On 21 May I delivered a paper entitled ‘Memory at War in Estonia and the Crimea: a comparative analysis of commemorative practices surrounding the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945’ at the conference Baltic Sea and Black Sea Region: Influences, Confluences and Crosscurrents in the modern and contemporary ages organised by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies in Targoviste, Romania 20-22 May. Many thanks are due to the organisers for such an engaging and successful conference.

Conference Paper Abstract

This paper takes the Russian-speaking communities of Estonia and the Crimea as a comparative case study for the role of memory in cultural aggression in current-day Eastern Europe. It uses the ‘memory event’ paradigm (Etkind, 2010) to explore public war commemoration (9 May Victory Day) along three analytical axes: 1) state vs. publically led; 2) import vs. export model; and 3) creative vs. recreative.

Russian-speakers on the territory of Estonia became part of the ‘beached masses’ (Laitin, 1998) when the borders of the Soviet Empire ebbed in 1989. The trajectory of this unexpected minority moved from exclusion from Estonian citizenship through to an integration model of de facto assimilation. Against this background, Ehala (2009) has theorized the ‘bronze soldier’ incident as a powerful rejection of the Russian speakers’ claim to be culturally recognised. Notable here is the role of young Russian speakers in contesting the hegemonic national narrative of Soviet invasion and occupation.

After 1991, the Crimea was consolidated (unexpectedly for many) as part of independent Ukraine, however its status as an Autonomous Republic attests to the cultural distinctness of the peninsula. Russian speakers form a strong majority which is reflected in the proud military past commemorated for example in the port town of Sevastopol – the uneasy home to both the Ukrainian and Russian navies. The proud war narrative is counterposed here by the memory of the Crimean Tatars who were deported en masse by Stalin in 1944 to return only after 1991.

This paper compares and contrasts the cultural dynamics of memory and traces the congruence between ‘memory wars’ and vested interests in Estonia and the Crimea. It confirms a high degree of cultural standardisation of Victory Day celebrations which incorporate both creative and recreative elements. Such models and practices are actively exported to these regions by Russian political will and the influential Russian media sphere, however they are also actively imported by Russian speakers in her ‘near abroad’. Victory Day in the Crimea has wide political and institutional support which is reflected in largely state-organized and funded activities. In Estonia commemorative practices belong much more to the sphere of civil society activity. In both cases, Russia proper has instrumentalised memory politics as a way of protecting both her ‘compatriots’ and defending her cultural heritage within these geo-political zones.

The full text of this paper will appear in a forthcoming edition of the Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (peer-reviewed).

On 12 March 2011 I gave a paper entitled ‘Scraping the Memoryscape: territory and memory in the Crimea’ at the Memory at War postgraduate conference in Cambridge paper

In this paper I engaged with the so-called ‘spatial turn’ by focussing my attention on the geographical imagination of the subject as identified chiefly in the works of Foucault and Said. Of interest were the ways in which the material world is imbued with memory and, more specifically, how these territorialised memories are currently ‘at war’ in the Crimea. My use of the term ‘memoryscape’ here signified not only urban spaces and the constellation of monuments but recognised also the ‘man-madeness’ of the natural world, that it can be fruitful to examine the ‘production of space’ (Lefebvre) of mountains, rivers, land expanse and sea.

In my paper I argued that ‘imagining’ and ‘remembering’ the Crimea are intrinsically linked with territory and sense of place. I took three case studies to illustrate these processes. They corresponded roughly to the main ethnic groupings in Crimean society – the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians and Russians. The examples I chose for the case studies were not intended to be the most striking or emblematic, but rather demonstrate how the memoryscape paradigm as defined here can be fruitful for understanding contemporary memory wars in the area. This is not an entirely new approach, rather I am building on the work of previous scholars of the Crimea such as Gwendolyn Sasse[1]and recent work on new spatial history in Russia.[2]

Firstly I looked at the Crimean Tatars and their meta-level relation between territory, memory and identity. This is what Smith would refer to as an ‘ethnoscape’[3]whereby memories become territorialised into historic homelands. I then zoomed in on the territory of the Crimea and gave examples of fairly low-key memory sites (mountain tops, mosques, gardens) at which Crimean Tatars perform memories of the past. I then discussed the continued salience of territorialised memory among the Crimean Tatars in the context of on-going battles for land rights on the peninsula.

