The Legacy of Totalitarianism Today

Last week I spent a few days in Prague, where I was attending an International Conference ‘The Legacy of Totalitarianism Today’ (Dědictví Totality Dnes). The conference was organised by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience in association with several of their partner organisations, and hosted by the Senate of the Czech Parliament. In addition to two full days of conference presentations and discussion, two linked film showings were offered at European House (Evropský dům): Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn (2007) and a special screening of The Soviet Story (2008) followed by a great Q and A session with Director Edvīns Šnore. You can read more about The Soviet Story (and order copies!) at the official website here.

 

It’s always nice to have a reason to visit beautiful Prague! Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

A particular highlight for me was the invitation to attend the presentation of the first Prize of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience at Kampa Museum. The award, designed by Polish artist Mikołaj Ostaszewski, will be awarded annually to a person or persons who are fighting anywhere in the world today against totalitarianism, for the ideals of democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms and the rule of law. This year, Crimean Tatar Leader Mustafa Dzemilev was presented with the award, to enthusiastic applause from all of those in the audience. You can read more about the award here.

 

Presentation of the first Platform of European Memory and Conscience Award to Mr. Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatar People. The award was presented by Göran Lindblad, President of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

 

Mustafa Dzhemilev’s acceptance speech. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

 

The aim of the conference was to assess the legacy of totalitarianism twenty five years after the collapse of communism, by combining discussion about past lessons with analysis of contemporary developments in the region. Discussion thus covered a broad range of topics, with themed panels including the ongoing fight to achieve justice for victims of totalitarian crimes; the evolving role of memory institutions; democracy the rule of law and economic transparency; media engagement; the role of the European Union and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. However, I have briefly highlighted some of the key themes and ideas that emerged from the conference below.

 

The Long Shadow of Totalitarianism

“We have been living in an atmosphere of freedom for the last 25 years, but what is freedom? Freedom is just a space that needs to be filled with positive developments and actions. Today, it is important to defend this space of freedom and prevent the past from repeating, by filling this space with positive content, for us and for generations to come” (Conference Statement by Daniel Herman, Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic)

 

Twenty-five years after the collapse of communism across the region, the legacy of decades of totalitarian rule continues to cast a shadow. The Berlin Wall may have fallen in 1989, but there is compelling evidence to suggest that for many, the maur im kopf (‘wall in the mind’) still persists today. Despite the widespread joy expressed when communism ended, millions of people had been deeply affected, and often damaged, by decades of totalitarian rule. This created the mass ‘moral illness’ described by Vaclav Havel. It is generally accepted that mentality lags behind institutional change during times of transition and during the conference presentations, many questions were raised about how effectively the totalitarian legacy has been overcome, and to what extent the ‘ ‘post-communist mentality’ has endured, and continues to influence both individual attitudes and institutional reforms.

 

 

Conference Poster: Legacy of Totalitarianism Today. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

Assessing the Post-Totalitarian Transition

In the past twenty-five years attempts by former communist states to establish and consolidate democracy, the rule of law and respect for individual rights; establish social trust; develop political accountability and fight corruption have produced a variety of experiences. From the mid-1990s the prospect of EU membership was a key motivating factor driving reform in many post-communist countries, but some were able to use this ‘window of opportunity’ more effectively than others. Often however, there has been little political will to reform beyond the requirements necessary for EU accession, and little evidence of genuine internalisation of many of the associated democratic values (including individual rights). Today, while official data provided by organisations such as Freedom House tend to rate Central and East European countries relatively highly with regards to levels of freedom and democracy, popular opinion polls suggest that democracy in the region is not working so well, although there is evidence to suggest that citizens are now more willing to hold governments accountable by ‘punishing them’ via the ballot box. Law still has a tendency to ‘bend’ before political power, many of the big anti-corruption cases are politically motivated and there are cases where the security services have been misused for political purposes.

Today, there are suggestions that we are seeing a post-EU accession ‘crisis of democracy’, even amongst countries that have previously been viewed as success stories in terms of their post-communist transition (such as the worrying drift towards authoritarianism in Hungary), but given recent political developments in Western Europe (as highlighted by the 2014 European Parliament elections), I wonder to what extent we need to see this ‘democratic crisis’ in the context of a wider European political shift rather than as the direct result of an incomplete post-communist transition and the legacy of recent totalitarian rule.

 

Communism and Nazism Compared

“Nazism and communism are, in effect, interchangeable” (Conference statement by Valters Nollendorf, Occupation Museum Association of Latvia)

 

 

In 2009 the European Parliament designated 23 August as an annual day of European Remembrance for Victims of Nazism and Stalinism (‘Black Ribbon Day’) to act as ‘a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes’. But should we emphasise the similarities or the differences between these ideologies and the regimes they fostered? Should victims of communism be considered together with or separately from victims of Nazism? To what extent can the persecution and repression associated with the early communist period be considered as a continuation of Nazi repression? Nollendorf’s conference statement was controversial; the comparison between Nazism and communism has been addressed by numerous scholars and still remains a highly disputed subject. However, this comparison was evident in the screening of The Soviet Story, which highlights the ideological similarities and practical parallels that existed between the Nazi and Stalinist regimes. It is worth noting that many victims of totalitarianism suffered under both regimes and following WWII the Soviets often used former Nazi concentration camps as ‘special camps’ for prisoners of war, where many people were killed (although, there was no organised industrial genocide on the scale of the Nazi Holocaust). After the communist parties had consolidated their power in central and eastern Europe however, they also established their own system of prison camps and labour camps across the communist bloc – an extension of the Soviet Gulag – many of which have been described as ‘extermination regimes’. At last week’s conference, journalist Karl-Peter Schwarz highlighted the 2009 discovery of 4000 mummified bodies, victims of communist terror buried in a mass grave mine shaft at Huda Jama in Slovenia, which had created a ‘Pompeii of communist horrors’, and questioned why this story had barely been covered by wider European media (There is some information about this here).

