The purpose of this article is to contribute to the scholarly and public debates on the often-invoked but undetermined European Union reconciliatory identity. First, it articulates an interpretative analysis of the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and civil society initiatives in post-World War II western Europe, which draws its conceptual framework from Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt's hermeneutics. Second, it discusses whether the reconciliatory practices thus detected are still relevant for countries in conflict on the path to EU membership. Former EU Commission President Jacques Delors and Polish Member of the European Parliament Bronislaw Geremek affirm that this is the case for the Western Balkans. This article explores what this might mean in terms of policies and grass-roots initiatives between Kosovo and Serbia today.
Drawing from the central notion in Russian culture of resurrection, and from Hannah Arendt's concept of political 'lost treasures', this article analyses initiatives for democratisation during the Soviet Thaw (1956-1964) and perestroika (1985-1991); and current attempts to recall the legacy of medieval Pskov and Novgorod's republican institutions. Retrieving memories of civic action matters intellectually and politically because it roots Russian democratisation in alternative national traditions, which, curiously, both Russian democratic activists and Putin supporters dismiss today. The empirical data come from interviews, ethnographic observations, and studies on Russian/Soviet politics and memory. ARE THERE 'USABLE PASTS'-SOME OF HANNAH ARENDT'S 'lost treasures'-for political reform and democratisation in Soviet and Russian history (Arendt 2006)? This article answers this question affirmatively and offers empirical evidence, which it analyses through the conceptual lens of resurrection, a central notion in Russian culture and history. Hannah Arendt's concept of 'lost treasure' provides another, more secular analytical category, which shares important commonalities with political resurrection. The first piece of empirical evidence of usable pasts is vast: it covers almost 40 years of collective and individual selftransformations from 1953 to 1991; the second comes from Russian academic research on the republican traditions of the cities of Pskov and Novgorod during the Middle Ages. In spite of its broad range, the empirical evidence has no pretence to exhaustiveness; plausibility, factuality and relevance to issues of democratisation have guided the author's choice. When this non-Russian scholar presented this argument to an audience of Russian pro-democracy activists and scholars, it understandably provoked disbelief (Guisan 2016). Indeed, selective references to the past have helped legitimise the turn of the Putin presidency to authoritarianism at home and imperialism abroad (Kalinin 2011; I would like to thank my interviewees and the many Russians who patiently answered my questions, for their very helpful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.