On September 1, 1939, German troops entered Polish territory, thus launching what is now chronicled as World War II. Seventy years later, it is timely to reflect on the memory of a war that turned large parts of Eastern Europe into rubble and cost millions of lives. Pamiat’ o voine, edited by Mikhail Gabowitsch, provides abundant material for understanding how this war shaped public consciousness, politics, and cultural artifacts in countries affected first by German invasion and occupation, later by the struggle for liberation, and eventually by the geopolitical reorganization of Europe during the early stages of the cold war.
Focusing on both German and Russian societies, the book assembles 43 articles by 46 authors, resulting in 784 pages that are heavy in weight, both physically and morally. The book is the second edition of a collaborative issue of the Russian journal Neprikosnovennyi zapas and the German monthly Osteuropa, which was published in May 2005, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II. This ambitious project presents the texts of historians, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and analysts of literary works, films, music, and visual culture. A number of translators should be commended for their high quality work in making mainly works by German scholars accessible to a Russian-speaking audience.
Introduced by translations of canonical texts, such as Maurice Halbwachs on collective memory, Harald Welzer on social memory, and Theodor W. Adorno on “working through the past,” nine sections touch upon a broad spectrum of what in recent years has begun to shape the field of “memory studies.” Contributions range from seven general surveys of collective memory in Germany and Russia, to country profiles outlining debates in Latvia, Italy, and former Yugoslavia, to detailed analyses of government bodies in determining practices of commemoration, monuments, and cultural productions.
The editors argue that public memory of the war has not previously been a central issue of Soviet/Russian scholarship and critical inquiry (P. 8). However, several ongoing research projects by Russian scholars aim to fill this gap, as demonstrated in the informative and rich analyses included in the book. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the first edition of the book sold out within six weeks of publication, and one would hope that the second edition has a broad enough circulation to satisfy the demand for scholarly investigation into the vital issue of the politics of memory. Research projects begun in the 1990s, such as the analysis of opinion polls regarding the significance of World War II for Russian society (Lev Gudkov), or analyses of memorials to the Great Patriotic War (Natalia Konradova and Anna Ryleva) and the war in Afghanistan (Natalia Danilova) show the potential of studying memory to help understand more general trends in the political-social transformation of post-Soviet societies.
As a whole, the contributions by Russian scholars are original and full of new insights, while most of the texts on Germany put forth accounts of the rather familiar history of denial, oblivion, and late conversion to a more conscious discussion and examination of individual guilt, collective responsibility, and the events in general. However, “Germany” seems to identify mainly West Germany; only one article (by Monica Flacke and Ulrike Schmiegelt) is specifically devoted to East German practices of commemoration. Given the strong political ties between the USSR and the GDR, a focused analysis of the intersections of cultural, political, and personal forms of remembering is necessary.^[1]
While most articles on the German discourse included in the book outline the ups and downs of German society’s confrontation with the past, the reader is left with the impression that eventually Germany and its citizens “learned their lessons” and have now internalized a considerate and critical attitude toward the Nazi regime as a regime with deep roots in German culture and history. “Working through the past” seems to have come to an end with Germany’s reunification. For instance, none of the articles address the at times heated confrontation with the past in reunified Germany – for example, when the writer Martin Walser was compelled to demand an end to constant (Jewish) reminders of the Nazi past in 1998. Or, consider the instrumentalization of memory. Maria Ferretti’s contribution, otherwise a thoughtful review of the Stalinization of Soviet war memory, suggests that the use of the past for present purposes occurs only in the Soviet/Russian case, where the political elite referred to the victorious military campaigns to legitimize state and party politics during and after the war. Similarly, one could criticize the German government’s campaign to gain support for military intervention in Serbia in 1999. Attempting to prevent “another Auschwitz,” German troops engaged in military action outside of Germany for the first time since the end of World War II.
Ferretti’s piece highlights universal values promoted in (West) European mnemonic communities that Russia should embrace to gain international recognition (P. 146). If possible at all, such a process requires great caution, as Eva Klarita Onken points out. Her work on the modification of Latvian war memory since the early 1990s posts important warning signs against the adaptation of patterns of memory, especially particular artifacts in different societies. The ever-present railway car, exemplifying and commemorating the deportation of Jews from all over Europe to the Nazi extermination centers in the East, fails to fulfill that same function in Latvia. Here, the railway car instead, or in addition, evokes memories of the Soviet authorities’ campaigns to deport Latvian citizens to the Far East after the USSR had annexed the Baltic states and aimed to quell potential resistance against Soviet rule (P. 446).
Onken’s discussion further indicates the inextricable links between the memory of World War II and other experiences of war and violence in the Soviet/Russian context. Virtually all of the contributions focusing on this area address questions of censorship or state repression during and after the war and thus highlight the necessity to consider the larger context of memory. Natalia Danilova’s examination of the memory of the war in Afghanistan shows the central role of heroism and military success that either enable (in the case of World War II) or circumvent recognition (as in this case), and reveals the mechanisms of political and cultural memory that pervade the case of World War II. One wishes similar excursions had been included for the German context.
On a general level, a focus on seemingly peripheral or marginal subjects proves most insightful, whereby margins are defined in both the spatial and the social senses: Irina Shcherbakova and Irina Pruss each use students’ submissions to the organization Memorial’s contest to highlight topics, experiences, and places that are frequently omitted from portrayals of the war or Soviet history in general. Citing students living in peripheral areas, the authors introduce some of the knowledge that in many articles has been identified as suppressed, absent, or irretrievable. One might consider these two, as well as Zhanna Kormina and Sergei Shtyrkov’s article, as located at the margins of the book – they are the only articles that address and work with the memories of people who experienced the past, which is the focus of all memory discussed in the book. All of the other articles focus on political discourse or institutions’ role in constructing cultural representations of the past.
