![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article examines the role of websites as historical sources, using a comparative case study of Germany and Poland’s respective lost territories after WWII and the border changes ordered by Stalin. The article proposes a methodology derived from the ‘Toolbox’ of the Oxford Internet Institute, which includes link and referral analysis plus sourcing of data about websites in past formats via the ‘Wayback Machine’ (archive.org). Its aim is to suggest ways in which historians can better assess the material function of these online sources within the wider taxonomy of historical discussion, in ways often taken for granted for traditional publications: for instance, noting ascribed provenance, prominence, age and stability as textual sources, in addition to their contents. The approach is tested through two websites each from Poland and Germany, construed as a pilot and spur to further investigation for application to other cases beyond where contentious episodes of 20th Century history are reframed to serve illiberal agendas, notably in Central Europe by parties such as Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary, or AfD in Germany.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A note on place names: I refer to cities using the English equivalent of their current names in general discussion, but the historical equivalent when specifically referring to that context or quoting from sources in the corresponding language, i.e. Lviv for the city that was Lwów as part of Poland before 1945, unless quoting Polish sources in the original; and Wrocław for Breslau, which was part of Germany until 1945, following the same policy.
2 Tim Gosling, ‘Poland and Hungary Tighten Grip on National Narratives’, Reporting Democracy, June 2019. Source: https://balkaninsight.com/2019/07/29/hungary-and-poland-tighten-grip-on-national-narratives/. This and all links unless stated otherwise were last accessed 2 February 2024.
3 Reaction by Polish ex-Prime Minister, Beata Szydło (in office 2015–17), on X (formerly Twitter), 9 June 2023, to reported remarks by AfD parliamentary caucus leader Alice Weidel: https://twitter.com/BeataSzydlo/status/1667147293680599043, (accessed March 14, 2024).
4 Jacek Chrobaczyński, ‘Polityka historyczna w Polsce po roku 2015. Kilka uwag i refleksji historyka’, Chorzowskie Studia Polityczne 12 (2016): 45–77; Jo Harper (ed.), Poland’s Memory Wars: Essays on Illiberalism (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018).
5 ‘There is a difference between memory, the impressions we are given; and history, the connections that we work to make – if we wish’ – Timothy Snyder, from the introduction to The Road to Unfreedom. Russia, Europe, America ;(London: The Bodley Head, 2018).
6 On this specific question: Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘Nationalism and the Internet’, Nations and Nationalism 13 (2007), 1–17. For a recent ‘state of the art’ survey, which while being quantative- and technically-focused (e.g. on hermaneutical questions posed by use of computers, forms of digital archive etc.), situates the useful concept of ‘digital history’: C. Annemeike Romein et al., ‘State of the Field: Digital History’, History, 105: 291–312.
7 For a survey: various essays in Alexander Etkind, Uilleam Blacker and Julie Fedor (eds.) Memory and Theory in Western Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
8 Yaroslav Hrytsak and Viktor Susak, ‘Constructing a National City: The Case of Lviv’, in John Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble (eds.), Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities (Washington, Baltimore, London: John Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp.140–164.
9 Genevieve Zubrzycki, The Crosses of Auschwitz. Nationalism and Regionalism in Postcommunist Poland (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
10 Jan Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’. New German Critique 65 (1995): 125–33.
11 Ellen Rutten, ‘Why Digital Memory Studies Should Not Overlook Eastern Europe’s Memory Wars’, in: Blacker, Etkind and Feodr (eds.), Memory and Theory In Eastern Europe, pp. 219–231.
12 C.E.J. Caldicott and Anne Fuchs (eds.), Cultural Memory. Essays in European Literature and History (New York: Peter Lang, 2003).
13 For a wide-ranging analysis that considers the broader ecosystem: Jason Steinhauer, History Disrupted. How Social Media and the World Wide Web have Changed the Past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
14 Daria Dergacheva et al., ‘2024 Russian Presidential Elections – How Digital Technologies are used to wield Authoritarian Power’: https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/2024-russian-presidential-elections-how-digital-technologies-are-used-to-wield-authoritarian-power/.
