Abstract
This chapter analyzes the interaction of discourses associated with World War II and its aftermath and the formation of related cultural, social, and political practices in Ukraine in comparison with Lithuania. The focus is on what can be considered a hegemonic war memory in the two countries—discourses about the anti-Soviet partisans and their memorialization. Political developments described as “revolutions” (Sąjūdis in Lithuania, the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan in Ukraine) have coincided with major discursive changes regarding memory politics. It is during those times that narratives extolling the virtues of anti-Soviet partisans and dwelling on losses associated with national tragedies, described as genocides, have attracted more supporters willing to “defend history” in both countries.
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- 1.
In September 2017, a consensus was reached to rename this Museum to get rid of the term “genocide.” The new proposed name for the museum is “The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights.”
- 2.
This video “Forest Brothers—Fight for the Baltics” is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5rQFp7FF9c.
- 3.
This information is from the Web site of the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania . “The Armed Anti-Soviet Resistance in Lithuania in 1944–1953,” Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania (2017), http://genocid.lt/centras/en/2390/a/ and see “Tremties ir kalinimo vietos,” http://genocid.lt/centras/lt/1491/a/.
- 4.
There was a death march in Molėtai in 1941, when the entire Jewish community was killed by the Nazis and their local collaborators.
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Acknowledgement
Research for this contribution was supported by a SEED grant awarded by Georgia Gwinnett College in 2016–2017. I would like to thank Charlie Marburger and Mandy Crane, my research assistants, for their help with this article. Previous versions of this contribution were presented at the European International Studies Association’s Annual Conference (EISA) in Barcelona in September 2017 and the Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Conference at Columbia University in May 2017. I would like to thank the discussants and the participants of these conferences for their comments and suggestions.
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Budrytė, D. (2018). Memory, War, and Mnemonical In/Security: A Comparison of Lithuania and Ukraine. In: Resende, E., Budrytė, D., Buhari-Gulmez, D. (eds) Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78589-9_7
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