[2/3] A battle for the past. How Politics Changes History (Category History)

Continuing the story of this cool book, started in first-postI will tell you about the second and third parts of the book.

Part two. The materialized past This part begins with a story about the seizure of the Capitol by Trump supporters, and the focus in the story is on the Confederate flag, which has become a symbol of the confrontation between the two Americas: Democrats and Republicans. In fact, this flag has many interpretations and different groups use it as a symbol of collective identity and as an occasion for rituals of memory. Next, the author goes on to consider how in America they fight monuments to the heroes of the Confederation and specifically General Edward Lee, and then this goes on to monuments to the founding fathers of the United States, since they too were supporters of “white supremacy.” (part of the U.S. population). It looks like the current political forces are trying to replay the past and seize the agenda – it looks like a struggle between demcorats and liberals for historical identity. But the United States is not unique here - further the author tells how during the Soviet Union and later the government demolished monuments, for example, monuments to Stalin in Soviet times, as well as the dismantling of the monument to Dzerzhinsky on the Lubyanka in Moscow. 1991. And then Lenin fell, when the former socialist countries demolished monuments from the past. Interestingly, demolishing the monument is easy, but what to put in its place becomes a big question, since people in power do not always have a consensus on this matter:)

Another option is the renaming of cities, for example, Stalingrad was once renamed Volgograd. But even in this renaming there is a feature - in the days of memorable dates and days of military glory, this city should be additionally called the "Hero City of Stalingrad". This connects the great past of the city and its present. The same thing happens with the renaming of streets in cities, when we fix the past we want to remember with the help of names. Moreover, this fixation can be done through the calendar - the standard way through memorable dates, and more interesting by changing the calendar, as was tried with the decades during the Great French Revolution or with the five-day and five groups of workers in the late 1920s in the USSR.

Part three. The past as a field of conflict and a reason to try Often the past acts as a field for conflict and the author recalls the Second World War and its results for Europe. In general, the history of post-war Europe was written by the victorious countries, and the Nazis were unquestionably evil, and the victors were good. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eastern European countries decided to equate Nazism with Stalinism and rebuild from the Eastern hegemon. (USSR). In this picture of the world, Russia was not a European neighbor, but a way to build its own identity through the presence of a “constitutive Other” with which comparison and repulsion help define itself. As a result, in Eastern Europe, countries decided to call themselves Central Europe and rewrite the history of World War II, with which Russia already disagrees. As a result, the Great Patriotic War was canonized and recorded at the state level. Interestingly, many European countries have memorial laws to maintain a particular version of history. And while in Western Europe these laws are about denying the Holocaust and recognizing the responsibility of states and society for this crime, in Eastern Europe these memorial laws are about denying the crimes of “Nazism and communism”, which was interpreted as taking responsibility outside the countries of the region. This has helped to turn a blind eye to the responsibility of their own nationalist movements. The Russian Memorial Law has its own peculiarities.

And finally, the author talks about museums and their exhibits, which are now claimed by the countries from which the artifacts originated. This raises the question of who owns the history and visible artifacts of bygone eras.

I will discuss the end of the book in the next post.

#Management #Leadership #History #Strategy