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From Soviet Legacy to National Memory: World War II in Central and Eastern Europe

Fri, November 21, 1:30 to 3:15pm EST (1:30 to 3:15pm EST), -

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War has prompted the rethinking and re-evaluation of World War II. The nationalisation of war memory in Central and Eastern Europe occurred by contrasting the existing imperial and post-imperial or post-colonial concepts. Rasa Čepaitienė’s paper discusses the changing attitudes toward WWII in post-Soviet Lithuania, focusing on the transition from rejecting the Soviet memory model to integrating it into the Western, cosmopolitan model.
In Ukraine after 1991, the Soviet WWII narrative persisted. Simultaneously, the Ukrainian diaspora promoted a nationalist narrative that portrayed the USSR and Germany as occupiers, emphasising the role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in defending the interests of Ukrainians. Hanna Bazhenovs’s paper examines the transformation of the image of WWII in Ukrainian official narratives, with a special focus on the development of a new conceptual framework for war remembrance, its study, and teaching. Following the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s political elites developed the legislation aimed at severing ties with the Soviet legacy and moving toward the Western model of remembering WWII.
In Ukraine, the government’s attitude toward the Holocaust evolved from simply recognising it as a crime committed on Ukrainian soil to understanding it as part of the shared history and memory of the Jewish, Ukrainian, and other peoples. Yurii Latysh’s presentation addresses the debate surrounding the memorialisation of the Holocaust and the tragedy of Babyn Yar, specifically whether the Babyn Yar should be memorialised as one of the largest Holocaust sites (Holocaust memory model) or primarily as a Ukrainian site of memory (National memory model).

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