����Ӱ��

A public lecture “The Quest for Recognition: Holocaust Aufarbeitung and National Memory Constructions in the Baltic States” by Eva-Clarita Pettai from University of Tartu in Tallinn University on 18 October at 2 p.m. in room M-225.

I will start with briefly outlining some of the main differences in how each of the three states addressed issues of historical justice and accountability with regard to Nazi-era crimes as well as their commemoration. Moreover, I will show how and to what degree in each of the states the issue of Holocaust Aufarbeitung became deeply political, entangled with the state's strive for international recognition of the Stalinist crimes committed against the population before and after the Nazi occupation. Looking at various legislative measures regarding the totalitarian past as well as at institutions of truth-seeking and commemoration established or heavily sponsored by the states, I will discuss not only to what extent official (national) memories in the Baltics today are being constructed against (or in reaction to) hegemonic narratives of the Holocaust and its local excesses, but also how local policies and practices have benefited from existing experience regarding the pursuit of recognition for past suffering and the sustaining of memory for later generations.

Eva-Clarita Pettai is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Government and Politics, University of Tartu. With a research profile in historical social science, her research includes the study of collective memory, democracy and the politics of history and memory in the post-communist space. She is the author of Democratizing History in Latvia. Civic Consciousness and the Politics of History in re-independent Latvia (2003, in German) and she has recently edited a volume on Memory and Pluralism in the Baltic States (Routledge, 2011).

The public lectures are part of the intensive seminar “Holocaust Memory and the Soviet Past: Transitional Remembering in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe” (Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University; Estonian Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts; Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of Estonian Academy of Sciences).