In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region's experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.

Malgorzata Pakier is Head of the Research Department at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Her publications include The Construction of European Holocaust Memory. German and Polish Cinema after 1989 (2013), and A European Memory?: Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance (co-edited with Bo Stråth, 2010).

List of Illustrations

Foreword
Jeffrey Olick

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Memory and Change in Eastern Europe: How Special?
Malgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak

PART I: MEMORY DIALOGUES AND MONOLOGUES

Chapter 1. The Transformative Power of Memory    
Aleida Assmann

Chapter 2. Political Correctness and Memories Constructed for 'Eastern Europe'    
Andrzej Nowak

PART II: EUROPE AS A (UNIQUE) MEMORY FRAMEWORK?

Chapter 3. The (non-)Travelling Concept of Les Lieux de Mémoire: Central and Eastern European Perspectives    
Maciej Górny and Kornelia Konczal

Chapter 4. Ain't Nothing Special
Slawomir Kapralski

Chapter 5. Biographical and Collective Memory: Mutual Influences in Central and Eastern European Context    
Kaja Kazmierska

PART III: EASTERN EUROPEAN MEMORIES FACING HISTORICAL CHANGE AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Chapter 6. The Path of Bringing the Dark to Light: Memory of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe        
Joanna Beata Michlic

Chapter 7. The Rise of an East European Community of Memory? On Lobbying for the Gulag Memory via Brussels
Lidia Zessin-Jurek

Chapter 8. Two Concepts of Victimhood: Property Restitution in the Czech Republic and Poland after 1989
Stanislaw Tyszka

Chapter 9. Shared Memory Culture? Nationalizing the 'Great Patriotic War' in the Ukrainian-Russian Borderlands    
Tatiana Zhurzhenko

Chapter 10. History, Politics and Memory (Ukraine 1990s - 2000s)
Georgiy Kasianov

Chapter 11. Walking Memory through City Space in Sevastopol, Crimea
Judy Brown

PART IV: FOCI OF MEMORIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

Chapter 12. World War II in the Memory of Contemporary Polish Society
Piotr Tadeusz Kwiatkowski

Chapter 13. Auschwitz and Katyn in Bondage of Politics: The Process of Shaping Memory in Communist Poland
Jacek Chrobaczynski and Piotr Trojanski

Chapter 14. Germans in Eastern Europe as a Polish-German Lieu de Mémoire? On the Asymmetry of Memories
Matthias Weber

Chapter 15. Remembering Collectivization in Bulgaria
Iana Iancheva

Chapter 16. Uses and Misuses of Memory: Dealing with Communist Past in Postcommunist Bulgaria and Romania
Claudia-Florentina Dobre

Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index