 

How comparable are Nazism and Communism?

Although communism was declared ‘dead’ after 1989/1991, it was arguably never fully buried. Communism has never been wholly discredited in the same way that Nazism was after WWII, and there has been no international attempt at ‘truth seeking’ along the lines of the Nuremberg Trials. In fact, in many instances attempts to bring legal action against communist-era officials has been met with reluctance and resistance. This lack of accountability allowed many communist parties across central and eastern Europe to rebrand themselves – some of them retained power into the 1990s, while others returned to political office just a few years after the collapse, and former communist parties in many countries have polled highly in recent elections (such as the success enjoyed by KSČM in the Czech legislative elections of October 2013, where they polled around 15% of the vote, making them the third largest parliamentary party). Today, communism and Nazism still tend to be presented differently, leading to allegations that communism is often ‘whitewashed’ for political reasons. In particular, academics and analysts often appear more willing to make excuses for the crimes of communism, presenting the ideology as well intentioned but distorted, due to a combination of the conditions under which it was enforced and the influence of human error.

 

Preserving and Promoting Voices of Victims of Totalitarian Persecution

“The communist experiment resulted in an ocean of injustice. I am just one drop in that ocean” (Aristina Pop Săileanu, former political prisoner, Romania)

 

Conference participants stressed the importance of recording the experiences of those who lived under communist regimes ‘to help give a voice to truth’ in the future. Several speakers also expressed the importance of education, knowledge dissemination and raising awareness of the crimes of communism. A number of organisations represented at the conference – including the Institute for Totalitarian Regimes , the Confederation of Political Prisoners (Czech Republic) and the International Center for Studies into Communism (Romania) described their involvement in oral history projects designed to collect testimonies from victims of the past, the ‘eyewitnesses of totalitarianism’, to ensure the preservation of their experiences. A variety of other positive initiatives were also outlined, including the organisation of school visits to encourage engagement between former political prisoners and victims of totalitarian repression, and the new ‘post-totalitarian’ generation. This is great news – I’ve seen first-hand how effective first-hand testimony from survivors can be in engaging younger students. But this process of ‘memory transfer’ can still be problematic.

What is the best way to pass on information, understanding, knowledge and experience about the past? As the generation gap widens, it is not only students but also their teachers who have no lived experience or memory of communism, and today, not all of the younger generation are interested in learning about the totalitarian past. Even twenty-five years on, it is often difficult for those who experienced communist repression to convey the truth of their experiences and discuss the ‘stripping of human dignity’ they endured, and some victims still refuse to speak about their experiences at all. Finally, how do we ensure equal representation of these voices, without privileging the more educated, more literate, more vocal members of this group? For example, Čeněk Růžička, President of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust, argued that the experiences of the Roma, a group persecuted by both the Nazi and Communist authorities, remain marginalised compared with many other victims of totalitarianism. It is estimated up to 500,000 Roma were murdered in the Holocaust, but their fate is not given the same recognition as Jews and other groups who were victims of Nazi genocide, and Roma survivors have often been denied equal access to compensation. The issue of restitution for property stolen from the Roma has still not been addressed, and neither has any compensation yet been offered to victims of the forced sterilisation that routinely occurred in communist Czechoslovakia. In part, this marginalisation can be explained by the higher levels of illiteracy and the insular nature of many Roma communities, but it is also a product of continued prejudice and racism, as the Roma continue to be viewed as ‘second class citizens’ across much of Europe today.

Panel discussion about the legacy of witnesses of totalitarian persecution. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

Remembrance and Restitution

Stéphane Courtois, Professor of History and editor of the Black Book of Communism gave a thought-provoking presentation, arguing that in post-totalitarian societies ‘memory goes hand in hand with forgetting’. Courtois talked about the slow process of ‘cleansing’ national memories, following decades when communist regimes used a combination of propaganda, censorship and brute force to supress or stigmatise any alternative interpretations or memories that deviated from or contradicted their ‘official line’. The fall of communism allowed many people to speak openly about ‘how things really were’ for the first time and today a more honest assessment of the past is finally possible.

 

Stéphane Courtois, Professor of History and editor of the Black Book of Communism talking about the post-communist ‘memory cleansing process’. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

The contemporary consensus is that memory institutions and sites of remembrance remain important, as a memorial honouring the victims, a source of support for the survivors, sites of authenticity, museums of history, and centres for research and education about the totalitarian past. However, to date, the majority of memorials to communist repression across central and eastern Europe have been organised and built without any real state assistance. However, some questions are being asked about memory institutions: how long will they be needed? What role should they play? How should they be financed? Similar debates surround the future of many sites of repression and suffering, including prisons, labour camps and execution sites. How many sites should be retained as permanent memorials? How should these decisions be made? Who should finance the preservation of such sites? What functions should they serve? What about the future function of those sites which are not preserved? Some sites are already well established (such as Auschwitz-Birkeanau and Terezin) and others are currently under development (such as the ‘red tower of death’, a four-story building at the Jachymov uranium mine (the location of an infamously harsh communist-era labour camp) which was donated to the Czech Confederation of Political Prisoners after the production facilities closed. There are currently plans to develop the tower as a monument to the maltreatment and suffering experienced by the prisoners and a memorial to slavery across the eastern bloc). However, many other sites remain disputed, such as the Lety concentration camp, south of Prague, where an estimated 1,327 Roma were interned and hundreds died 1943-44. Today Lety remains the site of a functioning pig farm, despite a concerted campaign to close down or relocate the business out of respect for the victims.

