UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference
Inclusion Exclusion
Thursday 16 February 4:30 – 6:00: Panel C2: Communism in Central and Eastern European Countries
Nikolai Vukov (Institute of Anthropology and Folklore, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences): ‘The commemorated and the excluded: the reshaped pantheons in eastern Europe, 1945-1956’
Over the entire period after 1945 in Eastern Europe, the socialist ideologies in power manifested a persistent readiness to remember their special dead, to revive them through commemorative acts, and to sustain their vitality. The contours of the political commemorations and of their uses by the ruling ideologies were set already in the first years after the end of World War II. The commemorations of the special dead introduced novel conceptualizations of the sacred and defined characteristic modes of cohesion between the living and the dead, between the ideologies and their addressees. The special dead were made instrumental in forming the frames of the political culture, in politicizing the public sphere, and in shaping the communal identities after 1945 in Eastern Europe. The selection of new figures appropriate for commemoration introduced new lines of inclusion and exclusion in the socialist pantheons and drew their contours for the following decades.
The aim of the current paper is to reflect on the dynamics of reshaping the post-war public pantheons and on the new lines of inclusion and exclusion applied to the special dead in the first decade after 1945 in Eastern Europe. The paper will address diverse means of including certain dead and excluding others from public life - mourning rituals, commemorative ceremonies, monument building, propaganda work, etc. Utilizing the resources provided by history and anthropology of death, the paper will view inclusion and exclusion in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945 as particular instances of putting communist propaganda into practice and as launching grounds for rewriting history in socialist ideological modes. By means of a broader comparative framework across the countries of Eastern Europe, the paper will reveal the historical experience of 1945-1956 as a product of a cross-national elaboration of particular techniques for structuring memory and for its politicization over the years to follow.
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