Myshlovska, Oksana

Dealing with the Difficult Pasts Across the Former Imperial Border

Transitional Justice and Memory Politics in Pidvolochysk and Volochysk Talk

This talk was held in the framework of the Prisma Ukraïna Workshop “When the Muses are not silent: Intellectuals’ and Artists’ Responses to the Ukraine-Russia Conflict and post-Maidan Developments in Ukraine” in Berlin on 19 June, 2018.

The talk discusses national approaches to “dealing with the past” adopted as of the late perestroika period in Ukraine encompassing investigation of “blank spots” of history, including the crimes of the Soviet period, rehabilitation of victims of mass repressions and approaches to justice. Then it explores different trajectories and mutual influences in “dealing with the past” during the post-Soviet period in two communities situated in the former borderland area between the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire and then interwar Poland and the Soviet Union - Pidvolochysk and Volochysk. In particular, the talk focuses on the role of local historians in the processes of “dealing with the past”. The talk will attempt to conceptualize interdisciplinary connections between the fields of dealing with the past which includes the right to know, the right to justice, the right to reparation and the guarantee of non-recurrence, memory studies, and conflict transformation.

 

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