Paper Abstracts
Polish-Ukrainian Reconciliation: Traditional Views and the Roots of Reconciliation from World War II to the Late 1980s
Frank E. Sysyn
Ukrainian and Polish Historical Commissions
Friday, March 12, 2010, 10:30 – 12:30
Polish-Ukrainian dialogue and reconciliation are based on differing narratives that first emerged in the seventeenth century and were crystallized in the nineteenth century. Crucial to all discussions in the twentieth century are the differing interpretations of the events of 1918-23. In many ways the very choice of time periods for discussing Polish-Ukrainian relations and conflicts shapes the varying interpretations. After World War II, much of the discussion of the Polish-Ukrainian shared past took place in the West in diaspora and émigré communities, with scholars in Poland joining the discussion more and more after the 1960s. In contrast, scholarship on Polish-Ukrainian relations and public discussion only began in Ukraine in the late 1980s.
The Longest Reconciliation: Polish and Ukrainian Memories on Polish-Ukrainian Military Conflicts in the 20th Century
Yaroslav Hrytsak
Ukrainian and Polish Historical Commissions
Friday, March 12, 2010, 10:30 – 12:30
This paper focuses on efforts of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation since 1989, with a special emphasis on two episodes: public debates over Cmentarz Orlat in Lviv/Lwow (2002) and controversies over the 60th anniversary of ethic cleansing in Volhynia (2003). Both issues are put in a broader comparative context, and analyzed from a perspective of later developments after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Institute of National Remembrance: Polish Model of Dealing with the Totalitarian Past
Krzysztof Persak
Ukrainian and Polish Historical Commissions
Friday, March 12, 2010, 10:30 – 12:30
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN) was established in 2000 as a public institution charged with the task of confronting the dark historical legacy of the World War II, with Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland, and the post-war communist dictatorship. The Institute was designed as a hybrid organization, whose four main departments perform activities and tasks characteristic to a research and education center, an archive, an investigative body (with full powers of public prosecutor’s office), and finally a body responsible for vetting people holding or running for public offices for their possible past collaboration with the Communist State Security Service.
The principal idea lying behind the foundation of the IPN was to solve the problem of the files of the Communist State Security Service, which were still in the custody of secret services since the systemic change of 1989/90. Accordingly, the IPN Archive concentrated documents of State Security and other repressive institutions of the Communist regime with the aim to grant victims access to “own files” as well as make the files available to researchers and journalists. This documentation forms the principal source-basis for IPN’s research, which is, however, not limited to topics connected with the activity of the Communist secret police, and repression and resistance to the Communist system, but covers a variety of themes related to the history of the 1939–1989/90 period. The newly created IPN incorporated an institution with a long-established tradition in Poland, dating from 1945, the Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Under new circumstances the Main Commission was charged with conducting penal proceedings concerning Nazi and Communist crimes as well as other crimes which were classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on Poles between September 1, 1939 and July, 31 1990. In 2007, the Vetting Office was attached to the IPN as its fourth department.
Since the beginning, the IPN confronted inter alia the problems of inter-ethnic violence during and after World War II, particularly in cases where the perpetrators were Poles. The first major challenge, both in terms of historical research and penal investigation, was the massacre of Jews in Jedwabne in Northeastern Poland in July 1941, uncovered by Jan T. Gross in his well-known book Neighbors. Another case investigated by a specially created panel of historians was the so-called “Bloody Sunday” in Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) in September 1939, when the Polish Army shot several dozen German saboteurs during the initial days of World War II. The IPN also dealt extensively (in all areas of its activity: books, conferences, exhibits, etc.) with the history of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict of 1939–1947, including the ethnic cleansing of Poles by Ukrainians in Volhynia in 1943–1944 and the deportation of ethnic Ukrainians from Eastern Poland in 1947.
