Paper short abstract:

The career of the urban myths of Dresden and St. Petersburg, that had been staged for centuries as royal seats, later as a platform for socialistic modernity and afterwards as cities of ‚decolonized postsocialist identity‘, is an impressive example of narratives and practicies of resistance.

Paper long abstract:

The crucial role of urban imaginaries for the legitimizing different vision of the past and therefore of the present and future can be seen at the biographies and the visual metamorphosis of different postsocialistic cities independently on its national belonging. The career of the urban myths of the two fascinating cities Dresden and St. Petersburg, that had been staged for centuries as royal seats, later as a platform for socialistic modernity and afterwards as cities of ‚decolonized postsocialist identity', is an impressive example of it. Symbolic resistance practices of the preservationists while struggling with the autorities for reconstruction of the "old Dresden" after the war or preservation of the "old Petersburg" in the 1980s drew upon the narratives of the cultural heritage of the cities. The myths contested urban spaces and showed oppositional identities of the citizens.

Being no longer marginalized, the myths as well as the narrative of the "European city" experienced a great revival in the 1990s. Nevertheless their symbolic power, the resistance traditions of the preservationists are still in use today, fighting against such neoliberal phenomena as ubiquitous city marketing and ‚investor's right to the city'.

Paper short abstract:

The subject of this article is the memory of the childhood spent in the last decade of the communist regime, expressed today in the texts of symbolic culture - books and comics. The texts are analysed in reference to the perspective of the sociology of childhood, sociology of things and sociology of memory

Paper long abstract:

The narration of "thirties' memory" has just already begun. Nowadays writers of this generation edit their first publications. We could expect that they remember those times a few. Nonetheless they create and publish texts telling of their childhood in the 80s, giving themselves the right to express their feelings and considering their own experience as important, meaningful and worth telling.

Here we are dealing with a particular post-war generation. "Thirties" is the conventional term covering people born in 70s and early 80s of XX century. Those generations entered adulthood after the fall of the iron curtain (1989) and therefore this group also include people approaching to forties. Their experience of life and socialization at the end of two eras and two worlds is specific.

Community memory shaped by the childhood in communist Poland as well as artifacts strongly present in the media discourse, makes that we can talk about the last generation of PRL.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how the phenomenon of nostalgia for Yugoslavia among younger generations, that do not have a lived experience of the former country, can be an agent of liberation from oppression of contemporary hegemonic discourses and practices.

Paper long abstract:

The starting point of the research was the interest in the phenomenon of nostalgia for

Yugoslavia among younger generations that do not have a lived experience of the former

country. While most authors dismiss nostalgia as 'false' and 'irrelevant', my argument is that

Yugonostalgia can be a resistance strategy since, during the 1990's, the former

Yugoslav countries underwent the 'terror of forgetting' in order for new nationalisms to arise

and most of the socialist memory was 'confiscated'. In the first part of the paper, I

provide the reader with the historical context surrounding Yugoslavia, the formation of the

pan-Yugoslav identity and its decay. Another argument I present is that the project of

Yugoslavia in itself was a nostalgic idea since it contained desires of a viable supranational

unity. Further on, I analyse the concepts surrounding nostalgia and post-memory, mostly

relying on work by Svetlana Boym and Marriane Hirsch. After reflecting on the rise of

regional artworks based on post-memory I find that their particularities lie in the narrative transition from macro to micro histories and the questioning of the East/West binary.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will focus on the role of collective memory as a resource for mobilization inside social movement. This will be discussed through the example of war-veterans protests in Croatia.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation is based on the short ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Zagreb and Vukovar in the period between April and December 2013 during the first wave of war-veterans protests in Croatia. Besides of fieldwork materials, the analysis includes media reports and public statements made by different social actors. The aim of this analysis is to detect contentious historical issues which hinder possible dialogue between ideologically conflicted actors in the contemporary Croatian society. The micro (narratives from the interviews) and macro (statements from politicians, leaders of veteran associations and other actors represented in media reports) level of the discussion about those events can be reduced to the issue of collective memory. Diverse interpretations of current and future politics are often connected with different criteria for the evaluation of the national history. The discrepancy between official politics of memory and the culture of remembrance (the distinction made by Jan Assman) was one of the causes for the social movement initiated by veterans. According to some preliminary results, the interplay between past and present in the interpretations of current political decisions and agencies has a conflict potential which can be turned into resource for mobilization on social action.

Paper short abstract:

By analyzing the bounds between space, identity and memory in contemporary cityscape of Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine I show how since 1991 the process of forgetting the communist past is reflected in urban space.

Paper long abstract:

The decade of the 1990s brought changes not only in the geopolitical map of Europe but also began the long path of transition into democracy and the market economy of the populace living in the former Soviet bloc. Moreover, it was a time of rediscovering "lost" memories and "white holes" in the history of Central and East European societies in reference to the pre-Soviet period (Gruber 2002). The terrains for most of the changes were cities, not only salient witnesses of transformation but also dynamic spaces in which memory was contested and reused. One of the most important questions, which were raised at that time, was that on the future of Soviet signs in the post-Soviet urban landscapes (Wanner 1998).