Questions were also raised regarding restitution. How successfully have the crimes of the communist past been dealt with? Given the advancing age and declining health of both perpetrators and victims of some of the worst crimes of these totalitarian regimes, is there still a moral responsibility to achieve justice by bring them to trial? 2002 saw the launch of  ‘Operation Last Chance’ in an attempt to bring remaining Nazi war criminals to justice. Should a similar international campaign be launched targeting perpetrators of communist-era crimes, especially since more information has become available since the opening up of more state archives? The 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism stated that crimes committed under communism could often be classified as crimes against humanity, but relatively few trials and convictions have been achieved in the former Soviet bloc to date, and approaches to restitution have varied widely. In Poland, the creation of the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for Crimes Against the Polish Nation to cover the period 1939-1990, a body with special powers for investigation and prosecution has been an important development – between 2011-2014 there have been 311 indictments filed, over 470 perpetrators formally accused and 170 convicted and sentenced. Following the 2006 establishment of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes there have also been recent attempts to bring communist-era prison authorities to justice in Romania (where 600,000 people were imprisoned under the communist regime), such as the recent cases of Alexandru Visinescu and Ioan Ficior. In Hungary too, the conviction of former Interior Minister Béla Biszku on charges of war crimes in connection with the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising earlier this year was viewed as a landmark case, and clips from the controversial documentary Crime without Punishment (2010) highlighting Biszku’s apparent lack of remorse were also shown at the conference by director Tamás Novák.

Tamás Novák tells us about ‘hunting communists’ and the interviews he conducted with former Hungarian Minister of Interior and convicted war criminal Béla Biszku. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

Russia and Ukraine

“The current situation in Ukraine has created a moral and material threat for Europe” (Conference statement by Marion Smith, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation)

“23 years of independent Ukraine has shown that ignoring the totalitarian past deforms the present” (Conference statement by Volodymyr Viatrovych, Director, National Memory Institute, Ukraine)

“Ukraine symbolises the crisis of memory faced by all post-communist countries today” (Conference statement by Stéphan Courtois, Professor of History)

 

Naturally, recent developments in Russia and the current crisis in Ukraine also provided a key theme running throughout the conference, from Sofi Oksanen’s opening keynote speech to the closing panel discussion entitled ‘Ukraine and beyond’. Oksanen’s speech (which can be read in full here) argued that Putin’s rise to power did not just signify a new leader for the country, but a new system of power, a form of ‘neo-totalitarianism’ which is evidenced by the Kremlin’s use of ‘information warfare’, attack of pressfreedom and restriction of civil rights, while Russian nationalism is acting as a new basis for increased hegemony in their former empire.

 

Writer Sofi Oksanen delivering her keynote speech, focused on Putin’s Russia and the recent Russian annexaction of Crimea. Photo ©‎ Kelly Hignett.

Oksanen also questioned how easily ‘the West’ appear to have accepted and ‘forgotten’ the Russian invasion of Crimea. Mustafa Dzhemilev also gave an impassioned condemnation of the Russian annexation of Ukraine and the enforcement of Russian citizenship on Crimean people, stating that even as the Crimean Tatars still struggle to overcome the legacy of Stalin’s 1944 forced deportations, they are facing a new threat from Putin’s regime. Dzhemilev also expressed concerns about the lack of external protection for Ukrainian territorial integrity in the face of the renewed Russian threat, despite the assurances provided by the 1994 Budapest memorandum, asking what message this sends to other states threatened by Russia’s resurgence? Finally, Andriy Kohut, a Ukrainian civic activist and coordinator of the Civic Sector of Euromaidan, traced the evolution of the current crisis in Ukraine from peaceful protest through confrontation to full scale revolution, before discussing some of the key challenges faced by the new Ukrainian President Poroshenko: to finally leave post-totalitarianism behind, harness the renewed civic activity sparked by the Euromaidan movement in a constructive direction, and deal with ongoing instability in the east, much of which continues to be fuelled by Russian influence.

 

Mustafa Dzemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars, speaking about the current situation in Crimea. Dzhemilev is viewed as a ‘provocateur’ by the Russian authorities, and is currently banned from entering Crimea.

Finally, the ongoing situation in Ukraine also provided a focal point for a closing statement entitled ‘Time for Europe to Wake Up!’ which was released by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience following the conference, and this can be read here.

 

 

BASEES ICCEES 2013

Last weekend (6th-7th April) I attended the 2013 BASEES/ICCEES European Congress held at Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge. Unfortunately, teaching responsibilities and other constraints meant I missed the opening afternoon/evening on Friday 5th and the final panels taking place on the morning of Monday 8th. This was my third year as a participant at BASEES (you can see my report on last year’s conference HERE) and it was also my second year live tweeting from my twitter account @kellyhignett using the official conference hashtags: #euroiccees #basees. The annual BASEES conference brings together researchers working on all manner of topics related to Slavonic and East European studies, past and present, and has quickly become one of the highlights of my conference calender! The broad theme of this year’s congress was ‘Europe: Crisis and Renewal’, which encompassed a range of panels covering topics as diverse as cultural conflict in late Imperial Russia, re-thinking Cold War Eastern Europe, contemporary Balkan politics, the economics of Central Asia and the politics of healthcare in the post-Soviet space. As in previous years, the biggest problem I faced was trying to decide which of the intriguingly-titled panels to attend!