The second case study in my paper concerned language policy and practice in the Crimea. I made reference to the long legacy of name changing on the peninsula, which I argued is able to profoundly change the memoryscape of a territory. I detailed the language provisions of the Crimean Constitution before covering more contemporary developments from ‘Ukrainianisation’ of the 1990s to Crimean Tatar demands for the return of pre-1944 names.

Thirdly I looked at territory and memory from a Russian and Russian-language perspective. Traditionally the example of Sevastopol is given as a key site of Russian/Soviet memory in the Crimea. In this paper however I focussed on media discourse around plans to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait from southern Crimea to the Krasnodar Krai in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. I argued that, in addition to sensationalising, this media narrative serves to extend the discursive boundaries of the Crimea in a reciprocal exchange with those of Russia.

In each of these three case studies an important role is played by influences outside the Crimea. Finally, I reflected on notions of de-territorialisation, globalisation and cosmopolitanism, and what implication these might have for an analysis of territory and memory in the Crimea.

Those interested in the text of the paper should contact the author via this blog.

On 22 February 2011 I gave a paper at the Cambridge Russian Graduate Students’ seminar series. My paper was entitled ‘Workers and Whatever: history, memory and oblivion in the Crimea’; it contained an overview of current-day memory conflicts in the Crimea as well as further reflections on my January field-trip.

I began the paper with reference to my stage in doctoral studies and my role in the Memory at War project in Cambridge. I discussed the concept of the ‘memory event’ and the ways in which this paradigm has proved fruitful yet limited in my own work.

Firstly I discussed the question of memory and the Crimean Tatar community in the Crimea. I gave an overview of the history of deportation and return before proceeding to discuss Crimean Tatar groups’ use of memory politics to help resolve contemporary land disputes.

Secondly I discussed language policy and practice in the Crimea. I made reference to the long legacy of name changing on the peninsula, which I argue is able to profoundly change the memoryscape of a territory. I detailed the language provisions of the Crimean Constitution before covering more contemporary developments from ‘Ukrainianisation’ of the 1990s to Crimean Tatar demands for the return of pre-1944 names.

Thirdly, I turned my attention to the Russian community in Crimea. I analysed the memory focus of this group as centred around the fate of the Crimea under the auspices of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. A key memory site is the port town of Sevastopol, besieged and heroically defended during both the Crimean War and the Great Patriotic War, and which now stands itself as a monument to these events and serves as the uneasy home to naval base for the Ukrainian and Russian navies.

On a subtler but no less salient point, I highlighted the history of the Crimea as a centre for sanatoria and holiday resorts, making it both an object of nostalgia and a destination for ‘nostalgia tourism’.

In addition to these three pressing areas in contemporary memory disputes, my paper highlighted firstly the point that memory wars are not always acted out between groups with specific stakes; sometimes memory is a fight with the natural forces of forgetting. Secondly I stressed that it is important to look at what else there is besides memory in the Crimea. That is to say, although cultural memory is the object of my study, I must also be alert to that which is the context for and interplays with cultural memory.

Lastly, I brought attention to a dilapidated monument I had come across in Yalta. I discussed this instance of ‘urban decay’ in light of theories of monuments and monument ‘iconoclasm’, before theorising this former monument as a liminal zone where time starts again and signage slips into oblivion.

I have recently returned from my first field trip to Crimea; big thanks are due to the contacts and interviewees who made my time there successful.

I was based in Simferopol and travelled to a number of towns of interest to meet various ‘stakeholders’ in current-day memory wars in Crimea. The trip gave me a good impression of what issues are being discussed ‘on the ground’ and have prompted my literature review in new directions. Here I give a brief overview of some of my activities and discuss a few of the things which struck me whilst I was there.