15 The toolkit was initially aimed at ‘measuing usage and impact of scholarly resources’ but this application broadens its use. The toolkit is now itself archived via the Wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20180126210118/http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/. A contemporary (live in 2024) description: https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/tidsr/.
16 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), esp. pp. 49–51.
17 Results from the Wayback Machine, via the URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20020527122804/http://lwow.com.pl/.
18 The work was not available in Communist Poland until it appeared in a samizdat pamphlet under the relaxed conditions of Glasnost in early 1989. It instead appeared first in New York in 1946, Paris in 1963 and London in 1975. On its publishing history, see: Maciej Wcisło, ‘Tytuł tej gawędy, narzucony przez wydawców’, Konteksty Kultury 2, no. 17 (2020): 237–41.
22 Eleonora Narvselius, ‘Polishness as a Site of Memory and Arena for Construction of a Multicultural Heritage in Lviv’, in Barbara Tornquist-Plewa (ed.), Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe (Oxford: Berghahn, 2016), 73–109.
23 I discuss the dimensions of ‘Polish’ identity in 2010s Lviv, set in historic context, in my article: ‘Place, borderland and elective affinities: Contemporary Polish identity in Lviv in post-1945 historical context. Between “minority” and “sub-culture”’, Ab Imperio (2017): 263–92.
24 See: Magdalena Semczyszyn and Mariusz Zajączkowski (eds.), Giedroyc a Ukraina. Ukraińska perspektywa Jerzego Giedroycia i środowiska paryskiej „Kultury” (Warsaw, Lublin, Szczecin: IPN, 2014).
25 ‘Memory of Sovereignty and Sovereignty Over Memory: Twentieth-Century Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania’ in Jan-Werner Müller (ed.), Memory and Power in Postwar Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 39–58.
26 Georgiy Kasianov, Memory Crash: Politics of History in and around Ukraine, 1980s–2010s (Budapest: CEU Press, 2022), especially the chapter, ‘Historical Politics: Beyond Borders,’ 319–86.
27 The controversial law, passed in early 2018, had been weakened by President Andrzej Duda by the Summer of that year after international criticism for its criminalization of false accusations of Polish involvement: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/world/europe/poland-holocaust-law.html.
28 Anon., Poland’s ruling party picks a fight with Germany, 17 August 2017. Available at. https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21726708-raising-question-reparations-may-not-be-sensible-move-polands-ruling-party-picks-fight.
29 http://www.old.uwazamrze.pl/artykul/986156/lwow-jest-polski. Hałaś also authored a 2012 book with a title asking Ukrainians, by implication, to give Lviv back to Poland: Oddajcie nam Lwów (Warsaw: Bollinari).
30 Oksana Kis, ‘Displaced Memories of a Displaced People: Towards the Problem of Missing Polish Narratives in Lviv’ in: Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Bo Petersson (eds.), Remembering Europe’s Exiled Peoples of the Twentieth Century (Lund: Lund University, 2009), pp. 60–75; Eleonora Narvselius, ‘Tragic Past, Agreeable Heritage: Post-Soviet Intellectual Discussions on the Polish Legacy in Western Ukraine’, Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2403 (2015).
31 My forthcoming book on the Polish memory and mythology of Lwów explores this question in depth. A survey of popular literature from c. 1989–2015 can be found in Adam Bajcar Lwów wielu kultur (Weset: Lublin, 2019), 427–62.
32 [Projekt „Kresy24.pl – Wschodnia Gazeta Codzienna. Ponadregionalny portal informacyjno-historyczno.
−publicystyczny Polakow na Wschodzie” realizowany prez Fundacje Wolnosé i Demokracja]. Source: https://www.Kresy24.pl.
33 Source: https://wid.org.pl/o-fundacji/. Translation my own. [Fundacja Wolność i Demokracja jest niezależną, niepartyjną organizacją pozarządową. Od założenia w 2006 roku Fundacja działa w dwóch zasadniczych obszarach: pomocy Polakom na Wschodzie oraz wspierania przemian demokratycznych na terenach byłego Związku Sowieckiego.[… Na] obszarach działania Fundacja nie zapomina o popularyzacji wiedzy o polskim dziedzictwie kulturowym i polskiej historii Kresów. Ważnym dążeniem Fundacji jest odzyskanie poczucia wspólnoty oraz świadomości konieczności współpracy przez narody tworzące I Rzeczpospolitą].