 

The first panel I attended on Saturday 6th focused on ‘New Perspectives in Cold War Studies’. In addition to great papers about East-West interaction during the Cold War by Sari Autio-Sarasmo and ‘Interactive Socialism’ by Katalin Miklossy, I particularly enjoyed Melanie Ilic’s paper, discussing her experience of interviewing and recording the life stories of several high profile Soviet women. Melanie’s new book Life Stories of Soviet Women will be published this August, featuring an impressive range of interviewees include one of Khrushchev’s daughters! She is also currently editing a collection relating to the ethics of oral history and memory studies, which I am contributing a chapter to, in relation to my own work on petty criminality in late-socialist East Central Europe.

 

A second panel, ‘New Research on Cold War Eastern Europe’, also contained an interesting mix of papers.Andru Chiorean discussed the ways in which new archival evidence is prompting a re-evaluation of role played by the Romanian censorial agency in regulating the output and content of publications after 1948, highlighting the need for researchers to incorporate the perspectives of both censor and victim. Patrick Hyder Patterson delivered a fascinating paper about socialist brand packaging in the East bloc, followed by an interesting discussion about the ‘afterlives’ of these brands, many of which are remembered fondly today (think Ostalgie and the film Good Bye, Lenin!). I’ve read Patterson’s book Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia and can recommend it. Finally, Kristian Nielsen argued the need to reconsider the economic aspects of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik.

 

I particularly enjoyed both keynote speeches on the Saturday evening, given by Sabrina Ramet and Luke Harding. First up was Sabrina Ramet, whose talk ‘Religious Organizations and the Legacy of Communism in East Central Europe’  was insightful and engaging. Ramet began by linking calls for ‘re-evangelisation’ in post-communist east Europe with the popular desire for a return to more conservative social norms including discouraging divorce, contraception, abortion and homosexuality. She also discussed how the post-communist religious resurgence gave rise to a form of ‘gigantomania’ in the former East bloc, with the construction of elaborate places of worship, religious icons and statues (including massive figures of Mother Theresa and Jesus – with three different cities (one in Slovakia, two in Poland) all competing to build the world’s largest statue of Jesus and the world’s tallest cross erected in Macedonia!). The bulk of Ramet’s paper however, focused on the evidence of widespread collaboration between various religious leaders and the secret services that have emerged with the opening of communist-era archives. The available evidence shows numerous instances of Orthodox priests in Romania passing information gleaned from the confessional to the Securitate, while Ramet suggests that 10-25,000 Catholic clergy acted as informants in Poland, while also acknowledging that there were some cases of ‘fake files’, planted to implicate innocent priests. After a quick break for refreshments during the wine reception (always a conference favourite!) and dinner, I returned to listen to Guardian Reporter and former Russian Correspondent Luke Harding discussing the experiences that formed the basis of his book Mafia State, in conversation with Glasgow University’s Stephen White. Harding too, was a very engaging speaker, likening his experiences in Russia to a bad spy thriller, but ‘without the Aston Martin or the beautiful Bond girls’, and describing Putin’s Russia as a ‘clever, adaptive, post-modern autocracy’ where corruption has flourished. The informal conversational style worked well, and was followed by a range of lively, probing questions from the audience.

 

I was up early on the bright and sunny Sunday morning to present my own paper, entitled ‘Doing Drugs Behind the Iron Curtain‘, alongside a fascinating paper about naratives of Kosovan wartime exile and Albanian nationalism, given by Erida Prifti and Nicholas Crowe from the University of Vlore in Albania.  My own paper was taken from a longer article I’m currently working on, which will be completed and submitted for publication this summer. This article explores levels of drug abuse and the development of domestic drug markets in East Central Europe between 1960s-1980s. In a nutshell though, the key points of my BASEES paper were as follows:

 

• Although the regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland all noted rising levels of drug abuse from the 1960s this was largely denied and downplayed through a campaign of misinformation, censorship and propaganda

• However, this official policy of ‘silence and inaction’ not only had negative consequences with regards to the lack of information, education, legislation and specialist healthcare available for drug addicts, but in many ways also faciitated the development of a thriving domestic market for the production and supply of illegal drugs.

• The two main sources of supply were narcotics acquired from state healthcare (either via forged prescriptions or stolen by staff in hospitals, pharmacies and Doctors surgeries)  and domestic production of a range of opium and amphetamine based drugs, including Pervitin (Czechoslovakia) and Kompot (Poland), which were sold on the black market.

• By the 1980s more organised, professional criminal networks began to operate in the drugs trade, which, according to law enforcement reports, was increasingly dominated by ‘professional manufacturers and pushers’.  I’ve also discovered evidence of international links with the wider global drugs trade, including gangs operating in the Middle East, South America, India, West Africa and Turkey, who were engaged in a range of drug smuggling operations through the East Bloc and across the Iron Curtain, although the domestic market in East Central Europe remained dominated by domestically produced and soirced drugs until the collapse of communism in 1989.

