Renaming Men: the politics of memory and the commemoration of war at the Baltic–Russian Crossroads

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the role of war commemorations in the politics of collective memory and the ways in which rites and practices of commemoration contributed to the production of normative ideals of masculinity in specific post-Soviet contexts. The analysis draws upon some examples of present-day commemorations concerning the cult of the fallen soldier in the Baltic countries and in Russia. The author explores the different post-Soviet—Baltic and Russian—discourses and ways of reconstructing the value of military masculinity through commemorations, and argues that combat masculinity as a particular form of military masculinity is dominant in commemorative rituals, practices and sites. The image of the fallen soldier has become a common source of inspiration for the discourse of reciprocity between the body of the soldier and the body of the (trans)nation. It sustains nationalist politics in different post-Soviet contexts and is a central component in the construction of masculinity.

Notes

See L. Spillman (1997) Nation and Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Robert W. Connell (1995) Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Henry S. Commager (1967) The Search for a Usable Past, and Other Essays in Historiography (New York: Knopf).

Pierre Nora, Lawrence D. Kritzman & Arthur Goldhammer (Eds) (1997) Realms of Memory: the construction of the French past. Vol. II: Traditions. (New York: Columbia University Press); Jacques Le Goff (1985) Mentalities: a history of ambiguities, in Jacques Le Goff & Pierre Nora (Eds) Constructing the Past. Essays in Historical Methodology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 166–180.

Dominique La Capra (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press); Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser & Piotr Sztompka (Eds) (2004) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press); Eric L. Santer (1993) Stranded Objects: mourning, memory, and film in postwar Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University); Haral'd Veltser, Istoria, pamiat I sovremennost proshlogo. Pamiat kak arena politicheskoi borbii (History, memory and past's present. Memory as arena political struggles) Available at: http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2005/2/vel3.html

Inesis Feldmanis & Karlis Kangeris. The Volunteer SS Legion in Latvia. Available at: http://www.am.gov.lv/en/latvia/history/legion

Ibid.

See the website of a radical-nationalist organisation Klubs 415. Available at http://www.klubs415.lv/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=280

Vadim Poleshchuk (2007) Estonian Minority Population and Non-discrimination: Report 2006 (Tallinn: LICHR), pp. 20–24. Full version at: http://www.lichr.ee/docs/cerd-final.pdf

Available at: http://linnamuuseum.tartu.ee/en/branches/kgb/forestbrothers.html

Victor Roudometof (2003) Beyond Commemoration: the politics of collective memory, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 31(2), p. 163.

See Merje Kuus (2005) Multiple Europes: boundaries and margins in European Union enlargement. Editorial introduction to a discussion forum on EU enlargement, Geopolitics, 10(3), pp. 567–570; See also: Merje Kuus (2004) Eastern Enlargement and the Re-inscription of Otherness in East-Central Europe, Progress in Human Geography, 28(4), pp. 472–489, and M. Kuus (2004) ‘Those Goody-Goody Estonians’: toward rethinking security in the European Union applicant states, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22(2), pp. 191–207.

Social memory is doubly selective, both positively and negatively. From the inexhaustible multiplicity of the past, particular events, persons and themes are singled out as worthy of commemoration, while others are condemned to oblivion—not simply by default, or passively, by virtue of escaping notice, but actively, by virtue of being deliberately ignored, downplayed, or repressed. Quoted from: Rodger Brubaker & Margit Feischmidt (2002) 1848 in 1998: the politics of commemoration in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44(4), p. 714.

An interview with Professor of Slavic Studies Aurika Maimre, Itogi ‘Bronzovoi nochi’ (The Outcome of the ‘Bronze Night’) by Ekaterina Val'cifer. Available at: http://www.expert.ru/printissues/russian_reporter/2007/01/qa_itogi_bronzovoy_nochi/

Ibid.

Anatoly Korolev & Dmitry Kosyrev, National Symbolism in Russia: the old and the new. Available at http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070611/66883914.html

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Irina Novikova

Irina Novikova is a professor at the Department of Culture and Literature and Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Latvia. Her research interests include questions of gender and genre in literature and film; gender, citizenship and ethnicity in post-socialist/post-colonial transnationalism; and masculinities.