Conference “Restoring History: Memory Politics in Central and Eastern Europe”

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Time: 3-4 May 2013 (2 days)
Main organizers:
Political Sphere Institute (Belarus)
Institute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuania)
Instytut Polski (Minsk, Belarus)
Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania)
Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Belarus (Lithuania)
Working languages of the conference: Belarusian, Russian, English, Polish.

Approximate number of participants: 40 people.

From the outside, the Soviet Union appeared to be a gigantic repressive empire, but its collapse demonstrated that behind this enormous shadow there was a diversity of nations, languages, cultures, and histories.

For the new states of Central and Eastern Europe, complex questions of geopolitical choice and socio-economic transformation immediately arose.

After overcoming the initial stage of transition, however, other questions began to surface, proving no less painful and no less difficult to resolve:
What should a nation-state look like?

How should criteria for belonging to a nation be formed?

What should cultural memory consist of?

How should relations with minorities be built?

And what should form the basis of relations with neighbors: historical grievances, traditions of shared political life, or economic benefit?

These questions do not have a single clear answer, generating numerous intellectual projects and a wealth of discussions and clashes.

Moreover, it is becoming clear that painful issues of memory and identity are increasingly being used by politicians for their own purposes, which does nothing to promote mutual understanding either within countries or between neighbors.

Belarus has found itself geographically at the center of the unfolding “memory wars”, but in essence on their intellectual periphery.

The preservation of a political regime that pursues a practical course toward the country’s self-isolation means that questions of a complex and traumatic past are almost never publicly discussed.

At the same time, in current discussions of memory politics, an important place is given to redefining and rethinking the shared past in various state formations: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union.

This is not only a matter of defending one’s own part of a common heritage, where Belarus is clearly losing, but also of developing an understanding of the past that will foster harmonious relations between nation-states.

We therefore consider it very important to return Belarus to the focus of discussions on memory politics, to introduce Belarusian scholars into the international process of understanding an intertwined past, and to build a nationally centered version of cultural memory that at the same time will not generate new conflicts and hostility.

To achieve this, it is necessary to stimulate dialogue and discussion of difficult historical questions between Belarusian scholars and researchers and intellectuals from the countries of the region.

The task of the conference is to create a platform for interaction among academic and expert communities of the region for a deeper understanding and study of the problems of memory politics in Eastern Europe.

The goals of the conference are to analyze the main strategies for implementing historical politics in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, to identify specific and common features of work with the past, and to consider the relationship between memory politics and the broader context of political and cultural transformations in post-communist countries.

The following three key themes, which seem to us the most significant for understanding the region’s shared cultural and historical heritage, will be selected for analysis and discussion at this conference:
1.

A shared past or autonomous national histories?

Memory of the GDL and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the states of Central and Eastern Europe.
2.

Kastuś Kalinoŭski and the uprising of 1863: a conflict of interpretations 150 years later.
3.

The communist past: between overcoming and restoration in post-communist countries.