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How to avoid the genocide trap Genocide as a concept in historiography and social sciences

25 May 2021 Klaus Bachmann

This article argues that instead of using inconsistent and often tautological ad hoc definitions from social sciences and the humanities, the legal notion of genocide as it emerges from the Genocide Convention and the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals should also be applied to historical atrocities. This helps to prevent the inflationary use of the term ‘genocide’, whose inevitable consequence is that this term is voided of any meaning. Using instead the legal concept makes it possible to disentangle genocidal from non-genocidal violence and to prevent this notion from becoming obsolete. Three examples from German colonial...

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Why AREI

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

Veritas est adequatio rei et intellectus – this is how St Thomas formulated the definition of truth in his treatise ‘De Veritate’. Truth is the correspondence between a thing and a judgment, or, to explain it in another way, the correspondence between our judgment and the actual state of affairs. This so-called correspondence definition, which goes back to Aristotle, has formed the basis of Europeans’ thinking about the world for centuries, from ancient times onwards, and has inspired them to discover ways of approaching the truth. What is more, it is still shared by a considerable number of philosophers as well as by the overwhelming...

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Russia and the US in the Mirrors of Academic Research

25 May 2021 Ivan Kurilla

The article offers a comparative analysis of Russian and American scholarship on each other states and society. The author overviews the study of US history in Russia, the study of Russian history in the US, the study of the history of Russian–American relations, and the discourse of each country on the contemporary political reality in the other. Both Russian and the US research agendas demonstrated some degree of dependence of the other country’s policies, they were engaged in a limited dialogue, but most heavily they were influenced by domestic politics. The author claims also that the image of Russia in the United States and the ...

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Histories of Nations and Borders: Critical Reflections Timothy Baycroft

25 May 2021 Timothy Baycroft

Examining the question of ‘which history’ of a nation emerges over time and why, this article interrogates the ways in which histories and borders come to acquire symbolic significance and become ‘national histories’ and ‘national borders’. It begins with a thorough analysis of the elements that contribute to and the forces which have an impact upon the development of national identity, national symbolism, and national memory. Then, drawing from a range of examples, it provides serious critical reflection on the work of historians and the nature of the questions that need to be asked in order truly to understand the processes of n...

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‘It is terrible that we have such a low level of historical knowledge’: Interview with Sergey Mironenko

25 May 2021 admin a

Biographical note Sergey Mironenko, Head of Research of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). Historian, PhD in Historical Sciences, Professor, Associate Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Director of GARF since May 1992. Head of Research at GARF since March 2016. A Panel Member of the Federal Archival Agency of Russia. Head of the 19th to early 20th century Russian History Department at the Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Member of the editorial boards of the journals ‘Istoricheskiy Arkhiv’ (History Archive), ‘Rodina’ (Motherland), and ‘Voyenno-Istoricheskiy Zhurnal’ (M...

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National master narrative: vicissitudes of method

25 May 2021 Georgiy Kasianov

This article focuses on the historiographical, cultural and political phenomenon known as the national master narrative. Its cognitive, interpretative and explicatory potential is analysed together with its advantages and shortcomings. Drawing on Ukrainian historiography, the place of the national master narrative on the historiographical, cultural and political map is discussed. Its influence on the writing of history in modern Ukraine is also addressed. Keywords: national master narrative, essentialism, nation, Ukrainian historiography, analytical history ...

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The Clash of the Soviet-Russian and Nationalist Narrations of the Past

25 May 2021 Šarūnas Liekis

Formerly occupied states or modern national movements have to develop narratives of resisting invaders or occupiers in order to teach the young never to be defeated in the future. Narratives of resistance explain temporary or permanent failures by employing resistance storytelling, which puts forward compensatory and defensive mechanisms for repressed peoples. This article is a case study of the narratives of resistance in Lithuania. The article explores the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance, the pro-Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups, the Polish Home Army, or the Jewish partisans in Soviet partisan formations in the framework of nar...

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Anti-Polish World War II Narratives in the Russian Internet Media Space: a Case Study of the period December 2019 to April 2020

25 May 2021 Veranika Laputska

The article touches upon the anti-Polish narratives in the Russian Internet media space that appeared during the period between December 2019 and April 2020. An anti-Polish media campaign initiated by the speech of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in December 2019 gradually unfolded into a large-scale information war that included multiple actors disseminating the relevant narratives. For the purpose of the study publication of the following segments of the Russian Internet were analyzed: Russia’s state and official sources, Russian main TV programs, Russian leading historical societies, Russian independent historians and their social me...

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Marek Kornat, Mariusz Wołos. Józef Beck. Biografia. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2020.

25 May 2021 Dušan Segeš

It is difficult to imagine narratives on the period preceding the Second World War that do not include Józef Beck. As minister for foreign affairs, he was not just a key figure in Polish diplomacy; because of the important role that he played at a critical moment in global history, historiography pays much greater attention to him than it does to other representatives of the political elite of the Second Polish Republic. ...

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