Opening the files of the secret police not only opened up new possibilities for research and assessment of the Communist system, but also brought problems connected with the judgment of past conduct of individuals. Disclosure of the identities of secret collaborators (informers) of the Communist State Security Service turned out one of the most controversial issues in Poland. Apart from disputes arising out of genuine differences in views on whether and how secret collaborators should be exposed and treated, there were also many myths and misunderstandings in that area. In recent years, debates over State Security files and secret collaborators seem to have somewhat overshadowed other activities of the IPN in the eyes of public opinion in Poland in the recent years.
Ten years of operation of the Institute of National Remembrance provide a suitable perspective to present and analyze its activities and reassess its experience in coming to terms with Poland’s difficult past in the latter half of 20th century.
The Baltic States and Russia: Bilateral Lessons from Unilateral Commissions
Vello Pettai
Present and Absent Victims: The Baltic States and Romania
Friday, March 12, 2010, 1:45 – 3:45
Since the late 1980s the question of historical Aufarbeitung in the Baltic states has concerned primarily the issue of the Soviet occupation of these countries in 1940 and the historical, political and legal assessment that should be given to these events and to the decades that followed until re-independence in 1991.1 Since the perpetrator of these events, the Soviet Union, eventually disappeared, it has subsequently been Russia as the legal successor to the USSR that has been the focal point for dealing with this past history.
In this sense, it should be noted that the overall bilateral relationship between each of the Baltic states and Russia is extremely multidimensional and complex. After all, each relationship involves a legacy of over 50 years of rule and a multitude of social, political and economic transformations that took place. The specific dimension of historical truth is therefore but one contentious issue.
However, in many ways history is the over-arching dimension in these relations, since it is on the basis of a legal examination of this history that the Baltic states have derived a special political doctrine (termed legal continuity), which they have used to justify a range of specific state policies, most notably restrictive citizenship rules, large-scale property restitution and outstanding border claims, all of which have greatly exacerbated Baltic-Russian relations. In this sense, a deep and mutual examination of these historical starting-points would greatly help to improve relations between the countries in question.
However, the four major historical commissions that have thus far been created in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania2 have essentially been unilateral bodies aimed at establishing the Baltic side of the Soviet occupation, firstly in terms of historical facts, but also in terms of human and material damages suffered under Soviet rule. While there has been considerable value in this work from the perspective of establishing historical specifics, the commissions have had little impact on bilateral relations with Russia. If anything, the climate has worsened in recent years as evidenced by the 2007 “Bronze Soldier” riots in Tallinn and the creation in 2008 of the “Historical Memory” Foundation in Moscow aimed at presenting a Russian viewpoint of Soviet-era history, particularly in the Baltic states.
Using a four-part framework to analyze how historical commissions might contribute to bilateral reconciliation, this paper will assess the four major Baltic commissions and conclude that although these institutions have contributed greatly to the purely factual investigation of the Soviet era, their contribution to producing multiperspectivity with regards to history has been very limited. Thirdly, their societal impact (in terms of conveying their findings to the public) has been mixed, with the Lithuanian historian commission perhaps having the greatest effect, in the sense of reinforcing existing national narratives. Lastly, the commissions have affected the third-party international dimension by succeeding in conveying a Baltic perspective of the Soviet era to (in this case) major European political institutions, which in turn have supported the Balts (and other Eastern Europeans) in condemning Soviet communism.
As an explanation for these outcomes, the paper will examine how none of the four commissions were consciously crafted as a bilateral institution with Russia. Rather, the Estonian state commission was established (in 1992) as a purely national body. Meanwhile, the three international historical commissions were in fact an outgrowth from a separate political dynamic, namely pressure from international Jewish organizations and the United States to found historical commissions, which would examine the Holocaust in each of the Baltic states. Faced with this request, the Balts insisted that the commissions be given a dual task of examining both the Nazi and Soviet occupations. While this did result in single members within each of the commissions being appointed from Russia, this was far from a bilateral relationship.
