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Mangled Memory: Remembrance of the Nazi Regime in the German Democratic Republic
Cover photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Berlin, Palast der Republik — um 1990 — 2” / CC BY-SA 4.0 By Aviva Gomes-Bhatt From 1949 until 1990, Germany was divided into the Western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). Ideologically separated by the proverbial Iron Curtain, each state had to grapple with reconstruction and usher itself…
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Historical Revisionism in Russian State Media: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Nostalgia and Impacts Collective Memory
Photo: Direct Line with Vladimir Putin. Photo courtesy of www.kremlin.ru. No changes were made. View the license here By Ruty Korotaev “One is nostalgic not for the past the way it was, but for the past the way it could have been. It is this past perfect that one strives to realize in the future.”…
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Deconstructing Europe’s East-West Divide Through Abortion Legislation
March in support of abortion rights, Łódź October 2nd 2016. Photo: Zorro2212/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By Ashley Renz Introduction In September 2021, in the southern Polish town of Pszczyna, a 30-year-old woman named Izabela died due to fatal complications in the 22nd week of her pregnancy. Izabela’s fetus lacked amniotic…
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Revolution under the Shadow of the State: Organized Crime in the Soviet Union
Moscow’s Red Square during the Soviet era. Photo: daves_archive_1/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By Mike Shirley Introduction “I have no mother and no father. There is only the code, the vory v zakone code.” – Nikolai Luzhin, Eastern Promises[1] In 1971, Voldemar Mirkin, an antiques dealer in the Soviet Union’s thriving black market, came…
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Embodying the Archive: An Analysis of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
Poster for production Master and Margarita in Theatre Near the Bridge in Perm (2005). Photo courtesy of Theatre Near the Bridge Perm/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By Arina Dmitrenko Introduction This paper focuses on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita (trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1997),[1] and its…
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The City of the Dead Confronts the City of the Living: Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery as ‘lieu de mémoire’
Cover photo: Partisan Memorial Cemetery, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo: leiris202/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By Nikolai Ranko Duffield Introduction Located in a valley between the Hum and Velež mountains, a city of stone sits idly, intersected by the mighty blue Neretva, which flows quietly through the centre. Frequently listed as a…
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Tito’s Yugoslavia: A Book and Cinema Review: Goran Marković’s ‘Tito and Me’ and Jože Pirjevec’s ‘Tito and his comrades’
Josip Broz (Tito) & Willy Brandt smoking cigars. Photo: Pietro Izzo/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By: Michaela Nudo Throughout history, redrawn maps have shaped identities and driven ethnic conflict, the Balkans are no exception to this trend. The legacy of Yugoslavia and Tito will forever leave an impressionable mark on current studies…
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Hostages of History: North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and the Hazards of EU Accession
Photo: Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. Photo is in the public domain. By: Isabelle Avakumovic-Pointon Despite the groundbreaking Prespa Agreement with Greece in 2018, North Macedonia’s accession to the European Union (EU) is once again on hold. This time, the veto comes from Bulgaria: North Macedonia’s neighbour and, until recently, its staunchest supporter in…
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European Energy Security and Pipelines in the South Caucasus: Carriers of Energy and Conflict
Photo: Ilham Aliyev attended official opening ceremony of Southern Gas Corridor. Sangachal Terminal. Photo: Official website the President of Azerbaijan. No changes made. View the license here. By Sasha Slobodov Issue Statement In order to move away from reliance on Russia for natural gas imports, the European Union (EU) has identified the South Caucasus as…