This panel explores the shifting and fragmented landscape of (non)memory in CEE, a region where history continues to function as both a moral reference point and a political weapon. The metaphor of “crooked mirrors” captures the complex ways in which societies of the region confront, distort, or negotiate their pasts. By combining perspectives from cultural studies, history, and memory research, the panel examines how remembrance operates under post imperial conditions, ideological conflict, and the ongoing struggle for symbolic sovereignty. The discussion begins with Historical Memory in Street Art… which focuses on urban visual culture as a site of micro memory. Stickers and graffiti are treated not merely as aesthetic interventions but as political commentaries that contest hegemonic interpretations of history in post Soviet cities. Through comparative analysis of visual materials from Riga and Kyiv, the paper reveals how artists and activists transform public space into an archive of counter memories, transient yet powerful in shaping civic consciousness and resisting Soviet nostalgia. From public walls to state institutions, Wars of (Non)Memory… analyzes how the Russian state weaponizes history to sustain its geopolitical and epistemic dominance. The paper traces how cultural production, education, and official commemoration are mobilized to promote a monolithic narrative of the past that legitimizes aggression and empire. It argues that Russian memory politics operates through erasure, substitution, and mythmaking: forms of “ideological violence” that overwrite plural histories within Russia and its neighboring states. The next two papers turn to the Belarusian context, where nation building and collective identity emerge through complex negotiations between remembering and forgetting. The Forgotten History: What Belarusians Overlook to Become a Nation examines how the erasure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s plural heritage and the marginalization of non Russian identities shape Belarus’s fragile sense of modern nationhood. Forgetting, here, becomes not only a symptom of political dependence but also a strategy for coping with historical trauma. Building on this perspective, The “Sacred Truths” in Memory – Between Revivalist and Banal Nationalism... explores how state led politics of memory, particularly through education, form the basis of national mythmaking. Drawing on interviews with Belarusian Generation Z living in exile, the study compares their recollections with textbook discourses from 2009–2022. It shows how the political crisis of 2020 destabilized the state’s “sacred” historical truths, revealing the tension between revivalist and banal nationalism in shaping post Soviet identities.
The final contribution, Witnesses to Researchers: (Non)Memory of the Great Famine..., shifts the focus to Ukrainian intellectual exile. It explores how memories of collectivization and the Holodomor were transformed into early scholarly inquiry within Western Sovietology. The paper highlights the role of witness testimony in shaping knowledge about Stalinism, trauma, and Ukrainian modernity during the Cold War. Together, papers illuminate the diverse “mirrors” through which the region perceives its past: mirrors bent by ideology, trauma, and nostalgia. The panel argues that decolonizing memory in CEE requires not only critical reflection on inherited imperial narratives but also creative re-imaginings of the past as shared, plural, and open to dialog.
prof. Joanna Getka, University of Warsaw Poland
"Wars of (Non)Memory: The Russian Historical Policy as a Tool of Ideological Violence"
The paper examines the phenomenon of Russian “memory wars” as an integral component of the Kremlin’s ideological apparatus, focusing on the Historical and Cultural Standard (Istoriko-kul’turnyj standart) as a case study of institutionalized control over historical consciousness and explores how history has become both a battlefield and a weapon in the pursuit of political legitimacy and geopolitical dominance. The Standard, introduced in 2013/2014 as part of the Concept for Teaching the Course “History of Russia”, turns education into an instrument of symbolic violence. By promoting a continuous narrative of the “millennial Russian state” and erasing alternative memories—such as the distinct legacy of Kyivan Rus—it legitimizes imperial claims toward Ukraine and other neighboring countries. The document institutionalizes ideological control through state bodies such as the Russian Historical Society and the Military Historical Society, both headed by figures from the security apparatus, thus merging the spheres of knowledge, power, and patriotism. In this framework, memory becomes not a domain of plural interpretation but a tool of emotional mobilization and obedience. Historical narratives are reframed as acts of defense against “Western falsifications,” while aggression is represented as “historical restoration.” The result is a closed epistemic system in which education, propaganda, and religion co-produce an authoritarian memory regime. The presentation argues that the Russian memory policy functions as a form of ideological violence—one that enforces political loyalty through cultural and educational control. By analyzing both the rhetoric and institutional mechanisms of this policy, the study exposes how historical discourse in Russia operates as a technology of power and a key vector of contemporary hybrid warfare.