In sum, the paper will argue that while the four Baltic historical commissions can not be faulted for not having an explicit bilateral Russian dimension, they can be seen as examples of how unilateral commissions can cause certain historical narratives to become more deeply embedded, thereby influencing the prospects for reconciliation. In addition, the commissions can be said to have caused power proportions within the bilateral relation to shift, in this case by spurring third-party European support for the Baltic position by virtue of the commissions having presented detailed historical and legal assessments of the Soviet era. Lastly, this shift has, in turn, hardened positions in Russia via the creation of a specific foundation aimed at countering Baltic ‘falsifications’.
Needless to say, it is impossible to talk about possible bilateral reconciliation without taking into account Russia’s own declining degree of political openness and readiness for dialogue. However, it is equally true that in the interim the Baltic historical commissions have affected the climate in their own way. Thus the aim of the paper will be to examine this particular dimension of an overall ongoing phenomenon.
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1. A second major historical issue has involved how to evaluate the Holocaust in these three countries, a topic which will be covered separately in the workshop by Eva-Clarita Pettai.
2. This paper will examine the three international historical commissions created in the Baltic states in 1998 as well as a separate Estonian commission, the State Commission for the Examination of Repressive Policies Carried Out During the Occupations (Okupatsioonide repressiivpoliitika uurimise riiklik komisjon).
Aufarbeitung of the Holocaust in the Baltic States: Comparing Baltic History Commissions’ Impact on Jewish-Baltic Reconciliation
Eva-Clarita Pettai
Present and Absent Victims: The Baltic States and Romania
Friday, March 12, 2010, 1:45 – 3:45
The creation of international history commissions in all three of the Baltic states in the fall of 1998 came as a reaction to a continuous international pressure on the newly democratic states and EU candidate-countries to confront the recent past and in particular the history of Nazi-German occupation and the Holocaust. Ever since the Baltic states regained independence in 1991, different gatherings by former Nazi war veterans, anti-Semitic rhetoric or statements by Baltic politicians defending the right of these people to commemorate (long forcible suppressed by the Soviets) had repeatedly caused consternation and dismay among local and international Jewish organizations, but also increasingly among the countries’ own Western allies. These parties gradually began to insist that Baltic officials act more decisively to help identify former perpetrators still alive as well as to research and raise awareness about the crimes that had also been committed by locals against the Jewish populations during Nazi occupation. This mounting international pressure eventually led the three Baltic presidents to create international commissions to investigate crimes against humanity committed under the Nazis, while also insisting that Stalinist crimes be equally examined. The presidents invited representatives from both former occupation powers (Germany and Russia) as well as from Jewish survivor organizations to serve as foreign members of the different Commissions, adding what can be called “bilateral dimensions” to their work. Created as non-judiciary or -prosecutorial bodies, the aim of these Commissions was primarily in the areas of historical fact-finding, history education (both in schools and general public) and international outreach.
Focusing on the Estonian and Latvian Commissions, with occasional comparative references to the Lithuanian Commission, this paper will evaluate in what way the Baltic Commissions in fact contributed to the process of Aufarbeitung of the Nazi period and to the raising of historical awareness both in their countries and abroad. Against the backdrop of recent studies on history commissions and their role in general reconciliation, I will identify different areas and criteria against which to measure the Baltic History Commissions’ success. First, the commissions will be evaluated as to how well they contributed to the collection of historical facts and to giving a complete account about victims and perpetrators, lines of command and responsibilities during the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust in their countries. Here all three Commissions generally receive high marks, with perhaps the Estonian one slightly higher than the other two. Second, I will examine how much the given accounts of the Holocaust include the various perspectives of former victims and/or perpetrators (i.e. the criteria of multiperspectivity) and thus reach an understanding (and eventually reconcile) with Jewish survivors of the crimes that were in part committed by Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. In this context the role of the Jewish Commission members (both local and international) becomes interesting. They have been certainly more involved in the actual investigation and evaluation process in Latvia (and Lithuania), rather less in Estonia. Third, the Commissions’ work will be evaluated in terms of its impact on society, both in the realm of school history education (curriculum) as well as historical awareness (public debates). Here the Latvian Commission gets much higher marks than the Estonian, the latter not having been involved in any curricula development or teacher training nor taking part in public debates on issues of memory culture relating to the Nazi period. Finally, and given their international character and mandate, the Commissions will be evaluated as to how successful they have been in achieving international acknowledgment of the recent Baltic historical experience. Here, of course, political support for the Commissions’ work will have to be taken into account. The Latvian Commission, for instance, benefited quite a bit from the active role taken up by President Vaira Vike-Freiberga’s in promoting international exchange on issues of the past. The Commission organized regular international conferences and spoke out on controversial issues of the past by issuing statements for the foreign ministry. The Estonian Commission was less active in this respect. The Lithuanian Commission has perhaps been the most active one in the field of education and teacher training. With its support, 62 so-called Tolerance Education Centers (TEC) were established throughout the country that seek to raise awareness among students about the past as well as address questions of ethnic and religious minorities today.
