210166 SE M4: International Politics and Development (2020S)

German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeing 1970 in front of the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has become an iconic image of public atonement. In the context of West Germany’s new “Ostpolitik” this gesture symbolized the recognition of responsibility for past crimes as the foundation for renewed trust and friendly relations with the Eastern neighbors. Since then, this gesture has been reproduced in various international contexts. As argued by some scholars, apology for past wrongdoings is a sign of political and moral progress and a new international norm (e.g. Barkan 2000); it serves as a crucial element of collective reconciliation processes. The post-WWII German-French reconciliation became a model for Eastern Europe, where the fall of communist regimes in 1989 opened an opportunity to build a new European order based on the mutual recognition of historical injustices. The reconciliation process, however, is often complicated by “memory wars” emerging from the clash of nationalistic narratives about the past and the growing securitization of collective memory.

The course addresses the reconciliation processes and “memory wars” in post-1989 Eastern Europe. More specifically, it focuses on dealing with the difficult past in Germany’s relations with Poland and Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic), in Polish-Ukrainian, Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-Baltic relations. Through discussing concepts such as apology, restitution, reconciliation, mnemonic conflicts and mnemonic security, students will learn to analyze the role of history and memory in interstate relations. Various examples from the region will be analyzed in class; attention will be paid not only to the official political rhetoric, but also to civil society, churches, historians’ commissions and other institutions and actors.