The aim of my presentation is to show bounds between space, identity and memory in the case of the city of Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine. The center of my analysis is the (un)problematic communist past. As I show, in multiplicity of contemporary projects on urban memory of Chernivtsi the communist past of the city is largely omitted. Not only it disappeared from local history books but also it is not included in any revitalization projects. I base my presentation on the methodology of socio-cultural urban transformation implied by Ukrainian scholars in their study of urban memory of Ukrainian cities. Thus, I show how once the communist ideology was reflected in the urban space of Chernivtsi and then was largely forgotten after 1991.

Paper short abstract:

The project called Skopje 2014- an idea for making the city nobler, has become a reconstruction of a past and a construction of a new national conciseness.

Paper long abstract:

In Macedonia, the shift from the former socialist system into a capitalistic one has been announced as general modernization of society which will be implemented through economic changes with a free market, political changes, urbanization, education free of ideology, industrial development, social security, shifting the system of values, as well as omnipresent ceation of possibilities for development and equal possibilities for all citizens - in a word, abolition of one-party monopoly and development of democracy in general. These changes, witness for the complete collapse of a previously praised ideology, creation and construction of a new history generally based on glorification of the national identity. This construction of memories is not only unstoppable, but over time develops faster and in the last few years it is leading toward reconstruction and complete change of the appearance of the capital city, Skopje. Thus, a whole period of its history is literally erased, that is, striving towards the cycle of the Modern architecture in the second half of the twentieth century. If we consider the fact that Skopje irretrievably lost a part of its history with the devastating earthquake in 1963, it seems that this tremendous construction intervention concentrated at the downtown core has a goal to erase another fifty years of its existence. This reconstruction of the city causes contrasting opinions in the public that is already divided on the basis of nationality and party affiliation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the processes of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in post-socialist Croatia by observing the commemorations of Peoples Liberation Struggle participants and monuments at Zagreb's city cemetery Mirogoj.

Paper long abstract:

Memory of the WWII People's Liberation Struggle in socialist Yugoslavia was organized by political elites for purpose of creating and maintaining Yugoslav identity and thus it was cleared of all ideologically unfit elements. Its authenticity was unquestioned early 1990s when the fall of communist regimes, the secession of Croatia and war for independence, introduced drastic changes in reception of Yugoslav socialist ideals and opened possibilities for alternative narrations of PLS memory to flourish. The processes of silencing, transformation and different modes of rememorialization of WWII in contemporary Croatia can be explored through the relations to material heritage of PLS monuments.

This paper is based on ethnographic research of visitors practices and commemoration ceremonies related to PLS heritage in Zagreb's city cemetery Mirogoj. The cemetery offers access to commemorative practices of both the local community and state institutions which makes it almost an ideal research site. In relation to those practices, the paper identifies what individuals, social groups, political agents and institutions are related to PLS heritage. It further shows this relation of various agents manifests itself in practices from personal visits to highly codified political rituals. Furthermore, it identifies different ways of commemoration practices in relation to the symbolic significance of the monuments observed. In conclusion, it proposes that the memory PLS in post-socialist Croatia rememorializes through constant negotiations with personal and official histories whereby its the preservation and maintenance the most prominent role belongs to those participants with direct involvement the Partisan struggle.

Paper short abstract:

The changes after 1989 in post-communist countries are often associated with democratization of memory. However, the case memory field of Polish Recovered Territories shows that certain groups still lack their representation in public discourse and their contribution to local heritage is diminished.

Paper long abstract:

Post-migrative communities still represent a certain distinction among other regions of Poland. First, it is an issue of memory praxis on individual and local level on early and today's attitudes towards German heritage,including graveyards, monuments and buildings. Furthermore, a memory narrations change with generational progress - young people see themselves often as cultural successors. Post-migrative communities are also considered to be a cultural borderline, due to the postmigrativity of local communities. It is related with labile national and ethnic attitudes, maintaining migration processes and complexed inter-group relations.

It appears that certain groups are abandoned both in public and private discourse. The Ricoeur's concept of non-memory shows that it is not a vacuum, but a set of elements from the group's past that are excluded from memory

discourse. Non-memory in post-migrative communities is - as I assume - related

to several factors, such as: policies and stereotypes changing over time,

communist propagandist narration and social distances created in the process of social integration after 1945. Moreover, non-memory is also visible on institutional level, where organizations represent only selected groups.

The transition in Poland in 1989 and fall of communist regime enabled a new field in memory studies - memory of communism in everyday experience. There is no leading pattern of constructing memory narration related to Polish post-war society being planned, located, formed and changed. Moreover, the language of war memory is irrelevant to describe post-war social reality.