Articles

“A person comes in, protests just like you, then shouts and rants, and then, when finally shown the piece of paper that was signed when they were on military service, they crumple.”

The Czech communist party might be an anachronism, but to ostracize it only prolongs its existence. Whether irrational or calculated, anti-communism in the Czech Republic distracts from more pressing problems, writes Marek Seckar.

Slovak society has overcome its historical handicaps and became a fully-fledged EU member-state. Yet the style of resolving conflicts among Slovak political elites undermines conditions for future development.

The notion of abandoning the East for the sake of a brighter western dominates the Polish memory of ’89, writes Wojciech Przybylski. Renewed debate among the born-free generation about the period of change would foster a more individual cultural identity

The figure of the German in recent Polish literature reveals shifts in perspective from the experience of war to that of exile and resettlement. Representations of the German other in Polish self-imagining.

Bosnian Serb war criminal Biljana Plavsic is to be released from a Swedish prison later this month after serving two thirds of an 11-year sentence. Slavenka Drakulic notes that Plavsic’s “confession” in The Hague was nothing but a staged farce.

Devotion to “historical truth” can become an easy target for political manipulation. Deconstruction of national myths does not equate to destruction, but rather the rethinking and rearranging of the symbolic meaning of history.

Heavily influenced by the Black Wave or dissident Yugoslav cinema of her childhood, artist Nada Prlja considers its unique balancing act between iconoclasm and idealism, individualism and communism to be exemplary. In an interview with Stefan Szczelkun, Prlja talks about the cultural context of communist Yugoslavia and its mutation into a consumer culture – a shift that her artwork pivots on.

In Sweden and Switzerland, complicity in the Holocaust was for a long time ignored. It was only as a result of foreign publicity that national myths of neutrality gave way to admissions of responsibility, writes Arne Ruth.

Even if the West undertakes no obligations vis-à-vis the Rest, the principles upon which it is built suggest some responsibility, writes Mykola Riabchuk. Ukrainians are particularly wary of the Realpolitik that dominates western dealings with Russia. Whatever one thinks about the “centuries old affinity” between Ukraine and Russia, any policy that downplays the issue of values is fundamentally flawed.

After 1989, uncensored editions of many classics of contemporary eastern European literature became available, and numerous authors were discovered for the first time in the West. Meanwhile, a younger generation of writers, their imaginations liberated by events, were quick to respond to the new appetite for understanding the communist past. Katharina Raabe, editor for eastern European literature at Suhrkamp Verlag, surveys some of the most important of these authors and describes German publishers’ role in bringing them to western readers.

“Like the champagne from the bottles in Prague, that’s how the tears came rolling from my eyes! I’m tellin’ ya, if a Czechoslovak had been within reach, I’d’ve licked his ass clean!” A tough-talking Magyar remembers the stirrings of neighbourly affection in ’89.

“Increasing social distance between the poorest and the richest diminishes social cohesion, which in turn means more collective problems and fewer resources for solving all our other collective problems.” Göran Therborn on why inequality matters.

The conference “Challenges of freedom” takes place on 8 and 9 October in Krakow. The event, organized by Villa Decius in partnership with Eurozine, will discuss the essence of ideologies of liberation and the role of ethical values in initiating historical change.

“It is an unnatural but positive development when democracy trains people to believe that, overall, it is better to let the bastard speak.” Former Solidarity activist and journalist Konstanty Gebert talks to Irena Maryniak about censorship post-’89 and anti-Semitism in Poland today.