Remembering Communism

随着共产主义的崩溃和民主在中东欧的到来，该地区的公共历史被重写。1989年以前，共产主义对反法西斯和阶级斗争的叙述是强制性的，现在已经被新的占主导地位的民族主义历史所取代，取而代之的是将共产主义（而不是法西斯主义）描述为20世纪最卓越的恐怖政权，以及后共产主义国家作为（被夸大的）英勇的民族抵抗外国占领的结果。这项工作将首先分析这些公共历史之间的过渡，探索新的后共产主义帐户是如何在博物馆，纪念场所，并在波罗的海国家，波兰，捷克共和国，匈牙利和罗马尼亚的政治话语。例如，它将分析匈牙利的“恐怖之家”或立陶宛的“种族灭绝受害者博物馆”等博物馆是如何围绕一组特定的社会类别-犯罪者，合作者和受害者-进行结构化的，以及共产主义时代的经验是如何根据这些限制性的分类进行重塑的。它还将研究传记--比如匈牙利共产党总理纳吉（Imre Nagy）的传记--是如何被操纵和公开使用的。纳吉的人生故事现已被重塑为一位反共的民族主义抵抗英雄。它还将考虑如何生活故事已被用来提出共产主义，而不是法西斯主义，作为定义邪恶的二十世纪;研究犹太人大屠杀受害者的痛苦是如何被边缘化以强调共产主义下的民族困境，以及对抵抗的痴迷如何导致极右翼战时人物的公开康复，现在因他们反对共产主义而“提前”而闻名。然而，主要重点将放在不同的社会群体如何改变自己的生活史，以应对这些公共叙事的转变。虽然有很多关于政治/国家记忆如何在政治转型点（例如共产主义，法西斯主义或殖民政权崩溃后）发生变化的研究，但很少有研究探讨社会群体如何调整自己的历史，以及他们所维持的身份，以应对政治变革。这部作品将首先探索转型前的历史，考察共产主义叙事如何塑造公民的生活故事。报告使用了提交人在匈牙利、捷克共和国和波兰进行的120次访谈（平均3小时）的口头证词。例如，这些材料讲述了那些希望在社会上移动的、在意识形态上雄心勃勃或避免歧视的人如何在教育、专业或政党环境中的强制性年度公开简历中将自己写进阶级或反法西斯斗争的故事中，以及个人的私人自传如何通过他们对共产主义历史的挪用或拒绝而形成。然后，它将分析共产主义崩溃后个人如何不得不重新制定他们的生活史，解决新占主导地位的民族主义故事如何迫使个人重新记住他们的共产主义过去;例如，研究前党员如何净化他们的生活故事、虚构的抵抗历史案例以及自1989年以来“受害者叙事”成为重要传记资产的方式。然而，它也考虑了一些团体如何挑战这些新的代表，例如，考虑到1945年被红军强奸的一些妇女拒绝被视为被剥夺自由的民族烈士，以及犹太团体如何边缘化他们在共产主义下的痛苦，以保持大屠杀的记忆。这将是第一部考虑共产主义如何在整个地区的政治和社会上被记住的作品，也是第一部利用口述历史来探索一系列群体如何在政治转型后重建身份的作品。

With the collapse of Communism and the arrival of democracy in central-eastern Europe, the region's public histories have been rewritten. Communist accounts of the anti-fascist and class struggles that were obligatory before 1989 have been replaced by newly dominant nationalist histories which instead present Communism (rather than Fascism) as the 20th century terror regime par excellence, and the post-Communist state as the result of (much exaggerated) heroic national resistance against foreign occupation. This work will firstly analyse the transition between these public histories, exploring the ways in which new post-Communist accounts are enshrined in museums, memorial sites, and political discourse in the Baltic states, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. It will analyse, for example, how museums such as Hungary's 'House of Terror' or Lithuania's 'Museum of Genocidal Victims' are structured around a particular set of social categories - perpetrators, collaborators and victims - and how the experience of the Communist era is remoulded in accordance with these restrictive categorisations. It will also examine how biographies - such as that of Imre Nagy, the Hungarian Communist premier whose life story has now been reshaped into that of an anti-Communist nationalist resistance hero - are manipulated and publicly deployed. It will also consider how life stories have been used to present Communism, rather than Fascism, as the defining evil of the twentieth century; examining how the suffering of Jewish Holocaust victims is marginalised to emphasise national adversity under Communism, and how the obsession with resistance has led to the public rehabilitation of far right wartime figures, now celebrated for their opposition to Communism 'in advance'.However, the main focus will be on the way in which different social groups altered their own life histories in response to these shifts in public narratives. Although there has been much research into how political/ state memory alters at points of political transition (after the collapse of Communist, Fascist or colonial regimes, for example), there has been very little work which explores how social groups adjust their own histories, and the identities they sustain, in response to political change. This work will firstly explore the pre-history of the transition, examining the ways in which citizens' life stories were shaped by Communist narratives. It uses oral testimony from 120 interviews (averaging 3 hours) conducted by the author in Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland. This material addresses, for example, how those who wanted to be socially mobile, ideologically ambitious or avoid discrimination wrote themselves into stories of the class or anti-fascist struggles in obligatory annual public CVs in educational, professional or party settings, and how individuals' private autobiographies were shaped by their appropriation or rejection of Communist histories. It will then analyse how individuals have had to reformulate their life histories following the collapse of Communism, addressing how newly dominant nationalist stories pressurised individuals to re-remember their Communist pasts; examining, for example, how ex-party members sanitised their life stories, cases of invented resistance histories and the way in which the 'victim narrative' has become an important biographical asset since 1989. However, it also considers how some groups challenged these new representations, considering, for example, the refusal of some women raped by the Red Army in 1945 to be presented as victimised national martyrs, and how Jewish groups marginalised their suffering under Communism in order to keep Holocaust memories alive. This would be the first work to consider how Communism has been remembered both politically and socially across the region, and the first to use oral history to explore how a range of groups reconstruct their identities after political transformation.