One of the first must-see locations on my trip was the seaport town of Sevastopol, which is home to the headquarters of both the Ukrainian Naval Forces and the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This town is itself a monument to Russian naval and military might, with much to see for those interested in war history.

Sevastopol was besieged during the Crimean War and heroically, if unsuccessfully, defended by the army and local population. The echo of this experience during the Great Patriotic War has led to a potent mythology of Sevastopol as the City of Russian Glory[1]. I visited the Panorama Museum which contains Crimean War exhibits and the restored Panorama painting of the seige by Franz Roubaud. Our tour guide stressed that the panorama painting was based on eye witness accounts of those who were there on that day (depicting the height of the siege) thereby foregrounding the importance of transmitted memories for understanding history. At the beginning of the tour, the guide asked the young men to remove their hats; it is noteworthy that she invoked this traditional practice of mourning in preparation for the museum viewing.

Beyond the museums and exhibitions, there is a dizzying number of monuments in Sevastopol, over 2000 in total. When walking through a park, I even saw this – a monument marking the space where a monument will be erected.

That such memorialisation is both normalised and capitalised upon is shown by this political campaign poster, in which the politician is about to lay flowers at a monument.

Likewise there is no shortage of monuments in Yalta – resort town and host to the famous Yalta Conference which saw the ‘Big Three’ gather to reorganise post-war Europe. Many of Yalta’s monuments, especially along the seafront, are dedicated to Yalta’s heritage as a pilgrimage site for those seeking health, rest and well being. To a certain extent, these monuments promote Yalta’s current-day health spa industry.

As in any big town, there are monuments from different eras, the state of repair of which somewhat indicates the priorities of contemporary remembrance. When walking through the market I saw the following standing stone on a pedestal with no plaque on it, just advertisements and some graffiti.

I asked the nearest shop vendor if it was a monument and, if so, to what. She said, “it used to be a monument to workers but they took the plaque off it and now it’s just used for whatever.” If you would like to hear more of my reflections on this and other episodes, I warmly invite you to attend my seminar presentation on Workers and Whatever: History, Memory and Oblivion in the Crimea.[2]

In contrast to the cultural ‘hardware’[3] of monuments and museums, I met with dynamic and passionate individuals who are intent on not letting memories of the past drift into oblivion. I spent a day with Aleksandr Yanevich, a local historian from the village of Aromatnoe near Belogorsk.

As well as teaching history in the village, he recorded many life histories of its inhabitants and spent a lot of time in archives to build up a rich picture of the region’s history in the 20th century. He told me about how Aromatnoe and three nearby villages had been German colonies until the German population was deported in 1941. He described to me three wartime atrocities in the region and showed me the following monument to victims of a mass murder.

Incidentally, the Memory at War team had a seminar this week in which we discussed, among others, Paul Connerton’s text on ‘How Modernity Forgets’. Connerton argues that

‘The relationship between memorials and forgetting is reciprocal: the threat of forgetting begets memorials and the construction of memorials begets forgetting […] Memorials conceal the past as much as they cause us to remember it. This is evidently so with war memorials. They conceal the way people lived: where soldiers are directly represented, in war memorials, their image is designed specifically to deny acts of violence and aggression. They conceal the way they died: the blood, the bits of body flying through the air, the stinking corpses lying unburied for months, all are omitted.’[4]

Whilst Connerton makes a good point about the austerity and finality of many war monuments, I believe it is important to challenge this statement on two grounds. Firstly, many monuments depicting war or acts of war are deeply disturbing (such as this one). Secondly, I would argue that monuments do not teach us about the reality of war so much as they prompt associations with ‘soft’ cultural forms of remembrance such as books, films, school curricula and remembrance days. For example, every year on the anniversary of this particular atrocity, villagers and school children gather by the memorial and Mr. Yanevich tells the story of what happened.

Local historians such like Mr. Yanevich are all too aware of the possibility of such memories being lost through underfunding, emigration and death. He points out that he is also still fighting against the legacy of Soviet historiography; he found archival evidence that two villagers had been awarded the title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ but emphasises that nothing was known about this in the decades after the war, because one was a Crimean Tatar and the second was of German descent.