 

Before travelling home late on Sunday afternoon, I was also able to attend panels on ‘History, Narratives and Politics’, comparing contemporary Poland and Russia, and ‘Opposition, Terror and Imprisonment in Interwar Russia’, where I particularly enjoyed Ian Lauchlan’s discussion about the rise and fall of notorious Soviet Security chief Felix Dzerzhinsky and Mark Vincent’s insights into the fascinating subject of  Urki (criminal) courts in the Soviet Gulag camps, as protrayed in memoirs written by former  camp inmates.

 

Finally, I’d like to send a special shout out to the team from online magazine Crossing the Baltic, who I was lucky enough to meet at the conference. Check out their great website HERE, and you can also follow them on Twitter @CrossingBaltic !

 

 

Gdansk

 

From 7 – 10 November I visited Gdansk, at the kind invitation of the European Solidarity Centre. I was participating in a conference, ‘Europe with a View to the Future‘, which was organised by the ESC in collaboration with the journals New Eastern Europe and Nowa Europa Wschodnia (both of which I’ve previously contributed articles to), the Jan Nowak-Jezioranski College of Eastern Europe and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Unfortunately I arrived too late to attend the welcome reception on 7 November, which included the launch of Professor Jeffrey Goldfarb’s new book ‘Reinventing Political Culture‘, however I was up bright and early the following morning to join my fellow conference delegates! The second day of the conference opened with a short talk and a film showing about the European Solidarity Centre, which was founded in 2007 with a focus on preserving the heritage of the Solidarity movement and promoting its relevance for future generations. Rather fittingly, this session took place in the historic BHP Hall at the Gdansk shipyards – in the same room where, following the strike action of August 1980, the Gdansk Agreements (which led to the establishment of the independent trade union Solidarity) were signed, and since August 2010 the site of an exhibition about the Solidarity movement. From 2014 however, the ESC will be based at a new site nearby and so conference delegates were treated to a tour of the new building, which is still very much under construction – this was the first conference I’ve attended where I’ve been asked to don a hard hat and tour a construction site!

 

Opening conference presentation by the European Solidarity Centre, in the BHP Hall at Gdansk Shipyards. Photograph taken by me.

‘Europe with a View to the Future’ conference delegates touring the new European Solidarity Centre site – still under construction, due to open in June 2014! Photograph taken by Grzegorz Mehring, posted here with permission from the European Solidarity Centre.

 

The new Centre sounds like a fantastic project – designed to function as a cultural and educational hub (the conference organisers spoke of their desire for the new ESC to act as a ‘Gdansk agora’), the new building will house an interactive museum about the history of the Solidarity movement and the collapse of communism in Poland and across Eastern Europe, a multimedia archive and library and will organise and promote cultural and educational initiatives including exhibitions, concerts,  conferences, workshops and seminars. I’d certainly like to visit again when it opens in 2014! You can read more about it HERE.

 

We then moved to the Old Town Hall for the main conference discussion which consisted of two panels, the first on the theme of ‘Solidarity in a Contemporary Europe’, the second debating ‘Europe as Seen from the East’. The panels were delivered in a ’round table’ setting, which was a nice touch, providing another nod to the legacy of Solidarity and the famous round table talks that led to the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989.  I participated in the first session, ‘Solidarity in a Contemporary Europe’, which related to the likely future of the European Union, in light of the current Eurozone crisis, the ongoing ‘bailout’ negotiations and mounting questions about European integration. I spoke about the historical evolution of the European project and also discussed British attitudes towards the EU –  a hot topic coming at a time when all three of the major UK political parties are publicly  seeking to ‘reposition‘ their policies regarding Britain’s place in the EU, Foreign Secretary William Hague recently claimed that the British publics’ disillusionment with the EU is ‘the deepest its ever been’ and Prime Minister David Cameron has emphasised the need for  reform, renegotiation and the increasing likelihood of some kind of referendum on  Britain’s future in Europe. Other panel participants also provided interesting insights from German, Polish and US perspectives on European integration and our panel was followed by a lively question and answer session!

 

Roundtable panel discussion: ‘Solidarity in a Contemporary Europe’. Photograph taken by Grzegorz Mehring, posted here with permission from the European Solidarity Centre.

My contribution – discussing British attitudes towards the European Union. Photograph taken by Grzegorz Mehring, posted here with permission from the European Solidarity Centre.

 

The afternoon panel, ‘Europe as Viewed from the East’ was equally interesting, with panelists discussing contemporary Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian perceptions of ‘Europe’ and debating the extent to which EU membership is still viewed as an attractive prospects by its eastern neighbours today. We ended the day with a well earned drinks reception hosted by a local art gallery, perusing a photographic exhibition documenting last years Moscow protests and listening to Tatiana Kosinova discussing her new book ‘Polish Myth’, which explores links between communist-era dissident movements in Poland and the USSR, drawing on information taken from interviews conducted with several former dissidents, before enjoying dinner in a waterfront restaurant in the old town. This was an interesting and stimulating conference, and I’d like to take the opportunity here to thank the European Solidarity Centre for their hospitality.

