Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits

Oto Luthar (ed.)
Title
Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits
Subtitle
Post-Communist Historiography between Democratization and the New Politics of History
Price
€ 122,00 excl. VAT
ISBN
9789633861516
Format
Hardback
Number of pages
256
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.9 x 23.4 cm
Categories
Imprint
Also available as
eBook PDF - € 121,99
Table of Contents
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Preface

Introduction. “Red Dragon and the Evil Spirits”
Oto Luthar

Chapter 1 On the (In)convertibility of National Memory into European Legitimacy: The Bulgarian Case
Daniela Koleva

Chapter 2 Equalizing Jesus’s, Jewish and Croat Suffering—Post-Socialist Politics of History in Croatia
Ljiljana Radonić

Chapter 3 Wars of Memory in Post-Communist Romania
Michael Shafi

Chapter 4 Reflections on the Principles of the Critical Culture of Memory
Todor Kuljić

Chapter 5 The Struggle for Legitimacy: Constructing the National History of Slovakia After 1989
Miroslav Michela

Chapter 6 Victims and Traditions: Narratives of Hungarian National History After the Age of Extremes
Ferenc Laczó

Chapter 7 Instrumentalization of History in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Šačir Filandra

Chapter 8 Post-Socialist Historiography Between Democratization and New Exclusivist Politics of History
Oto Luthar

Authors
Bibliography
Index

Oto Luthar (ed.)

Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits

Post-Communist Historiography between Democratization and the New Politics of History

The collection of well-researched essays assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. As opposed to the revival of national histories that seemed to be the prevailing historiographical approach of the 1990s, the last decade has seen a particular set of narratives equating Nazism and Communism. This provides opportunities to exonerate wartime collaboration, casting the nation as victim even when its government was allied with Germany. While the Jewish Holocaust is acknowledged, its meaning and significance are obfuscated. In their comparative analysis the authors are also interested in new practices of ‘Europeanness’. Therefore their presentations of Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian post-communist memory politics move beyond the common national myths in order to provide a new insight into transnational interactions and exchanges in Europe in general. The juxtaposition of these politics, the processes in other parts of Europe, the modes of remembering shaped by displacement and the transnational enable a close encounter with the divergences and assess the potential of the formation of common, European memory practices.
Editor

Oto Luthar

Oto Luthar is professor at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia.