Andrei Zavadski

Public history seeks answers to these questions in order to better understand how our world and ourselves are structured, how they are influenced by contemporary art and mass culture, what public holidays and popular TV series do with the past, and how it is represented in literature and computer games. Everything in the Past is the first collective monograph on public history in Russian. The book is divided into five thematic sections: 'Living in the Past', 'Writing about the Past', 'Showing the Past', 'Playing with the Past' and 'Managing the Past' - each with four or five chapters. Each chapter discusses the past's role in a particular area of human endeavour.

A blog post based on the following article: 
Robbe K and Zavadski A (2024/2023) ‘C’mon, turn Swan Lake on’: Memories of the 1990s at the Belarusian protests of 2020. Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media, 22: 115–141. https://digitalicons.org/issue22/cmon-turn-swan-lake-on-memories-of-the-1990s-at-the-belarusian-protests-of-2020/

This is the editorial introduction to Issue 03 "Decolonizing the Self: How Do We Perceive Others When We Practice Autotheory?" of The February Journal.

This issue is dedicated to self-decolonizing practices exercised through the prism of autotheory. Employing different genres and stemming from different geographical, epistemological, and other contexts, the volume’s contributions variously analyze ways in which personal experience and positioning, indigenous knowledges, and doing away with formal rigidity as well as utilizing media other than writing (dance, sound, and others) are important for self-decolonization.

Set in the tradition of museum ethnography, this article looks at museum participation through the lens of labor. Based primarily on interview material, it analyzes the lengthy—and laborious—participatory process behind the creation of “Berlin Global,” an exhibition at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, Germany. The authors explore three aspects of participation related to labor, as identified in their research: the different types of knowledge and experience that participants bring with them, the organization of the participatory work process, and the presentation of the participants' contributions within the exhibition. The authors argue that because museum participation tends to be viewed as an act of civic duty, individually and socially meaningful, the different kinds of labor involved in it are often overlooked, resulting in power imbalances between curators and their external partners. A greater awareness of the labor demanded by participatory work is able to address this problem, decreasing the number of frictions and tensions, and thus making mutual beneficiality, participation's main goal, more achievable.

This exploratory study is dedicated to the actualisation of memories of the 1990s during the 2020 protests in Belarus. The public discontent manifested during the latest presidential election campaign in summer 2020 and, following the election day of August 9, became countrywide. Among a multitude of symbols, slogans, and memes that constituted the demonstrators' protest imaginaries, a noticeable place was occupied by the references to the perestroika and the first post-Soviet decade. Based on poster images and media reports related to the events of summer 2020, this article explores how references to the 1990s were used by participants to produce meanings and evoke affects, as well as offers an analysis of the relevant mnemonic practices exercised at the protests.

Статья посвящена становлению в разных странах публичной истории как пространства коммуникации между представителями исторической науки и группами практиков, занимающимися работой с прошлым. Российский опыт формирования поля публичной истории описан главным образом на примере соответствующих образовательных программ. Из предложенной в предыдущих частях перспективы анализируется опыт проведения Лабораторией публичной истории конференции «Прошлое — чужая страна? Публичная история в России», а также материалы данного тематического блока.

This discussion’s participants – all public historians working on Russia, albeit from different disciplinary backgrounds and with different areas of expertise – speak about the past and the present of (public) history in the country, and touch upon possible futures. Beginning with an acknowledgment of the immense interest in historical knowledge that characterized the 1990s, the conversation goes on to examine the rise of the official historical politics in Putin’s Russia and their impact on historical science, memory work, and public engagement with the past more broadly. These developments contextualize the establishment of the first public history programs at Russian universities in the early 2010s, discussed here both in their specificities and compared to other countries. At the heart of the conversation is the war of aggression that Russia launched against Ukraine in February 2022. The participants of the discussion see it as a caesura, while at the same highlighting continuities in the regime’s historical politics before and after the invasion. Issues of postcolonialism and decolonization are also raised, as well as the question of (public) historians’ responsibility for the ongoing tragedy.

Employing the theoretical framework of participatory countermonuments, this essay discusses Philip Kojo Metz’s performance and sculpture SORRYFORNOTHING (2020), which can now be seen in the ‘Berlin Global’ exhibition at the Humboldt Forum, and the ‘Moving Mountains’ (2021–2022) exhibition of the artist collective PARA and artists Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani, at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig.

On December 16, 2020, the Humboldt Forum—a major cultural centre in the middle of Berlin—officially opened. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening took place online and consisted of two events: a press conference and an opening ceremony. Ambitious and expensive, the Humboldt Forum has been fraught with controversy ever since it was conceived. And even though, as of February 2021, the institution remains closed to visitors, the debate around it continues to be heated. This essay reflects on the Forum’s digital opening, the protests it provoked, and their media coverage. It argues that the institution’s present is complicated, but its future will be even more so.