Mr. Yanevich has written down a detailed history of the villages into a book which is to be published this spring under financial sponsorship of the mayor. He made only one condition to this project – all 700 copies are not to be for sale but will be distributed free of charge to local villagers. Mr. Yanevich said, “I don’t want the books to go to just anyone, but to local people who are interested in their history. This is how I want to leave a monument to myself, not just that I taught in the local school.” In fact, Mr. Yanevich also helps disseminate this information overseas; he has hosted a number of descendants of deported German villagers so they can hear about their ancestors and see their former homes. This particular type of intergenerational transmission of memory foregrounds a transnationalism which is increasingly characterising modern-day memory events.

***

Again and again, people I met in Crimea stressed that what they were telling me about the past is based on ‘evidence’, ‘hard facts’ and ‘truth’. I always just took it that this is unsurprising for the post-Soviet space, where for many years the doctrine of ‘scientific historical truth’ held sway. But there is something to be said for historical truth and our attachment to it. Last week we had a talk by Professor Gabriel Motzkin from the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute on ‘The Role of Memory in the Construction of History’. The main thrust of his argument was that memory studies as a discipline does not get us any closer to historical truth. In many ways I felt that this was an incorrectly formulated line of argumentation, as memory studies (as our project understands it) neither tries to nor claims to be able to uncover historical truth; we are concerned with the effect of ‘representation of the past’ on the present and future. However Professor Motzkin’s talk does, I believe, remind us of two moral imperatives in our work: firstly, to refrain from propagating false versions of history; and secondly, to point out, is as far as possible, discrepancies between memory and history.

Professor Motzkin also wanted to stress that we, as memory studies researchers, cannot be entirely objective. To be honest, this seemed to me old hat; from the outset, I was keenly aware that researchers of ‘memory war’ are necessarily also participants in memory war. That is to say, however much we try to be objective when we enter the field, we will always impact upon it by virtue of our data selection and analysis. The only option as researchers is to be aware of and, in as far as possible, articulate our own discursive positionings vis-à-vis our work.

However this precise issue was on my mind as I returned from Crimea. Although I was reasonably confident that I knew my own relation to the subject matter, I became aware of the need to be prepared to better articulate my motivations. People I spoke to were generally receptive and open to my questions but I was, on one occasion, seriously challenged as to my purposes in Crimea and the ‘underlying agenda’ of the Memory at War project and our funders. I spoke with a local historian elsewhere who said he would be suspicious of my work, which he saw as divisive and inflammatory; he reckoned that I was being funded by European elites who want to destabilise Ukraine so that its capital would flow into the EU. He said, “If I remember correctly, England funded the Crimean War very well.” These kinds of ‘conspiracy theories’ are not uncommon in Russia and Ukraine and I hope to return to this theme in a later posting. On this occasion however I was rather taken aback and shall need to think how best to field such criticism and resistance in future visits to Crimea.

On 17th November a small group of 'enthusiasts' trekked into a forest in Crimea near the Suat region to restore a dilapidated monument. This was the spot where, ninety years ago, the partisan division of the 3rd Simferopol regiment was formed. Under the command of Paval Makarov, the partisans went on to defeat the White Army and bring Soviet rule to Crimea.

The participants cleared the area of rubbish, dead leaves and wood, cleaned the monument and hung a new commemorative plaque on it (along side the old one) [photo]. They then read poems about both the Red and White Armies, since 'no Russians won as a result of this fratricidal war’. The journalist who reported the expedition calls his article Without Winners; he also notes that ‘there are very many monuments in Crimea but almost none dedicated to the [Civil War]’.[1]

One of the participants discussed this event the following day on an online Crimean travel forum. He described how they had commemorated the liberation of Crimea from the White Army and ‘the end of a fratricidal civil war.’ Similarly to the journalist above, he and another forum member lament the lack of monuments commemorating this period in Crimea history and suggest possible locations for new memorials.[1]

