Contents PREFACE INTRODUCTION "Red Dragon and the Evil Spirits" CHAPTER 1 On the (In)convertibility of National Memory into European Legitimacy: The Bulgarian Case CHAPTER 2 Equalizing Jesus's, Jewish and Croat Suffering-Post-Socialist Politics of History in Croatia CHAPTER 3 Wars of Memory in Post-Communist Romania CHAPTER 4 Reflections on the Principles of the Critical Culture of Memory CHAPTER 5 The Struggle for Legitimacy: Constructing the National History of Slovakia After 1989 CHAPTER 6 Victims and Traditions: Narratives of Hungarian National History After the Age of Extremes CHAPTER 7 Instrumentalization of History in Bosnia and Herzegovina CHAPTER 8 Post-Socialist Historiography Between Democratization and New Exclusivist Politics of History List of contributors Bibliography Index
Oto Luthar is professor at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia
"Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits proves comparative research to be
relevant and exciting. With the overarching aim to contribute to
surmounting the ‘bloc division of Europe, which still persists in
viewing the East as a monolith’, this edited volume sets about to
a) point out divergences in the memory cultures in postsocialist
countries, and b) assess the potential to form common European
memory practices. It thus analyses the changing mnemonic landscapes
on two levels: within Eastern Europe and in Europe as a whole. With
nationalist historical revisionism as a common thread running
through the bulk of the case studies, the message is in fact one of
a shared postcommunist memory culture. The authors identify the
road to EU membership as the catalyst of how the attempt to
establish a European memory canon failed. In combination, the case
studies provide the reader with a nuanced view on ‘all-
Europeanness’ when it comes to memory. Even in the absence of a
shared European historical narrative, common mnemonic practices
have developed over time. In sum, trying to overcome the ‘bloc
division of Europe’ this edited volume contains highly relevant
insights into the divergences in the memory cultures in
postsocialist countries as well as into common European memory
practices."
*Südosteuropa*
"The volume surveys eight national contexts from East Central and
Southeastern Europe in an attempt to reconstruct the defining
features of the contemporary politics of the past. As the authors
suggest, falling short of the hopes and expectations of many in the
aforementioned two regions, instead of a process of democratizing
the narratives about the past, there is a return to or rather no
change in the dominance of nation-centered narratives. Of Dragons
and Evil Spirits as a whole has the virtue of addressing some
time-specific aspects of contemporary politics of history. Scholars
and policy makers may learn important lessons from the cases
presented."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26571615
*Hungarian Historical Review*
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