Remembrance, Identity Politics and Political Transitions: a Comparative Study

Abstract

The paper presents findings of the comparative study on relationships between remembrance story-telling and the transitional reconstruction of political identities. It identifies in which areas and fields of impact governments tend to use interpretations of the past to promote new leadership visions of society. Moreover, it verifies theoretical hypotheses related to the politicised remembrance and its role as a political asset during transformations, as well as it considers the theoretical framework of democracy-building (and a common prediction of its universal character). As a result, the study offers a detailed picture of the way remembrance narratives are transformed into explanations, justifications or legitimisation of new, post-authoritarian identities based on qualitative-to-quantitative analysis of the intensity of story-telling and its links with transitional identity politics. In the conclusion, the Authors present their consideration of research findings, and they discuss it with reference to the nature of transitional government’s remembrance policy as a sphere of social influence.

Transitional Justice Models and Analytic Philosophy: Towards Theory

“…Those may be further divided into the mechanisms of collective and individual clarification. The former include truth commissions, perpetual national memory institutes and memorialization initiatives, such as the enactment of monuments, the creation of museums and public apologies by the government (for more on memorialization see: Wolff-Powęska 2011; Marszałek-Kawa et al 2017a, 2017b. Among individual clarification instruments, lustration and declassification of former secret police files are most common.…”

The Remembrance Policy and Political Identities during Post-Authoritarian Transformations

“…The examination of the past enables us to explain reality as well as to observe its role in a forming of a society's political identity. It is so because of a remembrance policy and its tools, which give the government a possibility of influence the idealised vision of a country and a nation (Wawrzyński, 2017;Marszałek-Kawa & Wawrzyński, 2016). It causes controversy related to the selection of events and a possible 'cover-up' of inconvenient facts and circumstances.…”

Ukraine and the End of Post-Cold War Europe

“…In fact, the conflict seems to be impossible to resolve, as it requires from both sides either accepting own failure, or resignation form contents core for identity (Lachowski, 2017). Cross-cultural evidence shows that transitional reconstruction of political (national) identities requires the active involvement of a government in the process of dealing with past injustices (Marszałek-Kawa & Wawrzyński, 2016;Marszałek-Kawa et al, 2017). Unfortunately, for Ukraine and Russia coming to terms with the past means applying opposing strategies; and overcoming Ukrainian historical traumas requires opposing against Russian dominance, while Russians to deal with the collapse of Soviet Empire need to re-establish their position as a global superpower which can execute its dominance in the region.…”