Remembering the repression of the Stalin era in Russia: on the non-transmission of family memory

Research into some 30 families has revealed blank spaces in the history of many of these families, most of which date from the Stalin period. My thesis is that the internal policy of the Soviet state, with its repression and stigmatization of victims and their families, contributed to making certain pages of Soviet history disappear from family memories, or be reinterpreted within these memories. The policies of physical and symbolic stratification of the new “communist” society and stigmatization of broad social groups tended to create a gap between the social outcasts and their families. Families were impelled to “purge” their past and to eliminate the elements that could make them discreditable: to change names, surnames, and fathers’ names, to destroy the documents and photographs containing information about repressed people and to forget relatives lost from sight in the political turmoil. With the disappearance of eyewitnesses, firsthand memories that had not been transmitted to subsequent generations fell out of family history. These memory omissions result in these pages of family history being entirely wiped out, or lead to fragmented and impersonal memories.     

How NATO remembers: explaining institutional memory in NATO crisis management

This article introduces an argument for how institutional memory of crisis management operations develops in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Scholars of European security and of international organisations have examined organisational learning, but have yet to explain its precondition: institutional memory. In a context of increasing turnover due to defence budget cuts, it remains unclear how shared knowledge of strategic errors is acquired. This article finds that the NATO secretariat facilitates practitioners’ use of informal processes for contributing to institutional memory in response to the constraints of existing formal learning processes. These formal processes, including a lessons learned centre and a lessons learned database, inadvertently disincentivise practitioners from contributing such knowledge as using them can incur reputational costs. Drawing on NATO documentation and interviews with 27 NATO elite practitioners, the paper provides evidence that practitioners instead share knowledge through three informal processes: interpersonal communications, private documentation and crisis simulations.     

From hero worship to organized oblivion: representations of the People’s Front in Tajikistan’s national memory

The People’s Front of Tajikistan (PFT), one of the parties to the country’s civil war, was instrumental in bringing the government of President Emomali Rahmon to power. The article examines the official strategies of memorialization of the PFT from the early 1990s to the present. It discusses the emergence of a canon of the PFT heroes and martyrs and locates it within the nascent national mythology after independence. It argues that the maintenance of this canon was rendered impossible by the imperatives of consolidating presidential authority and securing national reconciliation following the 1997 peace deal. It concludes with an examination of the growing tension between the official line of historical amnesia on the one hand and resurgent social memory on the other. People in Tajikistan are increasingly interested in revisiting the events and protagonists of the war to develop a sense of the past, and remembering the PFT forms an essential part of their search for shared history and a sense of identity.     

Is there a new institutional response to the crimes of Communism? National memory agencies in post-Communist countries: the Polish case (1998–2014), with references to East Germany

Post-Communist Europe has not chosen to imitate the Truth and Justice or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions set up on several other continents. The notion of reconciliation with the Communist regime is not of much interest to certain political parties, many of which are rooted in the protest against the compromises that were part of the negotiated revolutions. The model admired by post-Communist countries was the one conceived by the Germans. Almost all the countries founded specific institutions – institutes – for managing memory, with archives located in these institutes. Some have archives that date from before World War II to 1990; they handle both totalitarianisms. What is feared is that through the game of partisan appointments, these institutes will become little more than instruments in less than honest hands for use in political contests. This is especially likely given that the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) employees perform several functions: classification, prosecution, and evaluating individual applicants to certain administrative positions. The specialized literature usually explains the trials and tribulations of Poland’s IPN in terms of the personalities of its different directors and the period in which each occupied that post. In this paper, we have verified this hypothesis.     

No Friends in the North? The Conservative Party in Northern England

Having won just 19 of 162 seats in northern England at the 2005 general election, the Conservative party under David Cameron's leadership has made an electoral revival in the north of England a particular priority. This article first outlines the Conservatives' post-war electoral record in the north and considers the significance of northern England to the party's strategy at the next general election. It then moves on to examine the potential for socio-economics, identity, memory, ideology and party organisation to frustrate its current ambitions for revival. Finally, it outlines and evaluates the initiatives which the party has undertaken in the north of England since 2005.     

大豆异黄酮对阿尔茨海默病大鼠乙酰胆碱代谢的影响

目的 观察大豆异黄酮（soybean isoflavone,SIF）对阿尔茨海默病（Alzheimer''s disease,AD）模型大鼠海马乙酰胆碱（acetylcholine,ACh）代谢的影响,探讨SIF治疗AD的作用机制。方法 将50只大鼠随机分为假手术组,模型组,戊酸雌二醇组和SIF高、低剂量组,采用双侧海马注射β-淀粉样蛋白(amyloid β-protein,Aβ)复制AD大鼠模型,分别给药21 d后,采用Morris水迷宫实验观察大鼠学习记忆能力的变化,免疫组织化学法检测大鼠海马组织ACh、胆碱乙酰转移酶（choline acetyl transferase,ChAT）、乙酰胆碱酯酶（acetylcholine esterase,AchE）的表达。结果 SIF可显著降低AD大鼠的逃避潜伏期（P<0.01）,显著增加AD大鼠的游泳时间百分比、穿过平台次数以及海马组织ACh、ChAT、AchE的表达（P<0.05,或P<0.01）。结论 SIF可能通过增强海马组织ACh的代谢起到提高学习记忆能力的作用。     

Ready for the homeland? Ritual,remembrance, and political extremism in Croatian football

In the case of Croatia, sport has proved to be a highly politicized form of national expression, functioning as a salient social field in which its “national habitus codes” are most intensively articulated, debated, and contested. An incident emblematizing this argument occurred on 19 November 2013, when the Croatian national football team secured their qualification for the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil. In front of the 25,000 people at Zagreb's Maksimir stadium, the national team player, Josip ?imuni?, grabbed the microphone and “greeted” all four stands with a loud chanting of Za dom (For the home(land)), to which the stands thunderously responded spremni (ready), the official salute of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist WWII quisling-state. This paper argues that the issue extends beyond politically radicalized football hooligans and has to be understood from the standpoint of “social memory.” By focusing on football, the article scrutinizes debates in the Croatian public sphere dealing with the salute Za dom – spremni. Providing an insight into its complex and multi-layered nature, this paper illustrates that Croatian football has to be understood as a field in which social memory is prominently constructed, heatedly articulated, and powerfully disseminated.     

The past or the politics of the present? Dealing with the Japanese occupation of South Korea

Why do historical legacies continue to burden politics in East Asia? According to major schools of thought on collective memory, perceptions of historical injustice may be determined by the past (traditionalism), the present (presentism) or the interplay of both. This paper assesses the validity of these theories by examining the effect of transitional justice on perceptions of wrongdoers. Transitional justice offers a unique substrate for exploring competing theories of collective memory as it represents a contemporary process for dealing with the past. Were transitional justice to transform perceptions of wrongdoers, it would provide evidence supporting presentism. This hypothesis was tested using a survey of 640 adults from the Gallup Korea online panel. South Korea was selected as a research site because the legacy of Japan's occupation remains unresolved. A Tobit analysis supported presentist approaches although, as traditionalists claim, perceptions of wrongdoers were resistant to change. The organic nature of collective memory suggests that perceptions can only be transformed by comprehensive transitional justice.