 

After the conference, I had a day free to see some of Gdansk before flying home. I began by heading back to the shipyard, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, where I visited the Monument of the Fallen Shipyard Workers. Also built as part of the 1980 Gdansk Agreement, to serve as a memorial to the 42 shipyard workers killed during the protests that took place in December 1970, this was the first monument to the victims of oppression to be erected in a communist country. I passed through the famous shipyard Gate no. 2 (still displaying a replica copy of the ’21 demands’ hung on the gate by the striking workers in 1980 – the original boards are UNESCO protected – combined with the addition of a Solidarity-themed souvenir kiosk!) and revisted the BHP Hall to take a more leisurely look at the Solidarity exhibition there. I also visited the Roads to Freedom Exhibition (dedicated to the history of the Solidarity movement and the collapse of communism), housed in an underground bunker! After lunch I visited the Amber museum which is housed in a beautiful fourteenth century gothic building on Ul. Dluga, wandered through the centre of the Old Town (past Lech Walesa’s office in Zielona Brama), strolled along the waterfront and enjoyed browsing the amber stalls set up on the charming Ul. Mariacka as dusk fell, stopping only to refuel with some pierogi ruskie and a beer!

 

Gdansk old town is utterly charming, a peaceful and picturesque space which belies the cities’ turbulent recent history. Virtually destroyed during WWII, the medieval buildings were painstakingly restored and rebuilt during the 1950s and 1960s (with similar post-war urban restoration projects undertaken in other Polish cities, including the capital Warsaw). Even today, just a few steps out of Zielona Brama, the remaining ruins of the old Granaries visible just across the river on Spichlerze illustrate the level of destruction wrought here less than seventy years ago.

 

A few photos follow, for those who are interested.

 

Monument of the Fallen Shipyard Workers, with the entrance to the Gdansk shipyard (Gate no 2) in the background.

Gate no 2 – Gdansk Shipyard, home of the Solidarity movement.

Outside the Amber Museum – medieval manacles hanging as a warning to potential thieves?!

The centre of the old town.

Lech Walesa’s office, in Zielona Brama.

Browsing amber stalls on Mariacka.

Waterfront

Granary Ruins.

Pierogi Ruskie!

Gdansk old town by night.

 

 

 

A Visit to Vilnius

 

Earlier this month I visited Vilnius, to participate in a conference, ‘The Soviet Past in the Post-Soviet Present’, organised by Melanie Ilic (University of Gloucestershire) and Dalia Leinarte (Vilnius University). The conference centred around exploring the implications of using oral testimony, memory studies and life writing when researching aspects of everyday life in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The two day conference comprised a fantastic mixture of interesting and thought-provoking presentations on a diverse range of research projects relating to broader themes including identity construction, gender, nostalgia and trauma studies. I delivered a paper entitled ‘Conversations about Crime in Communist East Central Europe’, focusing on my own use of oral testimony during my research into crime in late-socialist era East Central Europe, and the resulting question and answer session was pretty lively, giving me lots of food for thought about popular perceptions of morality and criminality under communism! In addition to a series of 20 minute papers delivered in the ‘traditional’ conference style, we were also treated to a reading from the transcript of an interview-style conversation between Barbara Alpern Engel and Anastasia Posadskaya, two scholars who conducted several interviews for their seminal study A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History (Boulder, Colorado, 1998). This was followed by a question and answer session with Barbara Engel herself, who joined us live via Skype.

 

‘The Soviet Past in the Post-Soviet Present’ – conferencing in Vilnius.

Melanie’s toast at the conference dinner.

 

I stayed on for an extra day to explore Vilnius after the conference ended –  as I only had 24 hours there I confined myself to exploring the Old Town and surrounding areas, but still found plenty to see and do and I’d certainly recommend visiting if you have the chance! Vilnius itself was lovely, thoroughly charming and quietly cultivating a relaxed ‘shabby chic’ feel as the post-communist renovation of the city’s stunning architecture gradually continues (Vilnius Old Town gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 2004), combined with more modern developments. The contrast between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Vilnius was particularly apparent when looking out across the city from the top of Gediminas Castle:

 

‘Old Vilnius’ – the Old Town gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 1994.

‘New Vilnius’ – view across Šnipiškės, the principal business district.

 

This contrast was also visible when wandering around the city, as the more ‘modern’ feel of the broad streets and designer fronted stores along Gedimo prospect juxtaposed with the more traditional narrow, winding, cobbled roads leading past the smaller souvenir shops, cafes and restaurants snaking down Pilles Street and throughout the University quarter.

 

Souvenir shopping on Pilles

 

Of course, I visited several of the main tourist attractions including the Cathedral, the remains of Gediminas Castle, St Annes Church (along with several other beautiful churches) and the Dawn Gate. I also enjoyed sampling some traditional Lithuanian cuisine!

 

Cepelini (Zeppelins!) – traditional Lithuanian dumplings with pork mince, sour cream and crackling.

 

Vilnius also had a very ‘arty’ feel to it, something that was particularly apparent as I wandered through Uzupis, a bohemian city district that declared itself an independent republic in 1997! However, I also enjoyed stumbling upon the street art dotted around the old town, and was intrigued to spot several trees that appeared to be ‘dressed’ in brightly knitted jumpers. I know we’re heading into autumn and that the Baltic winter is notoriously cold, but do the trees really need cosy knitwear?! A quick enquiry on Twitter when I returned informed me that the tree jumpers were an example of ‘yarn bombing’ or ‘guerilla knitting’ a form of urban art that I hadn’t seen before!

 

Tree Jumpers – yarn bombing in Vilnius!

Teapots on Bernardinu

Open Air Gallery – street art on display on Literatu.

