Stefan Troebst

Jan Rydel

In today's world, we can point to many international disputes and interstate conflicts fueled by past events. Historical resentments or memories of past suffering or fame are often used to justify political, economic and even territorial demands. Inter-state disputes and historical conflicts should be understood as evidence of political and social tensions related to active, serious differences in the assessment of the common past. The book explains the role of such conflicts in international relations and suggests ways of classifying them. It presents examples of the internationally relevant instrumentalisation of history from different regions of the world and outlines ways of overcoming them.

The Impact of History on Contemporary International Conflicts

Instrumentalizing the Past

Dietmar Müller

This book centers on the Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, published in Washington in the early summer of 1914 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The volume was born from the conviction that the full assessment of the significance of the Carnegie Report—one of the first international non-governmental fact-finding missions with the intention to promote peace—requires a deeper exploration of the context of its birth. The authors examine how the countries involved in the wars handled the inquires of the Carnegie Commission and the role of the report in the remembrance of the wars in the respective states. Although the report considered both the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan nation-states insufficiently civilized to wage wars within the limits of the codes of conduct of international law, this orientalist conclusion can in part be explained by the liberal internationalist strategy of the Carnegie Endowment, and of the commission members’ professional, political, and ethnic background. Overshadowed by the outbreak of World War I, the Carnegie Report’s direct impact on international arbitration or international criminal law was limited, yet—in the authors’ opinion—it ultimately contributed to the further juridification of international relations

The 1914 Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912/13

Philanthropy, Conflict Management and International Law

Ulf Brunnbauer

die Erinnerung an den Kommunismus in Südosteuropa

Zwischen Amnesie und Nostalgie

Maria Todorova

Augusta Dimou

Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past.ÿ

Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe

REMEMBERING COMMUNISM

Anna Kaminsky

Europäische Geschichte: Eine historische Wegmarke aus verschiedenen nationalen Blickwinkeln. Die Erinnerungen der Europäer an den Hitler-Stalin-Pakt weisen erhebliche Differenzen auf, die mit der Teilung des Kontinentes in West-, Ostmittel- und Osteuropa zusammenhängen. Der Pakt steht für den Beginn von Krieg, Besatzung, Deportation und Holocaust. In Ostmitteleuropa steht der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt überdies für die Aufteilung in Interessensphären, deren langfristige Wirkung sich nach Kriegsende in der Ablösung der nationalsozialistischen durch die kommunistische Diktatur zeigte. Die westeuropäische Erinnerungskultur fokussiert stattdessen seit den 1980er Jahren den Holocaust, so dass der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt nur eine geringe Rolle spielt. In der russischen Geschichtspolitik wiederum ist nach wie vor der "Große Vaterländische Krieg" der zentrale Erinnerungsort, der auch mit Gesetzen und staatlichen Kommissionen verteidigt wird. Mit dem Fokus auf die unterschiedlichen Erinnerungskulturen wird in dem vorliegenden Band die Langzeitwirkung des Hitler-Stalin-Pakts erforscht. Der Schwerpunkt liegt bei den Ländern Ostmitteleuropas, darüber hinaus werden die Unterzeichnerstaaten ebenso behandelt, wie England, Frankreich und Dänemark sowie die Juden und Deutschen Ostmitteleuropas.

Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt 1939 in den Erinnerungskulturen der Europäer

Farimah Daftary

Nation states and minorities resort more and more to violence when safeguarding their political interests. Although the violence in the Middle East has been dominating world politics for some time now, European governments have had their share of ethnic violence to contend with as this volume demonstrates. And as the case studies show, ranging as they do from the Basque Country to Chechnya, from Northern Ireland to Bosnia-Herzegovina, this applies to western Europe as much as to eastern Europe. However, in contrast to other parts of the world, instances where political struggles for power and social inclusion between minorities and majorities lead to full-fledged inter-ethnic warfare are still the exception; in the majority of cases conflicts are successfully de-escalated and even resolved. In a comprehensive conclusion, the volume offers a theoretical framework for the development of strategies to deal with violent ethnic conflict.

Stefan Troebst

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