Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe - The Ghosts of Others

After the Second World War, millions of people across Eastern Europe, displaced as a result of wartime destruction, deportations and redrawing of state boundaries, found themselves living in cities that were filled with the traces of the foreign cultures of the former inhabitants. In the immediate post-war period these traces were not acknowledged, the new inhabitants going along with official policies of oblivion, the national narratives of new post-war regimes, and the memorializing of the victors. In time, however, and increasingly over recent decades, the former "other pasts" have been embraced and taken on board as part of local cultural memory. This book explores this interesting and increasingly important phenomenon. It examines official ideologies, popular memory, literature, film, memorialization and tourism to show how other pasts are being incorporated into local cultural memory. It relates these developments to cultural theory and argues that the relationship between urban space, cultural memory and identity in Eastern Europe is increasingly becoming a question not only of cultural politics, but also of consumption and choice, alongside a tendency towards the cosmopolitanization of memory.

List of contents

Introduction 1. Memory of Lost Others and the City as Text. 2. Absence, Ruins and Remembering. 3. Martyrdom, Memory and the Other City. 4. Thrills, Chills and Sensations: Lost Others in Consumer and Popular Culture. 5. Popular Literature and Lost Others. 6. City, Text and Photograph. Conclusion

About the author

Uilleam Blacker is a lecturer in comparative Russian and East European culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London.

Summary

After the Second World War, millions of people across Eastern Europe found themselves living in cities with traces of the foreign cultures of former inhabitants. This book explores this increasingly important phenomenon to show how other pasts are incorporated into local cultural memory.

Product details

• Authors: Uilleam Blacker, Uilleam (University of Oxford Blacker, Blacker Uilleam
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2021
• EAN: 9780367785628
• ISBN: 978-0-367-78562-8
• No. of pages: 242
• Series: BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Ethnic Studies, Eastern Europe, Russia, European History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Regional Studies, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Europe / Eastern, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Social and cultural history, Human Geography, History and Archaeology, USSR, Soviet Union, HISTORY / Russia / General