 

The quiet, relaxed feel to Vilnius belies its turbulent recent history, however. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the visit for me was exploring some of the lingering traces of Soviet occupation. This was most evident in the Soviet-era kitsch on sale in the many flea markets and souvenir stalls set out (similar to that I’ve seen elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc) and the tall Soviet statues which remain proudly standing at the four corners of Žaliasis tiltas (Green Bridge), over  the river Neris.

 

Goodbye Lenin! A portrait of Lenin for sale at a small flea market in Vilnius

“Welcome to Vilnius, Comrade!” – Soviet-era statues still stand at the four corners of Žaliasis tiltas (Green bridge)

 

However, there is an argument to be made that the brutal nature of Soviet occupation means that the psychological legacy rather than the physical traces of communism lingers longest for many Lithuanians. With that in mind, one particularly striking aspect of my time in Vilnius was my visit to the Museum of Genocide Victims, an extensive exhibition housed in the former KGB headquarters on Gedimo prospect, which charts the oppression and suffering of the Lithuanian people under successive foreign occupations between 1939-1991. The exhibition takes you through periods of successive Soviet (1940-1941), German (1941-1944) and Soviet again (1944-1991) occupations, although the Nazi occupation receives a lot less attention that the years of Soviet domination –  this is a sobering tale of suffering and oppression, charting partisan warfare, collaboration, opposition, dissent, imprisonment and mass deportation.

 

Letters written by Lithuanian citizens who were interred in prison camps during the Stalinist era. The letter on the left has been censored by the camp authorities.

Old KGB-branded stationary, on display in the Museum of Genocide.

“How to be a spy” – illustrations from an old KGB manual.

“How to be a spy” – illustrations from an old KGB manual.

 

The final part of the exhibition guides visitors down into the basement, formerly used as a prison by the KGB, where visitors can tour the cells, prison exercise yards and even visit the former ‘execution room’. By now, I think of myself as something of a veteran visitor to such sites – I regularly read and teach about the ‘darker aspects’ of totalitarian regimes, and have visited Auschwitz, the Stasi Headquarters in Berlin and Budapest’s ‘Museum of Terror’ in recent years. However, the tour of the former prison still affected me on a personal level (more so, I found, than similar visits in Berlin and Budapest, but less than my visit to Auschwitz , which was emotionally draining, an experience I previously blogged about HERE). There was something about the heavy feeling that settled in my stomach while my footsteps echoed down the dark, dank, narrow corridors (the fact that I was entirely alone in an otherwise deserted basement prison probably contributed to this!). I felt increasingly unnerved and unsettled as I peered through the cell doors to view the ‘punishment cells’ set up to demonstrate how prisoners would be forced to stand on narrow platforms surrounded by  icy water for hours on end (inevitably to plunge into the freezing water when they lost their balance or lost consciousness); illustrating how prisoners condemned to isolation were incarcerated alone in cramped, dark boxes for days (and sometimes weeks) on end and how padded walls were installed in some cells to block out the sound of cries of pain from prisoners subjected to physical torture. All of this was accompanied with information about various individuals who had spent time (and sometimes even died) whilst in the prison.  I’d certainly recommend visiting the museum if you are in Vilnius, but I must confess that I was glad to escape out into the fresh air and the sunshine when my tour ended.

 

A sense of dark foreboding pervades the former KGB prison in the Museum of Genocide, Vilnius.

Sacks of torn KGB files – when Lithuania declared independence from Soviet rule and communism crumbled, the KGB attempted to hide their worst ‘crimes’ by destroying incriminating evidence.

In Memoriam – names inscribed into the walls of the Museum of Genocide.

A monument to victims of Genocide, outside the former KGB headquarters in Vilnius.

 

 

 

BASEES 2012.

 

I spent last weekend in Cambridge, attending the annual BASEES (British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies) conference. I always enjoy BASEES;  the range of topics covered by the various panels are excellent and it’s a great way to discover more about the research projects people are currently engaged in. In fact, the only problem I have with BASEES tends to be deciding which of the dozen panels to attend in any given time stream!

 

This year, I decided to try live conference tweeting for the first time, using the hashtag #basees2012. I was initially a little wary about this – I wanted to get the balance right, and tried to ensure that tweeting about what was being said didn’t detract from my ability to listen, concentrate and engage with the discussions and debates as they were going on around me. So, I tended to wait until the end of each lecture or panel of presentations before briefly updating my twitter feed, restricting my commentary to summarising a few key points from each session. I actually found this a really useful exercise – distilling my notes down to a handful of 140 character tweets forced me to really think about the essence of what had been said and I found this amplified, rather than distracted from, my concentration throughout the sessions. Using Twitter also allowed for wider engagement with the academic community, further enhancing the face to face opportunities for networking that conferences such as BASEES provide – several of my Twitter followers who were not able to attend #BASEES2012  engaged with my own commentary. So, live conference tweeting is definitely something I’d do again!

 

This year, I presented a paper early on Sunday morning, as part of a themed panel about ‘The Soviet Past in the Post-Soviet Present’, related to the growing use of oral history and memory studies as a tool for studying everyday life in the communist block. My paper (entitled ‘We had to become criminals to survive under communism!’ – Conversations about Crime in Communist Eastern Europe’ – click here to read the abstract, and you can read more about my work on communist-era criminality here), drew on my experiences of speaking to people about their attitudes towards and involvement in the communist-era second economy, and was presented alongside Melanie Ilic’s paper about conducting interviews into the everyday lives of Soviet women and Dalia Leinarte’s paper on researching the life stories of Lithuanian women under Soviet rule. Our panel was well attended, and our presentations sparked a lively debate/discussion relating to the theory and practice of oral history and memory studies more generally and, in relation to my own paper, a discussion about what exactly constituted crime and criminality in communist Eastern Europe. Some of the questions posed gave me considerable food for thought, and I came away with some useful ideas and avenues to explore as I continue to develop my work in this area.

