Researchers in social memory are bound in their work to include the relations occurring between the memory of local communities and the official historical policy of the state. When events retained and exposed in the local memory are persistently passed over in silence, distorted, falsified or removed from the public sphere by means of decisions taken by the censorship, the remembrance of these events takes on the character of concealed memory, which integrates the given social group tightly (e.g., the Siberians, the Silesians). The transformations which followed in Poland after 1989 (liquidation of the Censorship) formally introduced „commonwealths of memory” into the public debate; however, they affected the stereotypes and prejudices held by Poles only to an insigni' cant degree. The ideologization of the state policy of remembrance, which has been gaining strength for some time (among others, the amended act on the Institute of National Remembrance) practically makes it impossible for a free dialogue to function in the public space. If the official (state) remembrance imposes the way of understanding, interpreting and remembering past events and this under the threat of legal repressions, then there again we come to deal with its clash with unofficial (local) memory, in consequence of which the „bearers” of the latter may develop a sense of being excluded from the official historical narration. Such a situation not only hampers conducting studies among the stigmatized or excluded groups, but primarily requires from the researchers to be particularly responsible while interpreting the images of memory which are lived through by these communities.
The text concentrates on the multidimensional aspects of transforming a Masurian town into a tourist attraction. The analyzed material includes tourist brochures, museum guides and leaflets, town promotion events, fairs, and festivals. The article demonstrates what role folk literature and local lore play in the recapturing of the site identity, especially when it is part of Recovered Territories. It further shows how certain aspects of this process are forgotten. The author investigates cultural meanings of such procedures, uncovers attitudes towards history and local memory, and finally asks questions about their role in contemporary culture.
The article is an attempt to investigate the scale, form and scope of memory about forced laborers in the Polish symbolic landscape. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of monuments and plaques dedicated to former forced laborers. In the period of the Polish People’s Republic workers were a group of Second World War victims which was too common be given a special place in the collective memory of Poles. Only the creation of the Association of Poles – Victims of the Third Reich at the end of the 1980s opened the space for a symbolic commemoration of the deportation of Poles to forced labor in Germany. An opportunity to incorporate forced labor into the memory of the Second World War came with the debate on reparations from the German government at the beginning of the 21st century. In today’s Poland there are not many places dedicated to those nearly 3 million people who make up this specific group of victims of the German occupation of Poland. Numerous such places were established in the last few years, mainly as part of grassroots initiatives aimed at discovering the local history of a particular area. However, forced labor is still insufficiently present in the Polish memory of the Second World War.
The social changes throughout the twentieth century had provoked uneven development of cities within the former Czechoslovakia. Each of the political regimes that alternated at the periodicity of approximately twenty years had marked, through the ideology, not only the ethnic and social profile of the city and its districts, but also their urbanistic and architectonical characteristics, symbolism and the outer appearance of the streets. As a result, important changes occurred in the spatial division of the city as well as the identity of city spaces. The author analyzes the impacts of social changes on the spatial diversity of the city and social composition of its districts from the beginning of the twentieth century, but focuses especially on the processes of transformation of the post-socialist city and its present state. Analyses the role of local memory in the politics of the self-government of the city and in the attitudes and activities of its inhabitants.
The article presents the tradition of celebrating the Day of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria and traces its development from a predominantly religious feast into a national holiday. The author points out that the first celebrations of the Feast Day of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in 1850s through 1870s were connected with the struggles of Bulgarians against the Greek Patriarchy in Tsarigrad (Istanbul) under whose authority the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was at the time. These celebrations were expressions of the aspiration for independent autonomous church and religious service in Bulgarian language, and thus also for Bulgarian education. The article traces the history of celebrating the feast day of the holy brothers in the famous class school (later – a high school) “Sts. Cyril and Methodius” in Plovdiv. The author points out that before the Liberation Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878, the day of the two Slavic apostles and holy brothers, which was celebrated in Plovdiv and in other towns of the Ottoman Empire, was perceived as a symbol of Bulgarians’ struggle for church independence and the celebrations were loaded with revolutionary pathos. After the national liberation, the Day of Sts. Cyril and Methodius continued to be loaded with explicit ideological meanings and became a symbol of the cultural and political unification of Bulgarians from the liberated Bulgarian lands, as well as for those that remained outside the state territory. Attention is paid to the special emphasis on the involvement of the celebration of this day within the educational process during World War II. The article discusses also the changed meanings of this festive day during the socialist period – in the direction mainly towards the educational activities of the two brothers. The reconstruction of the previous rituals on this feast day nowadays is also traced in the text.
The author shows philomathism in Poland as a phenomenon of cultural memory, sustained thanks to the medium of literature and art as well as personal documents (of not historical research) and serving to strengthen the national community. The author of the article considers the relationship between national and local (regional) philomathism, the author reflects if the philomaths were a kind of geo-generation, a generation closely related to the places where they lived and carried out their activities, when and why the “geo” aspect was forgotten. The author analyzes several examples of philomathic understanding of the relationship with place, its nature, history, indigenous culture, civic life, e.g. the creation of grass-roots knowledge, a holistic approach to science. The article also raises the question of whether the philomathism of Podlasie, Kroże, Świsłocz, and Minsk existed and how it manifested itself in the Society’s statutes and in the biographies and experience of its members.
PL
Autorka pokazuje filomatyzm w Polsce jako fenomen pamięci kulturowej, podtrzymywanej dzięki medium literatury i sztuki oraz dokumentów osobistych (a nie badań historycznych) i służący wzmacnianiu wspólnoty narodowej. Rozważa relację filomatyzmu narodowego i lokalnego (regionalnego), zastanawia się, czy filomaci stanowili rodzaj geopokolenia, generację ściśle związaną z miejscami ich życia i działania, kiedy i dlaczego aspekt „geo-” został zapomniany. Autorka analizuje kilka przykładów filomackiego rozumienia związku z miejscem, jego naturą, historią, autochtoniczną kulturą, życiem obywatelskim, np. oddolne tworzenie wiedzy, holistyczny stosunek do nauki. W artykule pojawia też pytanie, czy istniał filomatyzm podlaski, krożski, świsłocki, miński i jak przejawiał się w ustawach Towarzystwa oraz w biografiach i doświadczeniu jego członków.
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