The paper will conclude with an examination of how we might explain the cross-national differences, as well as what these experiences might tell us in a general sense about historical Aufarbeitung through international commissions.
The Wiesel and Tismaneanu Commission: Lessons for Turkish-Armenian Historical Commissions
Lavinia Stan
Present and Absent Victims: The Baltic States and Romania
Friday, March 12, 2010, 1:45 – 3:45
Romania is the only post-communist country that set up separate historical commissions to investigate the Nazi and the communist pasts. The Wiesel Commission was established in 2003 as an international presidential commission mandated to investigate Romania’s role in the Holocaust, following extensive negotiations between the Romanian Social Democrat government, the Jewish communities in Romania, and the Romanian Jewish diaspora groups. By contrast, the Tismaneanu presidential Commission created in 2006 to investigate the communist past involved very limited discussions with opposition parties, victims’ groups or representatives of ethnic minorities. Both commissions were academic in nature, had no subpoena powers, received extensive access to previously classified archival documents, were mostly free from direct political interference, were mandated to establish the responsibility of the Romanian state in persecuting different groups, and were successful in drafting final reports supported by all their members and submitting these reports to the Presidents within the deadline. However, the Wiesel Commission was better able to make its conclusions accepted by the victims’ groups and the larger society both inside and outside Romania, while the Tismaneanu Commission came under attack from a wide variety of groups, academic and political parties. By examining the mandate, membership, resources, internal workings, political influences, and bilateral relations, this presentation identifies some of the lessons the Romanian presidential commissions could provide to a Turkish-Armenian historical commission.
Germans, Poles, and the Controversy about the “Museum Against ‘Vertreibung’”
Norman M. Naimark
Germany: After Guilt
Friday, March 12, 2010, 4:00 – 6:00
This paper will review the main lines of the decade-long argument between Poles and Germans about the proposed building of a museum in Berlin dedicated to the forced deportation of Germans from Poland at the end of the war and the beginning of the peace. The controversy about the museum and about the history of the postwar period demonstrates the complicated relationship between domestic struggles over history and public memory and the politics of interstate relations.
Money, Memory, and Bureaucracy: The Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future”
Constantin Goschler
Germany: After Guilt
Friday, March 12, 2010, 4:00 – 6:00
In the year 2000, after complicated negotiations a complex arrangement was set up for the compensation of former forced and slave workers of the German war economy. The German foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future was cooperating with seven national and transnational “partner organizations” which dealt with the mass claims handling of the individual former forced and slave workers. In my presentation, I will focus on aspects of communication: How were differences perceived? To what extent was it possible to bridge differences and what were the limits? By discussing these questions, I want to highlight the role of the complicated institutional setting, which was both an expression of complex political compromises and a permanent source of misunderstandings. While the partner organizations considered the bureaucratic procedures as a means to produce to some extent historical justice for the claimants, the main task of the German foundation was to safeguard the proper functioning of the procedure. Hence, differing expectations on the meaning of the procedural framework were a constant source of frustration, but at the same time it was highly effective in providing many claimants money and recognition.
