Remembering Katyn
1. Auflage September 2012
200 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Katyn- the Soviet massacre of over 21,000 Polish prisoners
in 1940 - has come to be remembered as Stalin's
emblematic mass murder, an event obscured by one of the most
extensive cover-ups in history. Yet paradoxically, a majority of
its victims perished far from the forest in western Russia that
gives the tragedy its name. Their remains lie buried in killing
fields throughout Russia, Ukraine and, most likely, Belarus. Today
their ghosts haunt the cultural landscape of Eastern Europe.
This book traces the legacy of Katyn through the interconnected
memory cultures of seven countries: Belarus, Poland, Russia,
Ukraine, and the Baltic States. It explores the meaning of Katyn as
site and symbol, event and idea, fact and crypt. It shows how Katyn
both incites nationalist sentiments in Eastern Europe and fosters
an emerging cosmopolitan memory of Soviet terror. It also examines
the strange impact of the 2010 plane crash that claimed the lives
of Poland's leaders en route to Katyn.
Drawing on novels and films, debates and controversies, this book
makes the case for a transnational study of cultural memory and
navigates a contested past in a region that will define
Europe's future.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
A Note on Translation and Transliteration
Map
Timeline
Introduction: Remembering Katyn
Chapter One: Katyn in Poland
Chapter Two: Katyn in Katyn
Chapter Three: Katyn in Ukraine
Chapter Four: Katyn in Belarus
Chapter Five: Katyn in the Baltic States
Chapter Six: Katyn in Russia
Chapter Seven: Katyn in Katyn
Coda: 'Katyn-2'
Bibliography
Times Literary Supplement
"A fine example of international research collaboration."
Russian Review
"An important corrective to most recent studies of imperialism, which rarely transcend the national optic."
Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research
"This book, a rare example of collective scholarship, is more than path-breaking. It manages to move around the furniture in an entire field, that of memory studies, one that is shared by literary scholars, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, historians and others. This exploration of memory events is essential reading for all students in the social sciences and the humanities."
Jay Winter, Yale University
"In an exemplary way, this multi-disciplinary in depth case study reconstructs the symbolic legacy of Katyn as a transnational trauma. The book is a unique collective achievement with genuine potential to integrate this key event into European memory."
Aleida Assmann, University of Konstanz
"The crime of Katyn has bedeviled European memory for decades, and only an ambitious pan-European effort such as this one can reveal every angle of the problem - and some of the solutions."
Timothy Snyder, Yale University
History at the University of Cambridge.
Rory Finnin is Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies and Chair of the
Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies at the
University of Cambridge.
Uilleam Blacker is MAW Postdoctoral Research Associate at the
University of Cambridge.
Julie Fedor is MAW Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the
University of Cambridge.
Simon Lewis is a PHD candidate at the University of
Cambridge.
Maria Mälksoo is Senior Researcher at the University of
Tartu, Estonia.
Matilda Mroz is Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the
University of Greenwich.