Conservatism and Memory Politics in Russia and Eastern Europe

Katalin Miklóssy, Markku Kangaspuro, Katalin Miklóssy, Markku Kangaspuro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032170855
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000516760
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book discusses the diverse practices and discourses of memory politics in Russia and Eastern Europe. It argues that currently prevailing conservativism has a long tradition, which continued even in Communist times, and is different to conservatism in the West, which can accommodate other viewpoints within liberal democratic systems. It considers how important history is for conservatism, and how history is reconstituted according to changing circumstances. It goes on to examine in detail values which are key to conservatism, such as patriotism, Christianity and religious life, and the traditional model of the family, the importance of the sovereign national state within globalization, and the emphasis on a strong paternal state, featuring hierarchy, authority and political continuity. The book concludes by analysing how far states in the region are experiencing a common trend and whether different countries' conservative narratives are reinforcing each other or are colliding.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Abbreviations
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Conservatism and memory politics
• 1. Putin’s history, politics and conservative turn
• 2. A conservative turn in a patriarchal society? The entangled memory of female political activism in post-Soviet Russia
• 3. Non-traditional sexual relationships: Law, forgetting, and the conservative political discourse in Russia
• 4. How to conserve Kertbeny’s grave? A case of post-communist queer necrophilia
• 5. Literary theosis and witnessing the Gulag: Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories and Evgeni Vodolazkin’s The Aviator
• 6. Revisiting the narrative of conservative Russian Islam
• 7. Memory and leverage: Russia’s history policing and the remembrance of 1956 in Hungary
• 8. A conservative turn in Belarus? Exploring the normative power potential of the Russian conservative agenda
• 9. Serbia and Russia: Between piety and politics
• 10. Paradigm change in Holocaust remembrance: Instrumentalizing conservatism
• 11. Dilemma over Stalin: Confronting the Great Patriotic War and the reputation of Russia
• 12. Victory Day, family style: Grassroots war commemoration, collective memory habits, and the shaping of public affect
• 13. The routinisation of conservatism: Key stakeholders of patriotic education in contemporary Russia
• 14. Whose turn, for whom? Conservative values and Putin’s social contract
• Bibliography
• Index