Crimes of the Wehrmacht and the Galician Mystery: Commissions and Obfuscations
Omer Bartov
Germany: After Guilt
Friday, March 12, 2010, 4:00 – 6:00
This paper will investigate the case of the commission established in Germany to investigate allegations regarding the veracity of photographs and the accuracy of captions in an exhibition dedicated to crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in World War II. The exhibition unleashed a major public debate in Germany and Austria, and led to a growing public realization of the German military’s involvement in Nazi criminal policies. Conversely, the commission, charged with assessing the photographic evidence and other documents, ended up by playing into the hands of those who wanted to conceal or relativize the extent of German soldiers’ complicity in war crimes and genocide. Moreover, although many of the crimes documented in the exhibition occurred in Galicia – now part of Ukraine – the complex nature of events in the towns of that remote region never entered into the scholarly or the lay argument over the Wehrmacht’s actions. Thus the exhibition, as well as the commission of inquiry that followed it, even as they intended to shed light on a murky aspect of German history, at the same time obscured or ignored much of what the genocide in Eastern Europe was about. For while the German military, SS, and various police agencies were central to the Holocaust, many of the victims in Eastern Europe and western parts of the Soviet Union were murdered by their own neighbors. This was why the photographs in question were difficult to interpret, since they contained more than one category of victims and perpetrators. Yet the commission missed the point, since it focused strictly on German crimes, not on local complicity. It thus not only failed to fully uncover the truth, but also unintentionally covered up the crimes of others.
A History That Opens to the Future: The First Common China-Japan-Korean History Teaching Guide
Soon-Won Park
North East Asia: Varieties of Denial and Recognition
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 9:15 – 11:15
The Japanese Education and Science Ministry approval of the New History Textbook (hereafter called Fusosha Textbook) in April 2001 has had a significant impact on East Asians’ approaches to their history, although in the end the textbook was adopted by less than 0.04 percent of middle schools in 2002 and 0.4 percent in 2005, way below the original goal of 10 percent. The ripple effects are still being felt at the end of the decade. As soon as the book was published, critical analyses of the book and distortions in history textbooks in general were published in many forms Asia-wide. Transnational Japan-Korea history activists organized the “Coalition for Blocking Japanese Textbook Reform” and the “Network to Block the Adoption of the New History Textbook,” and engaged in the “anti-campaign” movement in Japan. Ironically, because of the textbook style narrative of the Fusosha Textbook, the writing of alternative textbooks became the hot button issue in the war of, as well as in the dialogue on, history in East Asia. In April 2005, the second edition of the Fusosha Textbook was published. The third revised edition, of which there will probably be two versions because of a division of the New Textbook Society, is scheduled for publication in 2010.
In parallel with these external, inter-state confrontations against gross distortion of history, however, many neighboring countries of Japan, including South Korea, China, and Taiwan, have also been undergoing reforms of their history textbooks and history education since the late 1990s. Because of the post-Cold War paradigm change, more self-reflexive post-nationalistic trends in the region, and deepening understanding of Europe’s textbook dialogue and experiences by the end of the 1990s, the respective countries have started carrying out internal history textbook reforms, moving from a government-written one textbook system to a privately written, government-approved multiple textbook system, as well as instituting educational curriculum reforms to train the new generation of teachers and authors with more open, flexible methodological approaches, in tune with the rapidly emerging regional and global context of the new century. These reforms in basic educational values and educational curriculum have started in South Korea (1997), China (2003), and Taiwan (2006) and are on-going. In this context, ironically, the Fusosha Textbook crisis was a catalyst to further the already ongoing trends of liberal educational reforms in each country.
This helps to explain the nature of inter-state and inter-societal reactions and approaches to the Fusosha Textbook crisis in 2001, compared to the more animosity-oriented, unilateral attacks manifested after the first history textbook crisis of 1982. There was an immediate noisy and emotional reaction this time too, but a more collaborative, enduring reaction followed in the form of both joint history research committee meetings on governmental level and various inter-societal collaborative efforts on academic level. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and President Kim Dae-Jung agreed to handle this crisis in a more institutionalized manner, by organizing the Joint History Research Committee in 2002. In the non-governmental level, several joint study projects got started around the same time, intending to produce some alternative historical materials or texts to the Fusosha Textbook. Many Japan-Korea joint history books, mostly in textbook format, came out after 2005.
