Politics of Memory: Soviet Repressions in Geopolitical Shifts 3102-FPOM
What are the politics of memory, and why do they matter? Can mnemonic wars—conflicts over memory—escalate into real wars? What do concepts like victimhood nationalism, mnemonic security, militant mnemocracies, or memory-political deterrence mean, and how do they shape our understanding of today’s geopolitical tensions? In this course, we will explore these pressing questions through the lens of Soviet repressions and their legacy. We will investigate how these memories are mobilized in different countries and societies once affected by Soviet violence, and how they are reshaped within current cultural, political, and international constellations. Special attention will be paid to how large-scale geopolitical dynamics manifest at the local level, and what new insights a local perspective can offer into broader memory politics.
From the Madden Committee’s 1951 investigation into the Katyn Massacre during the Cold War, to the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, The Black Book of Communism in 1997, the emergence of the International Memorial Society in 1989, and its eventual closure by Putin’s regime followed by its receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022—each of these is a key moment that has reshaped global understandings of Soviet violence. We will examine these "memory events" to explore how and why memories of repression become politically useful—or dangerous—at different historical junctures.
Using both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, we will investigate how memorializations of Soviet repression have been created, contested, or dismantled across time and space. Particular attention will be paid to how these memory practices speak not only to past atrocities, but also to contemporary conflicts, ideologies, and struggles for historical legitimacy. We will further explore how, at different historical moments, memories of Soviet repressions have functioned either as a unifying force among societies affected by them or, conversely, as a source of division and conflict.
During our course we will explore following problems:
What are the politics of memory, mnemonic conflicts, mnemonic security, militant memocracy and victimhood nationalism and what is their role in times of geopolitical shifts?
What were the Soviet repressions? How they have been perceived by various European And Asian societies? And what role they played in international relations?
The tension between trauma and the return of repressed versus nostalgia for Soviet Union.
How the memories of soviet repressions travelled between societies and countries? Are there some similar global memory patterns of Soviet repressions?
How the Soviet repressions were used in international relations. For whom and for which reasons they became useable past?
Legacies of Soviet repressions?
Heritagisation of Soviet repressions
Problem of victims, perpetrators and implicated subjects
Weaponization of memories of Soviet repressions
Impact of religions, religious memories and the institutional churches on the shape of Soviet repressions.
Soviet repressions in art, cinema and literature
How the Russian war against Ukraine transforms memories of Soviet repressions across societies
Entanglements of Soviet repressions and myth of Victory Day in Russia and other post-soviet countries.
Politics of Dead Bodies and how the exhumations have served as tools in memory-making, national narratives, and geopolitical struggle.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Student is able to analyze and compare memory practices related to Soviet repressions across different temporal and geographical contexts.
Student develops the ability to critically assess how memories of Soviet repression are mobilized in political discourse, cultural production, and societal debates.
Student deepens their understanding of how memory politics intersects with identity formation, nationalism, and geopolitical shifts in the post-Soviet space.
Student becomes more reflexive in approaching the contested narratives of victimhood, collaboration, and resistance related to the Soviet past.
Assessment criteria
Mandatory reading of assigned texts and active engagement through oral responses and discussion during seminar sessions.
Active participation in class, including the preparation of short written reflections or a presentation on a selected topic related to the course.
Participation in the conference “Mobilizing and Weaponizing Memories of Soviet Repressions” (University of Warsaw, 29–31 October 2025), including attendance at at least one panel or event and submission of a brief critical reflection on it.
Oral exam at the end of the course to assess comprehension and critical engagement with the material.
Bibliography
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Etkind, Alexander, Rory Finnin, Uilleam Blacker, Julie Fedor, Simon Lewis, Maria Mälksoo, and Matilda Mroz. 2012. Remembering Katyn. Cambridge: Polity.
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Tolczyk, Dariusz. 1999. See No Evil: Literary Cover- Ups and Discoveries of the Soviet Camp Experience. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
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