 

 

Our panel on 'The Soviet Past in the Post-Soviet Present' at #BASEES2012. From left to right: Melanie Ilic, Myself and Daria Leinarte.

 

 

Other highlights of this year’s conference included Ivan Krastev’s opening keynote speech on Saturday lunchtime, ‘Eastern Europe and Europe’s Crisis’, which compared and contrasted the post-socialist transition in 1990s Eastern Europe with the current economic crisis. Krastev began by questioning whether the ‘successful’ transition model applied to post-communist Poland or the Czech Republic could work today in Spain, Italy, Portugal or Greece. He went on to argue that there were some important differences we should consider – the East European transition, while a painful experience for many, was helped by the almost universal consensus that communism had failed, and the ‘end of history’ mentality that dominated the end of the Cold War, meaning that people accepted the need for radical change. In cost-benefit terms then, while people acknowledged the painful nature of post-communist economic reform, their confidence in a positive outcome remained high.  Today though, no similar consensus exists among European populations – in fact we are witnessing a high level of resistance to efforts to implement harsh austerity measures and reform the capitalist welfare state.

 

Krastev highlighted the fact that the political map of Europe was also very different, and suggested that today, while voters could change their governments they could not change their policies. He also emphasized the impact of declining levels of trust in EU institutions during the last two decades, and the shift in popular perspectives of the EU from ally (by the East Europeans, who had believed in what Krastev termed ‘the myth of the transformative power of the EU’  in their quest to ’re-join Europe’ after 1989) to enemy. Krastev concluded by sounding a warning note about the current European crisis, pointing out that the Eurozone remains in a very fragile state, and drawing parallels with the shift from viewing the collapse of the Soviet Union as ‘unthinkable’ in the mid-1980s (something which I often struggle to get my students to grasp) to ’inevitable’ just a few years later. Thought provoking stuff!

 

I also attended panel presentations on a variety of different topics. The first panel I chose discussed reactions to and reflections on the 2011-2012 Russian Elections. Derek Hutcheson’s paper drew on available data to analyse allegations of electoral fraud in more detail, before Stephen White demonstrated that although social media had played an important role in communicating and coordinating the recent mass protests in Russia it was Facebook rather than Twitter that appeared to have played the primary role. David White’s presentation suggested that the recent election backlash in Russia had ‘raised the costs of authoritarian rule’, although he questioned the prospects for recent dissent to develop into any kind of longer-term, organised, grass-roots opposition movement, followed by Richard Sakwa’s thoughts about the current political, sociological, epistemological and economic ‘stalemate’ in contemporary Russia.

 

From contemporary Russian politics, I was then quickly transported back in time as the next panel I attended was entitled ‘Imperial Russia: Tradition and Modernity’. Here, I particularly enjoyed Susanna Rabow-Edling’s paper which drew on the individual experiences of three governors wives in nineteenth century Russian Alaska, in relation to broader issues of gender, class, the ‘civilising mission’ within colonial discourse and experiences of frontier life. On Sunday morning, another Russian-based panel, this time on  ‘Stalinism and its Legacy’ also provided some interesting insights, particularly in relation to Norman Prell’s paper ‘The Road to Magadan: Memory and Silence’ which focused on exploring the importance of the Road to Magadan as an effective symbol for Gulag remembrance, due to its ability to act as both a physical symbol and a narrative tool; while Peter Whitewood’s paper on ‘Subversion in the Red Army’ provided some new ideas about the climate surrounding the Stalinist-era military purges of 1937-38.

 

On Sunday afternoon I also attended a panel on the topic of ‘Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian tourism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ and enjoyed all three papers. Kerstin Jobst began by providing an interesting overview of the development of Yalta as a modern spa resort in nineteenth century Russia, a process largely triggered by its initial popularity as a destination for the Russian Imperial family during Alexander II’s reign – which hinted at cnineteenth century ‘royal endorsement’ and a kind of Imperial ‘celebrity culture’! – while Sarah Lemmen concluded with a great paper about Czech travellers and their experiences of Cairo in the early twentieth century. However my favourite paper from this panel was definitely Yavuuz Kose’s paper ‘To bicycle in Bursa’ (read by panel chair Wendy Bracewell) which recounted the published account of Ahmed Tvfik, a young Turkish bicycle enthusiast who, along with a friend, independently toured Bursa on two wheels in 1900!

 

Finally, I was pleased that I was able to attend the screening of Robin Hessman’s documentary film My Perestroika before heading home on the Sunday evening. ‘My Perestroika’ (2010) told the stories of five Moscow schoolmates who reached adulthood just as their world collapsed around them in 1991. Hessman mixed archival footage (taken from both state archives and home movies) with contemporary first-person testimony to great effect, illustrating how and why these individuals looked back fondly on some aspects of their Soviet childhood, providing some sobering insights into how the enthusiasm and excitement that followed 1991 was quickly replaced by disillusionment and widespread political apathy and raising some interesting questions about the true nature and extent of the changes that have occurred in Russia in the last twenty years, particularly in terms of their impact on people’s everyday lives.