The Miraerŭl Yŏnŭnyŏksa (A History That Opens to the Future: The Contemporary and Modern History of Three East Asian Countries; jp: Mirai o Hiraku Rekishi, hereafter called History That Opens the Future) was published in May 2005 as the outcome of the China-Japan-Korea History Committee’s work. It was a breakthrough in many ways. It was the first and the only collaboration on trilateral inter-societal level as is often called the first “Common History” of Northeast Asia. It was written with a clear focus on countering the Fusosha Textbook and done by the collaboration of scholars, teachers, and history NGO activists of the three countries, and successfully proved trilateral collaboration producing a tangible result. Half of the book covers the period 1931-1960s, and provides a thorough handbook on the current East Asian history problems rooted in the divided memories of this period.
More significantly, this trilateral project brought Chinese scholars in as full players in non-governmental collaborative efforts on the textbook issue for the first time in the region. The Ch-J-K History Committee has continued with a second project (2006-2010), and is working on a two-volume project on modern and contemporary history of the region, and there are even plans for a third round after 2011. China is now a committed player in the East Asian history textbook dispute. It is also noteworthy that the governmental level Japan-Korean Joint History Research Committee ended in 2005 with the mechanical publication of 55 papers which reconfirmed a deep gap in opinion and conflicting interpretations on 19 mutually contentious historical issues. It also continues working, however, into the second round meeting from 2007 with a year delay because of reluctance on Japanese government side.
This paper intends to illuminate the nature and characteristics of the history textbook issue in East Asia in the last decade by examining the book History That Opens the Future through looking at the following four points: (1) Context and motivation, with particular reference to Korea; (2) Assessment of achievements and limits of the book with particular reference to the period 1931-1951; (3) Reception and impact of the book (sales, reactions and criticisms from various social groups); (4) Comparing the European experiences in history textbook dialogues, referring here mostly to the German-Polish case, with the East Asian case in order to sort out East Asian characteristics.
Remembrance, Reconciliation and Reconstruction – China-Japan Joint History Research Project: Problems and Prospect
Q. Edward Wang
North East Asia: Varieties of Denial and Recognition
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 9:15 – 11:15
By situating the controversies and frictions between China and Japan over their understandings of history in their apposite context, this paper offers a careful and critical reading of the essays written by the members of the Joint History Research (JHR) committee of both Japan and China, which were made public in Japan by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 2009. These essays represented the outcome of the first phase of the JHR project, launched by the two countries’ leaders in December 2006. Despite the obvious differences over some historical details, the writing of these essays, the author finds, has shown a marked degree of agreement between the scholars from the two sides in reconciling the “perception gaps” about their shared past. He also notices and discusses some encouraging signs emerging from the work at this stage, which are of help to repair and reconstruct the two countries’ relationship. At the same time, he recognizes that JHR’s future development remains unpredictable.
Armenian-Turkish Protocol and Dispute on an Historians Commission
Taner Akçam
Lessons Learned: Perspectives on the Proposed Armenia-Turkey Commission
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 11:30 – 1:15
In October 2009 Turkey and Armenia signed a protocol to establish diplomatic relations and to endeavor to find a solution to the endemic issues arising from the interpretation of Turkish-Armenian history. One of the articles of the protocol addressed the establishment of a commission to help resolve the issues of history. The relevant article states that both governments agree to set a “sub-commission on the historical dimension to implement a dialogue with the aim of restoring mutual confidence between the two nations, including an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define existing problems and formulate recommendations, in which Armenian, Turkish as well as Swiss and other international experts shall take part.” Both countries have put forth conflicting interpretations of how those words should be understood. In my talk, I will address these conflicting interpretations and I will discuss the different potentialities that are inherent in those words and what it means for the establishment of this commission envisioned by the protocol.