Oleksandr Avramchuk Witnesses to Researchers. (Non)Memory of the Great Famine in Ukrainian Exile Sovietology, 1945–1991 The beginnings of the Holodomor Studies can be traced back to the late 1940s and early 1950s. Contrary to some contemporary critical assessments, the pioneers in studying this topic were not radical nationalists, but rather members of the leftist and liberal circles of the Ukrainian exile. These included activists of the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party, most of whom were émigrés who had lived in Soviet Ukraine prior to 1939. Their personal memories of Stalin’s repression of national “deviations,” the policy of collectivization, and, most notably, the terror-famine of 1932–33, significantly shaped the conceptual understanding of Soviet modernization, the memorialization of the Holodomor, and, at times, its mythologization. The study of the Holodomor - and, more broadly, Stalinism in Ukraine - emerged as a central theme in Ukrainian Sovietological research during the first postwar decades. This paper aims to explore the role of the personal experiences of Cold War refugees from the Soviet Union in shaping the early studies of the Holodomor during the 1950s and 1960s. What mechanisms linked the memory of Stalinist crimes to academic research? Did discussions about the Holodomor within the diaspora lean more toward mythologization or scholarly analysis? Finally, what can the case of Ukrainian émigrés reveal about Western Sovietology and the role of witnesses in its development?
20260731T140020260731T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires9.10. Crooked Mirrors of History: (Non)Memory in Central and Eastern Europe SV305MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
Memory, democratization, decolonization, and the Romani women
Individual paperMemory Politics and Policies00:00 Midnight - 00:00 Midnight (America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires) 2026/07/31 03:00:00 UTC - 2026/07/31 03:00:00 UTC
After the communist regimes collapsed in 1989, Central and Eastern Europe underwent not only a lengthy process of democratization but also one of decolonization. While the impact on memory frames of transition from dictatorship to democracy has been discussed in some detail, I argue that in addition the decolonization framework helps us to understand not only what has been done to overcome the injustices of the past, but also why some Western norms and narratives were rejected by a region whose memory frames are significantly different. Based on a careful review of relevant scholarship, this presentation makes the argument that Western memory actors faulted Eastern reckoning programs for focusing on the communist past while neglecting the abuses perpetrated during World War II when some Central and Eastern European countries collaborated with the Nazi regime. In response, the Central and Eastern European decolonization project emphasized the importance and urgency of reckoning with communist crimes but overlooked the crimes they inflicted on the Roma. The Roma, which live in all European countries but are represented by none of those governments, have been at the losing end of democratization, decolonization, and memory politics. Their memories of the 500-year-old slavery in the Romanian principalities, the Holocaust of the Roma, the non-consensual sterilizations enforced up until the 2000s have gained only sporadic attention from state actors involved in memorialization and memory politics in Europe. Special attention is devoted to the ways in which the reckoning needs of Romani women have been overlooked.
Presenters Lavinia Stan Professor And Chair, St. Francis Xavier University
Mnemonic Security in Central and Eastern Europe in the Era of Rising Populism
Individual paperMemory Politics and Policies00:00 Midnight - 00:00 Midnight (America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires) 2026/07/31 03:00:00 UTC - 2026/07/31 03:00:00 UTC
This presentation explores how mnemonic security practices shape historical narratives and national identity in the states of Central and Eastern Europe. A comparative analysis of mnemonic security in Poland and the broader region reveals that collective memory is treated as a strategic resource within a geopolitical framework. In the context of international tensions and internal political divisions, state institutions and societal actors deploy selective historical narratives to reinforce national cohesion and legitimize political authority. The memory of twentieth-century traumas—such as communism, world wars, and genocides—serves not only commemorative functions but also operates as a mechanism for controlling public discourse. Mnemonic security is not merely about safeguarding against forgetting; it involves the active management of what is remembered and how it is remembered. This leads to a phenomenon of “memory competition,” in which different social groups contend for dominance over the interpretation of the past. Such dynamics influence international relations, historical education, and cultural policy. The study demonstrates that mnemonic security in the region is closely linked to processes of democratization, disinformation, and the redefinition of national identity in the twenty-first century. The presentation focuses on mnemonic security as a critical component of national identity formation in Central and Eastern European states, particularly in the face of populism and Russia’s aggressive historical policy. Populist governments in the region often intensify these tensions by instrumentalizing memory to construct identities rooted in antagonism, national myths, and selective historical narratives. This results in the erosion of memory pluralism, the marginalization of alternative perspectives, and increased societal vulnerability to disinformation. Ultimately, the presentation argues that mnemonic security is not solely a regional concern but a global one—pertaining to the resilience of democratic societies against narrative forms of aggression, disinformation, and ideological polarization. The conclusions drawn are interdisciplinary and comparative in nature.
Presenters Jacek Nowak Professor, Jagiellonian University In Krakow
Lavinia Stan
Jacek Nowak