history or memory? Do you think the alternative between history and memory can be resolved? At which point does memory become history?

Jan GROSS. Well, it seems to me that memory has to do with an account of the past that is produced by those who actually witnessed the event in question, while history is not really recounted by direct witnesses of the event. Of course, one can think of collective memory, but collective memory is not really a part of, as it were, historical documentation. Maybe it is an object of study, in the same way as one studies collective representations, myth, narrative, or whatever. So in that sense memory and history are very distinct, because there is only a very special kind of a force that can have… that can produce a statement that may be classified as a statement that delivers memory of something, whether it’s produced twenty years after the events or a day after the events. There has to be a very transparent and clear relationship between the author, as it were, and the statements. History, of course, uses such statements and produces yet another narrative on the basis of recollections and memories that have been left, and it does the best it can. There are criteria of textual analysis that should be used and comparison of different statements. Sometimes I think it created a lot of debates, for example, when the text of “Neighbors” was published. But I was speaking about very special circumstances, which are particularly tragic episodes to which very few witnesses will ever record their recollections. So, there are these memories, or recollections, which are very unique, and one has to deal with very few sources pertaining to a certain set of events. So in that sense one might say that these are very special and dramatic circumstances and memory may at the same time be history of something because nothing else is left. Memory is just the only record of facts on occasion.

SG. Correspondingly, you firmly place your own work in the realm of history rather than memory?

JG. Yes, certainly, I don’t have any recollections or memory of any stories, except for events of the student protests of 1968, of which I have slight memories.

SG. It wouldn’t be an overestimation to suggest that your work has become or is becoming the basis for a new historical narrative in the sense of formalized history (even if it emerged initially as a search for memory). This new narrative helped alternative memories of the past to be marginalized (at least on the local level in Jedwabne). How do you perceive this dilemma, especially in the light of your own appeal to reconsider the past in order to gain a more inclusive version of history?

JG. You know, I really don’t see this “new narrative”, as it were, as something that suppresses anything. It seems to me that the novelty of this narrative – well, this is one variant of the historical representation of what has happened when one looks for causes and understanding – but as far as my work is concerned this new narrative essentially makes an appeal to disclose facts, not to conceal anything. And I don’t see why it suppresses any memories. If it interferes with something, it would be a kind of a denial of facts. I don’t know if this is what you had in mind but, for example, there would be this whole stream of statements that would come literally from the Jedwabne people infuriated with this, whether it was the local priest or the historian who was sort of taken by the local committee, who would say, well, you know, this did not happen, this was just something else, it was these Germans, who came et cetera, et cetera. But this is not a memory of anything, you know, this is a contrived and constructed falsehood, as it were. So there is the new thing, the breakthrough, it seems to me, in historiography of the Second World War and the experience of the Polish society to which this book Neighbors contributes in one small segment, namely of debunking, so to speak, paradigmatic versions of Polish-Jewish relations. The meaning of this appeal is to say: listen, we have to know the facts, just state what happened, and then we’ll reproduce some kind of a relation. And I think the effect my book had, to a large extent, is of many people sort of looking out, going after documentation, and putting out more and more factual material, which is very interesting, whether it deals with local collaboration, with the extortions, with the behavior in the countryside, or with the question of denunciations. You know, there is a whole proliferation of monographs now in Poland, which would have been quite difficult to write before, it seems, because there are all these taboo subjects. Now, in a way, once the biggest taboo has been poked and deflated more kinds of things can be put on the table.

SG. Do you think that reconciliation through the past is possible in principle? For instance, your own work seems to have reconciled neither the peoples involved, nor various interpretations of the past or history and memory. Moreover, the book seems to have helped the conflict resurface, for it provoked debates and new ruptures, while on the local level the more politically correct version (e.g., the Borderland Foundation) has pushed the “Polish” version of the past and “Polish” memory to the margins. Did you foresee such an outcome? Did you forecast the social and political consequences of your book’s Polish edition? In light of the above, can you think of possible examples where a reinterpretation of the past has helped to reconcile different groups of people or different peoples?

