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AbstractThousands of Roma were killed in Ukraine by the Nazis and auxiliary police on the spot. There are more than 50,000 Roma in today’s Ukraine, represented by second and third generation decendants of the genocide survivors. The discussion on Roma identity cannot be isolated from the memory of the genocide, which makes the struggle over the past a reflexive landmark that mobilizes the Roma movement. About twenty Roma genocide memorials have been erected in Ukraine during last decade, and in 2016 the national memorial of the Roma genocide was opened in Babi Yar. However, scholars do not have a clear picture of memory narratives and memory practices of the Roma genocide in Ukraine. A comprehensive analysis of the contemporary situation is not possible without an examination of the history and memory of the Roma genocide before 1991.

International audience

This paper aims at elaborating a new theoretical framework and a new methodology in order to identify the location of history discipline endorsed by the East European communist regimes between scholarly production and propaganda. The case study considered is the historiography produced by the History Institute of the Romanian Communist Party (Isisp) during the Ceausescu regime (1965-1989). This highly ideological, but still polymorphic historiography is placed into the context of the 19th and 20th centuries’ professionalization of history in Europe. Since historiography has been the main mean to develop nationalist messages, this paper is also a contribution to the study of nationalism. Since history-writing is a myth-breaker but also a (national) myths-maker, the theory considers that the Isisp historians were elaborating an academic, scholarly standard while performing the mandatory metanarrative canon imposed by the communist Party, creating a double-set of coherence, for the party and for their own profession. The theory implies also a methodology of analysis which integrates the study of the history-writings, considered in diachronical perspective, together with the collective biographies of Isisp and of its historians.

Romania: land of conquest by Romans, Huns, Turks, last outpost of Christendom in Eastern Europe, part of the Eastern front during the 20th century wars, a Soviet satellite and, finally, member of the European Union and of NATO. Romania has always been subject to different ideas of identity meant to define its essence: latinity or dacianism? Europe or authochthonism? The essay aims at analysing the debate regarding the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people since its origin in the 17th century, through the debates of the 19th century and the interwar period and, finally, analysing the debate between latinity and dacianism during the Ceauşescu regime in the light of the cultural politics of the regime and of the debate between different factions of intellectuals. As stated explicitly in the text, the original version of this article was written in italian and has been published in the collection BASSI, Jacopo; CANÈ, Gianluca (eds.) Sulle spalle degli antichi. Eredità cassica e costruzione delle identità nazionali nel Novecento, Milano, Unicopli, 2014.

The essay explores Peter Weiss's play "Die Ermittlung" (1965) and public reactions to it in BRD, DDR and Sweden.

This article analyzes newspaper representations of Nordic neighboring countries at the 1994 winter Olympics. Held in Lillehammer, Norway, the games constituted an enormous sporting success for the Norwegians, while neighboring Finland and Sweden fared much worse, which led national media in all three countries to contemplate on the discrepancy. Focusing on the tension between national and macro-regional Nordic identities, this article argues that media neighbor-images did in fact not compromise the seemingly collision-bound norms of “national rivalry” and “Nordist friendship”. Instead, the two norms informed and enforced each other through the key concept of humor, which created a safe media space for an Olympic dramaturgy of “siblinghood” to play out in. The analysis complements previous research on Nordic identity through highlighting the importance of emotion, popular cultural narratives, and intra-national neighbor relations for the construction of Nordicness.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo el análisis de la relación entre la historia y el poder político en la Rumania comunista durante el gobierno de Nicolae Ceauşescu. La sección de apertura del artículo tiene como objetivo explicar cómo la historiografía rumana fue sustituida por una versión pro-soviética y pro-estalinista, con el objetivo de proclamar la superioridad de la Unión Soviética y del comunismo. En segundo lugar, la primera sección muestra el delicado paso entre el estalinismo y el comunismo nacional. Como explica la primera sección, el liderazgo rumano entendió que eliminar la dependencia de Moscú era esencial para garantizar la estabilidad interna. Por esta razón, tuvo que crearse una legitimidad genuina al reeditar la ideología nacional rechazada en 1948. La historia nacional recuperó su importancia primordial dentro de la cultura rumana, esta vez al servicio de la élite estalinista y al lado de los símbolos marxista-leninistas. La segunda sección tiene como objetivo mostrar el desarrollo del nuevo canon comunista nacional después de 1965, una vez que Nicolae Ceauşescu asumió el poder. La segunda sección presenta las principales tendencias desarrolladas por la historiografía rumana para inspirar lealtad al Partido Comunista Rumano. Como muestra el artículo, a principios de los años ochenta, el nacionalismo y el culto del líder se convirtieron en las principales tendencias de esta metanarrativa histórica. El epílogo señala brevemente las continuidades y los cambios producidos para la historiografía rumana por el cambio de régimen de 1989.

Postcolonial theory has recently come under critique as an interpretative scheme applied to Eastern Europe and particularly Ukraine. However, a closer look suggests that the critique applies only to some aspects of the approach, such as a focus on power relations and representations, while the key question should be rephrased as whether the Ukrainian subject was constituted as a colonial subject. A range of empirical material from 1920s Ukrainian discourses, both Soviet and émigré, is analyzed to shed light on how Ukrainians constructed their subjectivity as “a site of disorder” (Dipesh Chakrabarty), splitting themselves into uncultured peasant masses to be modernized and erased as a voiceless subaltern subject, on the one hand, and modernizing elites, on the other. This split can be understood as an epitome of the colonial condition.