One reason for this imbalance is perhaps that “memory” means so much, and yet is more often than not simply equated with historiography – a notion that Pierre Nora discusses in his canonical text on the lieux de mémoire, published here in translation. As a complement to the texts by Halbwachs and Welzer, a closer look at how social remembering functions, both in Russia and Germany, and in other countries, would have added a valuable layer. I would like to have seen more contributions that discuss the social aspect of memory and thus focus on the more traditional notion of memory as a function of the human mind to remember, store, and recall information in the present, that is, embedded in a social context. In this regard, the texts by Shcherbakova, Pruss, and Kormina and Shtyrkov, based on oral history and other material retrieved through social communication, are highly valuable. In these contributions, social memory emerges as contradictory, fragile, and contested; and the authors demonstrate how the politics of memory and official portrayals of the past often fail to determine individuals’ or groups’ reconstruction of past events. Analysis such as that of Gabriele Rosenthal and others would provide a reasonable and enlightening counterpart for Kormina and Shtyrkov’s exploration.^[2] This scholarship, exploring the generational transmission of memories of the Nazi past in German families, offers a critical complement to the rather general surveys of Germany’s coming to terms with the past in showing that the social memory of Nazism is not nearly as politically correct as the official or public discourse might suggest.
Similarly, Lev Gudkov’s discussion of post-Soviet Russian public opinion about the country’s involvement in war could be juxtaposed to Alphons Silbermann and Manfred Stoffer’s study on how much Germans actually know about the Nazi regime and what they think of the need to remember this part of German history.^[3] In all of these analyses the transmission of memory across generational divides emerges as a central theme for current and further scholarship on the dynamics of memory. The problematic of this transmission becomes especially pronounced in a discussion among several Russian media experts, which is documented near the end of the book. While this discussion of the role of the Russian mass media in establishing a revised portrayal of the war is interesting, it leaves the reader somewhat unsatisfied because it lacks a critical commentary or analysis.
If the editors consider a sequel to this publication, questions and topics that are clearly missing or that beg to be addressed should be given attention. The portrayal and assessment of partisan activity in formerly German-occupied countries emerges as an important topic in several contributions. The authors highlight how debates across Europe, that is, in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Italy address questions of resistance, collaboration, and national liberation. In the newly independent countries, these questions are especially, but not exclusively, closely linked to the emergence or reconstruction of national identities and make for problematic revisionist portrayals of the past that fuel nationalist attitudes and politics. Attentive scholarship and analysis can and should intervene in these discussions.
Gudkov identifies older women as the core of the remaining group of survivors and eyewitnesses of the war in Russia (P. 87). Similarly, Alessandro Portelli bases his inquiry mainly on memoirs of Italian women. Thus, reflecting on the role of gender in the construction of memory is appropriate. Olga Nikonova and Franka Maubach introduce the war experiences of women in their analyses. Yet one needs to keep in mind that gender means more than differences between women and men. The sole focus on women in the military, which both authors pursue, also risks repeating the patterns of political and cultural memory, especially in the Soviet context, that prioritize the military’s endeavors and achievements – a celebration that is criticized throughout the book. An agenda for studying gender, war, and memory must include the study of everyday life, such as strategies of survival, new forms of personal networks and relationships, and the redefinition of social labor, and how they are remembered.
Further analysis of war memory in Germany and Russia surely needs to examine how historical experiences and portrayals of the past shape the relationship between the two German states and the USSR, and between the residents of these countries. The politics of compensation and reparation provides a good opportunity to study these relationships. It is striking that none of the many articles on German postwar memory probe the failure of German society to address the physical and material damages inflicted on East European populations. Gabriele Freitag’s account of compensation paid to former Nazi forced laborers between 2000 and 2005 is an exception here. Her reminder that East European victims were excluded from any form of material redress due to political considerations typical for the cold war (P. 315) points to the inextricable links between history, politics, memory, and the material and social conditions of existence. It also emphasizes continuities of neglect and violence that, as Richard Schneider points out in his essay, are an indicator of an unfinished process of “working through the past” in Germany.
Adorno’s warning remains valid – that “working through the past” cannot succeed as long as the objective social preconditions that enabled fascism are in existence. His remarks on the role and persistence of anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism require us to reconsider the exclusions prevalent in scholarship on the history and memory of the Nazi regime and World War II. Insufficient attention and recognition have been devoted to the hundreds of thousands of Roma, gay and lesbian, mentally ill and physically disabled people who were murdered, and the task of filling these gaps is the responsibility of all societies involved in the construction of German, Russian, and European memory.
Overall, Pamiat’ o voine provides a good basis for those doing further research. Providing access to a wealth of well-established “memory studies” outside of Russia is an honorable endeavor, yet the contributions here clearly indicate that a literal translation and adaptation of this scholarship is impossible. As Halbwachs knew, all memory depends on the concrete social context. This is true of scholarly analysis as well, and I sincerely hope that readers and scholars in Russia approach the given analyses with caution and sufficient distance to identify gaps and problems. However, the book offers texts not previously available in Russian translation, a broad selection of recent research, and an innovative look at memory studies in the Russian context that can lay the groundwork for further studies on political, social, and cultural remembering in the post-Soviet space.