JG. Well, I of course am not an expert, and I don’t monitor how it goes in societies in which there is a very deliberate procedure to deal with the complicated pasts through disclosure of facts rather than punishment, for a variety of reasons. And of course I have in mind this process of the Truth Commission. Obviously, this is a venue that has been chosen because presumably it produces desire for the facts, or at least this is the notion that underwrites it. I think it’s rooted quite deeply in our understanding of, I don’t know, maybe religious tradition, or morality, this act, which partly consists of clearing the air… This is not just punishment but admission of what has happened and laying out the facts. The truth is healing, and transparency of the past therefore is necessary to allow for a kind of working out and establishing the domain of compromise between groups who have competing claims to the past, to glory, to honor, or to property. So in that sense I don’t see whether it’s anywhere (well, I don’t want to make that general statement). But there is a very strong, as it were, presumption that the truth and speaking the truth is a foundation of understanding, of mutual understanding. The response to my book in Poland was something that I completely did not anticipate. I thought it would be confined only to the circle of specialists, and it came out into the open and became a public issue. I am not sure if the only effect it had was a kind of exacerbation of conflict. I would say that various gestures, public gestures that one saw, beginning with the statement by President Kwaśniewski in Jedwabne at the anniversary ceremonies, or even some gestures of the Catholic Church… this repentance Mass that the bishops were forced to carry (by the Pope, I suppose), these were all just seeds on which things will sprout. The tremendous stride toward reconciliation that I think had taken place was not in the act of people falling into each other’s arms, but in the fact that we see this openness… is most dramatic because of the murder, humiliation, plunder stories between the two groups. And these things are now openly debated and discussed. It’s sort of legitimate to have them out. It’s not viewed, except for those who are very entrenched in their denial of reality… it’s not viewed by itself as an act of meanness, so to speak, to put it out. You know, a few years ago you couldn’t have approached the subject without people looking at you as if you are trying to look for a side, so to speak. Now there are a lot of MA theses written on this subject, on some aspects of it, whether extortionists, or killings of Jews by Poles in various places. There are these two enormous volumes, it’s an enormous amount of work that was introduced by the Institute of National Memory, on circumstances surrounding the Jedwabne murder. This is a foundation. Now the plain, level zero, so to speak, of research into this subject and of historical understanding of these matters is a kind of a Mount Everest, comparing with where the point of departure would be for new students [or] people interested in the subject ten years ago.

SG. Do you believe that history as scholarship and teaching practice (academic historiography and textbook writing) can be an instrument for conflict resolution in the present?

JG. It seems to me that several of these conflicts which require resolution and which are being pursued dramatically in various places of the world are very explicitly grounded in, so to speak, competing historical narratives, whether it’s between Israelis and Palestinians, or the Muslim-Christian issue, or the dissolution of Yugoslavia, for example. This war that we have seen there – you could see that the rhetoric of that conflict was the rhetoric where there were words that belong to a different period, and symbols, some of which had existence in collective memory for several hundred years, were used as if they were common currency. So definitely historical knowledge and historical awareness is a very important part of learning that people have to go through in order to be able to recognize and see in the other, as it were, features that are more “like” than “different” from their own group and their own identity, and in order to find the common ground in the sense of norms that are binding us all and which cannot be violated.

SG. Our first issue this year explored the problem of historical memory in a multiethnic/multinational society. Do you believe there can be a memory of empire as distinct from history (that is, a version of the past sanctioned by power groups)?

JG. Well, there are some empires which are quite fondly remembered, one can think of, for example, the Habsburg Empire, which was explicitly established in order to mediate and facilitate coexistence (at some point, at least, some people thought that way) of different ethnic groups. So, there is a history of empire, but there can be memory of empire. But memory is, in a way, if I were to distinguish between memory and history, to the answer I gave you above to the difference between the two, of course, the Soviet Empire is quite different because there are still generations that had the direct experience of it, but for memory of something, there have to be actors who have been part of the events, so memory of empires that disappeared will dissipate, too. But as long as people who lived under these empires are alive, it will be there…

SG. Your work has been instrumental in setting in motion a historical debate focused on Polish-Jewish relations. Do you see any possibilities to conduct debates on “problematic” histories elsewhere in the region of Central and Eastern Europe? Which areas would you designate as needing a focused debate on the past in that region?