В статье рассмотрены три российские музейные экспозиции, полностью или частично посвященные Гулагу и советской репрессивной сис­теме послесталинской эпохи: Исторический парк «Россия — моя история» (Москва), Музей истории Гулага (Москва) и Мемориальный комплекс политических репрессий «Пермь-36» (Кучино, Пермский край). В центре внимания исследователей — части экспозиций, которые объясняют характер и форму труда заключенных. Авторы показывают, что в современной России заметно усилилась репрезентация подневольного труда как «продуктивной работы на благо Родины», что перекликается со сформировавшейся в раннесоветские времена репрезентацией труда заключенных как части советского социалистического строительства. В статье показано, что образы «социалистичес­кого труда» в российских музейных экспозициях, посвященных Гулагу, постепенно вытесняют образы, отсылающие к рабству. Ключевые слова: память, Гулаг, музеи, репрес­сии, труд заключенных НОВОЕ ЛИТЕРАТУРНОЕ ОБОЗРЕНИЕ № 142 Т.2 (6/2016)

Статья посвящена становлению в разных странах публичной истории как пространства коммуникации между представителями исторической науки и группами практиков, занимающимися работой с прошлым. Российский опыт формирования поля публичной истории описан главным образом на примере соответствующих образовательных программ. Из предложенной в предыдущих частях перспективы анализируется опыт проведения Лабораторией публичной истории конференции «Прошлое - чужая страна? Публичная история в России», а также материалы данного номера.

Ключевые слова: публичная история, прикладная история, публичная сфера, историческая политика, образование

НЕПРИКОСНОВЕННЫЙ ЗАПАС № 112 (2/2017)

Сборник посвящен музею как пространству взаимодействия с прошлым. Современные музеи выполняют традиционную для просвещенческого проекта образовательную функцию, предоставляя возможности для познания того или иного фрагмента прошлого. При этом музеи все больше заботятся о соучастии зрителей, активизируя различные аспекты их опыта. Музеи работают с материальностью, телесностью, изображениями, звуками и запахами, становятся местом для театральных постановок и перформансов, выходят за пределы музейных стен в городское и цифровое пространства. Эта книга посвящена тому, как осознание музеями потенциала эмоционального восприятия прошлого влияет на его репрезентацию. Используя различные методологические подходы, авторы сборника – музееведы, историки, социологи, культурологи, кураторы и драматурги -- исследуют техники управления аффектом и эмоциями в современном и историческом контекстах. Музейные технологии рассматриваются в контексте проблем публичной истории, политики памяти, культурной политики, музейной теории и практики.

In our age of human rights, 'reconciliation' has been an aspiration of virtually all post-conflict societies or states that 'transitioned' from colonial, dictatorial or authoritarian regimes. 'Dialogue'-between (former) victims and perpetrators, (former) colonizers and the colonized, 'winners' and 'losers' of regime change-is typically posited as a principal means to achieve this goal. However, when practiced in projects based on standardized practices of 'dealing with the past' meant to stimulate interaction between representatives of conflicting sides (even with allowance for the variety of models of reconciliation-see Gabowitsch 2017), such approaches often fail to create social cohesion. Instead of producing tolerance, forgiveness and/or understanding, they frequently result in growing resentment and lack of sensitivity regarding the impact of the past on the present as well as in nationalist and other exclusionary practices (David 2020; Gensburger and Lefranc 2020; Mink 2008). Furthermore, reconciliation efforts, especially when facilitated by tokenistic dialogue, tend to erase the past of emancipatory struggles that do not fit into new ideologies of nation-building (Grunebaum 2011; Kirn 2022; Litvinenko and Zavadski 2020; Malinova 2021). They can also involve de-politicization of public life by suggesting that a contentious past can be transcended or overcome simply by declaring a new beginning (Khlevnyuk 2021) or drawing a 'thick line' between the past and the present, to quote the Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's (1989) parliamentary address, in which he rhetorically separated the transitional coalition government from the legacies of the Communist Party that had ruled Poland after the Second World War. Such politics of separation in the name of 'reconciling' different social and political groups to shape a new nation often lead to the marginalization and silencing of voices and experiences that envisioned other post-conflict, postcolonial or post-socialist futures, which can fuel memorybased societal tensions and ultimately result in polarization. While abuses involved in the process of reconciliation (and dialogue as its key mechanism) are hard to disregard, the potential for mutual understanding and solidarity that the idea of the dialogic carries is undeniable (Assmann 2015). In this issue, we propose to reflect on dialogic remembering beyond facile moralization and political instrumentalization, highlighting and theorizing practices that allow for sharing varying memories, voicing difference and dissent, relating to stories of others, and potentially creating new narratives that interlink divergent visions of the past.

This discussion's participantsall public historians working on Russia, albeit from different disciplinary backgrounds and with different areas of expertisespeak about the past and the present of (public) history in the country, and touch upon possible futures. Beginning with an acknowledgment of the immense interest in historical knowledge that characterized the 1990s, the conversation goes on to examine the rise of the official historical politics in Putin's Russia and their impact on historical science, memory work, and public engagement with the past more broadly. These developments contextualize the establishment of the first public history programs at Russian universities in the early 2010s, discussed here both in their specificities and compared to other countries. At the heart of the conversation is the war of aggression that Russia launched against Ukraine in February 2022. The participants of the discussion see it as a caesura, while at the same highlighting continuities in the regime's historical politics before and after the invasion. Issues of postcolonialism and decolonization are also raised, as well as the question of (public) historians' responsibility for the ongoing tragedy.

This essay introduces the 89 th issue of Berliner Blätter entitled Germany's Changing Memoryscape. Postsocialist, Postmigrant, and Postcolonial Dynamics. The introduction, as well as the issue as a whole, is dedicated to how German remembrance is being transformed by various posts, first and foremost those invoked in the title. It argues that while postmigrant, postsocialist, and postcolonial memories have still to make considerable inroads into changing the existing Holocaust-centered memory regime in Germany, they have already changed the country's broader memoryscape and are continuing to do so. The issue's focus is on ways in which this transformation is experienced in practice, and the following introductory remarks present the editors' key arguments, contextualizing them within German memory as it developed after World War II (WWII) and substantiating them with the volume's contributions.