However on this point they are rightly corrected by a third forum user…

This month has seen a great deal of commemorative activity around the Civil War. Elaborate ‘Cross processions’ were held in Sevastopol, Yalta, Feodosiya and Kerch during 14-16 November – the days marking ninety years since the withdrawal of the Russian Army from Crimea. In Kerch, a new memorial cross was erected and consecrated in honour of the ‘victims of the Red Terror’ [photo].[2]

Rather than a dearth of monuments, as suggested above, we in fact see a multiplicity of commemorative practices across the Crimean peninsula. One Crimean travel blogger recently reflected on this reality in the town of Kerch. He writes:

'I am astonished by the collection of commemorative signs in Kerch. But I just can’t decide for myself what this selection is indicative of – an absolute tolerance or an utter lack of discernment. Monuments to revolutionaries (Lenin, Kirov) are found along side monuments to their victims (the White Army, Russian nobility). Memorial plaques commemorating time spent by Russian tsars in the town are found neighbouring a street and factory named after Voykov […] who with rapture shot these emperors and their families.'[3]

One of his readers leaves the comment 'I am still more inclined to think of the residents of Kerch as being tolerant towards historical memory rather than undiscerning. Surely a 2600-year-old history operates philosophically. This is better than taking down monuments – let there be reminders of all epochs.'

Such cosmopolitan attitudes are perhaps attributable to the fact that these are travel websites which tend to be characterised by openness and a sense of exploration. However this disposition is not shared by all.

One of the organisers of the commemorative events in Yalta said, “It’s great to have these great big events [photo]. They revive historical memory and help instruct young people.”[4] One of his counterparts in Feodosiya reported, “on the same day we held a round table discussion in the local heritage museum on the theme of the white movement. There were very big arguments about monuments in Feodosiya. […] It is noticeable that these commemorative days are attracting the attention of an ever-greater number of people. Many took part in both the cross procession and the round table discussion. Fewer and fewer people in Feodosiya are remaining indifferent to their history.'[5]

Rather than a postmodern acceptance of multiple histories, what we witness here are local forms of memory war or perhaps ‘turf battles’ over how to commemorate the past and what role these activities should take in public life. The ‘enthusiasts’ who met in the woods to restore a neglected monument said “Repairing this monument carries with it no other meaning (commercial or political) other than patriotic.” This disclaimer is a timely reminder that commemorative activities can be many things but never apolitical.

Welcome to Memory and The Crimea, a research blog shadowing my PhD activities in the Department of Slavonic Studies in Cambridge. I am part of a collaborative research project called ‘Memory at War’ which explores the cultural dynamics of memory in Poland, Russia and Ukraine. We advance the thesis that there is a war raging in Eastern Europe over how to remember the past, in particular events associated with WWII and Soviet Socialism. We examine contemporary memorialising and commemorative practices through the innovative theoretical framework of the ‘memory event’ – a re-discovery of the past which creates a rupture with its accepted representation.

Within the Memory at War project, I focus on Crimea as a site of contested memory where the Ukrainian-Russian interface is mediated. My own methodological and theoretical approach to the subject is informed by my interdisciplinary academic background. I did my Bachelors degree in ‘European Studies’ with a major in Russian Language and Area Studies in the School of Arts and Humanities, Trinity College, Dublin. I then completed a Masters in ‘Race, Ethnicity and Conflict’ in the Department of Sociology in Trinity College.

Crimea is a fascinating region which remains under-researched in memory studies. The peninsula attracted much attention from international relations experts in the early 1990s as an area of likely conflict in the post-Soviet space. Much of the existing literature therefore grapples with why such outright conflict did not in fact materialise. Nowadays, Crimea continues to represent a curious ambivalence – a Ukrainian autonomous republic with a majority Russian population and a sizeable Crimean Tatar minority with their own traumatic memories of deportation and return in the 20th century. In addition to multifarious and overlapping commemorative practices, the elites of Ukraine, Russia and some international observers continue to make political mileage out of the ‘Crimea question’.

On my Memory and The Crimea research blog, the reader can expect pieces on press analysis, literature review, findings of field trips to the area, discussion of Memory at War project activities and more general reflections on the research process. Comments and exchange are warmly invited.

Judy Brown