JG. I think that the question of nationalism and of ethnic relations is something that is extraordinarily important in all kinds of variations, I mean, we have seen this horribly devastating war of succession in Yugoslavia, which has been triggered with such ease by the instrumentalization of ethnic hatred and conflict, so I think Central Europe will very much benefit from a discussion of the past as related to various nationalist outbursts. And then, local Jewish-majority population relations all over Europe is a very important subject and this is somehow a sui generis subject, a specific subject of course because of the Holocaust and because of the universal presence of Jews throughout East-Central Europe for so many centuries. That’s very unique too, that is, a minority that is not territorially bound, as it were. It’s bound by a kind of a social space that it occupies – cities, for instance, are very important enclaves, domains of life of modern society. And again, because of the Holocaust experience, Jewish history has a very special significance in light of the relationships between the two groups, and what happened between them. There is a lot to be done here and I think that as the European Community extends its boundaries in a very natural way these things will be debated, if only because they have been discussed in one place, and already now we all become part of the same scene. So these discussions of the past and its darker pages can be replicated in many places.

SG. Related to the question above, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the mythology of historical relations between Russia (in its various incarnations) and Poland. Of course, in Russian historiography and collective memory there is a pronounced anti-Polish bias. I am sure that given the experience of Russian imperial rule in Poland and the Soviet experience, Polish historiography and public opinion is not likely to be very open to many things coming from the East. Do you see any possibilities for a discussion of the past in this particular area? Or, perhaps, given the situation in post-Soviet countries, it’s not time yet to conduct such debates?

JG. Quite frankly, it doesn’t seem to me that there is any particular bias in Poland. Well, there is of course one particular history which has a consistent anti-Russian perspective but it’s not vicious, as it were, and I have of course Norman Davies in mind and his appreciation and evaluation of Poland’s place vis-а-vis the rest of Europe. Otherwise, I don’t see any particular anti-Russian trace in historical writing. Also in politics, not to speak of history, there is a sense that each of these societies – I think that the understanding of totalitarianism has been transformed and is sophisticated and a lot of scholars in any case and I think a lot of common people understand that every society has been subject to the regime, has been a victim of it. It’s not just Russians doing it to somebody else, but Russians themselves much more have been victims of Soviet rule than anybody else. It’s a very simple and trivial example: there are lots of people from all over the former Soviet Union who have been for the last ten or fifteen years working illegally in Poland, trading, and this and that, all kinds of things that Poles used to do in Germany, for instance, and I haven’t seen any backlash in nationalist or xenophobic reaction to it. Even in that sense there is a shared understanding that these regimes have made all of the residents of that area and their lives very difficult. There is a difference between a regime and the people, and frankly I don’t see any problems in good discussions. There are some institutionalized entitled professors who from time to time would bespeak positions of the government but younger people and generally historians would not plight the trade of spokesmen, as it were, for any positions. The mainstream of writings I think is very open and kind of intelligent.

SG. Just to continue on that question, you would probably believe that this general sense of a commonality of experiences under the totalitarian regime can serve as a common ground for understanding the past?

JG. Absolutely.

SG. Do you think that the specific debate on Polish-Jewish relations, which has given more room for memory to become operational, has been only possible due to Poland’s growing integration into the European Union? Does that mean that it was only in the context of Europeanization, that is, the weakening of the grip of the national paradigm on Poland, that such a debate could become possible at all? What does that mean for Polish national history as a formalized narrative of the past privileged by the state and society and transmitted through schools, media, literature, etc?

JG. I am not sure if the European Union, as it were, in this process of Europeanization is a great factor. But definitely the collapse of communist rule and the Soviet Empire would have been, I mean, the fact that there is a kind of a moment in which for some time there is no censorship of any kind, it’s not binding and restraining debate. It also had to do with just the passage of time, so that in other words the generation that has been intimately and directly involved in it is an ever smaller minority by now. I was born after WWII and the vast majority of those who participate in these debates and who read them and were interested – they are also people who have not been directly involved in these events, did not have the experience of that horror, and may have been a really important factor here. I am not sure if expansion of the European Union mattered at all.

SG. Well, the question points to the persistence of national history and the changes that occur, apparently, in the way national histories are taught and explored once a society – Polish society in this instance – gains access to the larger community.

JG. I think that you have to wait, you know, Poland… access to the European Community for these countries that are newly admitted, it’s such a recent event. Before it translates into either pedagogical practices or the way people start thinking about their own national history, it will take time. I am sure it will affect them, but probably not as of now…