Memory Studies in Eastern Europe:Key Issues and Future Perspectives

Abstract:The paper addresses selected issues of the recent growth in Eastern European memory studies: It identifies the unconscious Western imperialism within the recently institutionalized interdisciplinary field of memory studies; Then, it offers arguments for historical sociology in memory studies, and proceeds to critically analyze the recent growth of transnational historical inquiries into European memory and the place within these studies of the research on Eastern Europe. Finally, it raises the theoretical issue of a region as one possible framework of memory and a terrain for legitimate sociological inquiry fuelled by historical data. As such, it serves as an introduction to the current PSR volume on theoretical traditions and propositions for Eastern European memory studies.Keywords: memory studies, Eastern Europe, regional studies, historical sociology.IntroductionMuch has been written and said about memory in recent decades. Developing vigorously, studies on memory are keeping apace also in Eastern Europe. The abundance of research, not its deficiency, has indeed become a conceptual problem. In that light, the purpose of this issue of the Polish Sociological Review is twofold: The first purpose is to reflect on the methodology and the state of memory research in Eastern Europe with its different genealogies and trajectories from Western counterparts. The other objective is to search for usable research traditions applicable to studying regional memories, so as to do justice both to developments in present historical research, while also exploring sociological explanations.In this introductory article, the authors sketch the necessary background for the volume by identifying the need for sociology and unconscious Western imperialism within the recently institutionalized interdisciplinary field of memory studies; providing arguments for historical sociology in memory studies; critically analyzing the recent growth of transnational inquiries into European memory and the place within these studies of the research on Eastern Europe; and finally, raising the theoretical issue of a region as one possible framework of memory and a terrain for legitimate sociological inquiry fuelled by historical data.Several disclaimers are necessary before developing these aims in full. Above all, the East European region requires specification from the perspective of history and memory. Mnemonical regions can be defined in various ways (see the concept of multiple geographies by Michael G. Miiller's 2010). Here we use the political category of Eastern Europe to refer to the half of the continent that in the twentieth century experienced double totalitarianism, wars, and decades of communism (or real socialism) and Soviet dependency. Without the intention of bringing up the Cold War as the only defining historical experience, the Iron Curtain dividing European societies in the second half of the twentieth century still represents a valid reference point when discussing European memories in the ensuing two and half decades. (This is not to say that the region's dealing with its pasts is homogenous; to the contrary, the different trajectories of histories and memories prompt conceptualizing it as consisting of several meso-regions-see Troebst 2010a, 2010b.) Among the East European historical experience with which post-Cold-War memories have struggled, these stand out: the direct adjacency with mass scale violence in the preceding century; the encounter of Nazism and Communism from victim and perpetrator perspectives; the region's ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious heterogeneity; the experience of semi-peripheriality; and finally, the ruptured institutional continuity and dramatic and mass scale changes to geopolitical and social structures. We will look closer at some of the mnemonic consequences of these processes in the literature review on the following pages.However, even when pointing out certain historical specificities of Eastern Europe, the authors neither intend to claim the region's exceptionality nor to tailor an approach suitable only for this region. …