34 Source: https://wid.org.pl/o-fundacji/.
37 Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki, ‘Niepodległość – kotwitca naszej tożsamości’, Kresy24.pl, 19 February 2018. Source: https://kresy24.pl/niepodleglosc-kotwica-naszej-tozsamosci/. [Przez cały 2018 rok będziemy tu prezentować – w miarę możliwości: w kontekście kresowym – wszelkie możliwe wątki, aspekty i okruchy pamięci związane ze 100-leciem naszej zbiorowej wolności. Na potrzeby przyszłości chcemy magazynować przeszłość, dla lepszego zrozumienia wzywań wolności – prezentować na ich temat najróżniejsze opinie, (z wyjątkiem komunistycznych: komunistom na nasze łamy wstęp wzbroniony), w celu budowania narodowej dumy – wraz z innymi wydobyć skałę, na której można ją postawić. Przede wszystkim chcemy jednak podtrzymywać światło pamięci, a mówiąc mniej górnolotnie: postawić naszą świeczkę w morzu zniczy].
38 Volker Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung. Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg. (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2008).
39 Aleida Assmann Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerunskultur und Geschichtspolitik (Bonn: Beck, 2007).
40 Annette Seidel-Arpaci, A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to Present (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2007), 161–179.
41 Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, ‘Germany’s Extreme Right Challenges Guilt Over Nazi Past’, New York Times, 18 January 2017. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/europe/germany-afd-alternative-bjorn-hocke.html.
42 Kalte Heimat: die Geschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2008); Damals in Ostpreussen: der Untergang einer deutschen Provinz (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2008); also Masuren: Ostpreussens vergessener Süden (Berlin: Siedler, 2001).
43 On the longer-standing controversy: Catherine Perron, ‘Museum or Memorial? Twenty years of controversy about the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation in Berlin’, SciencesPo Center for International Studies, 26 November 2021.
44 http://der-deutsche-osten.de/impressum.html [Diese Internetseite soll die Gebiete im Osten Deutschlands vorstellen und vor dem Vergessen bewahren].
45 http://der-deutsche-osten.de, Silesia section (not hyperlinked externally from the site) [Ganz Schlesien (Nieder- und Oberschlesien) ist und bleibt ein Teil Deutschlands!].
46 http://der-deutsche-osten.de [Unsere deutsche Heimat ist – mit Hilfe unserer eigenen deutschen (?) [sic[Politiker – nach wie vor von fremden Machthabern besetzt].
47 http://der-deutsche-osten.de/impressum.html [Ich möchte diese Seite hier nochmals ausdrücklich von rechtsradikalen oder neofaschistischen Verbindungen und Ideen distanzieren].
48 Ibid. [Gerade die Zeit der NS-Diktatur und dem daraus resultierenden Weltkrieg hat für die deutschen Ostgebiete einen schrecklichen, zerstörerischen Leidensweg heraufbeschworen und eine unmenschliche Vertreibung von nahezu 14 Millionen Deutschen zur Folge gehabt].
49 Ibid. [Diese Seite dient keiner Erinnerung an großdeutsche Herrschaftsphantasien, die im Bezug auf die deutschen Ostgebiete nicht nur inhaltlich, sondern auch geschichtlich vollkommen falsch wäre].
50 Ibid. [Die deutsche Geschichte besteht nicht nur aus den 12 Jahren NS-Diktatur, sondern ist reich an politischer und kultureller Vielfalt, die nur zu oft durch die Zeit von 1933–1945 in Vergessenheit gerät. Dieser ‘Verdrängungspolitik’ unserer Gesellschaft fallen vor allem die deutschen Länder östlich der Oder-Neiße zum Opfer. Länder, die jahrhundertelang von deutscher Kultur geprägt wurden und die deutsche Kultur prägten].
51 https://ostpreussen.net. [[…] das Land, die Landschaft und die Menschen im einstigen Ostpreußen mit ihrer Kultur einem interessierten Leserkreis so zu zeigen, wie es war und wie es jetzt ist].