Patterns of Cultural Interpretation of Socialism

Barbara Christophe’s core project on the patterns of cultural interpretation of socialism in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Lithuania questions the reception and the effectiveness of the post-soviet patterns of interpretation of socialism as transported through textbooks, which, since 1989, has become a memory-political battlefield and which exists through a barely hegemony-capable narrative. It aims at a methodical comparison between textbook narratives and the biographical memory narratives of history teachers, which are conceived of as the interface between cultural and individual memory. The basis of this is formed through the assumption that history teachers act as the representatives of a national grass-roots elite, who not only convey the textbook canonized patterns of interpretation and memory narratives, but who translate, reinterpret and modify them in academic practice against the backdrop of their private and specific biographical experiences. It is not only in Eastern Europe that socialism has become a battleground of memory since 1989. Its place and codification in global memories is also controversially debated. The project examines the negotiation of socialism in three post-soviet societies, which are characterized by a fascinating combination of convergences and divergences. Methodically, it begins with a comparison between textbook narratives and the biographical memory narratives of history teachers.

Questions

• First, the project analyzes, from a systematically comparative perspective, the representations of Socialism in textbooks from Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Lithuania. Traces of the trans-national debate on the place of socialism in global memory are also sought after as a part of this.

• Second, the project examines the degree of institutionalization and the effectiveness of Socialism’s patterns of interpretation, as transported through textbooks. It empirically approaches this question through the survey of biographical interviews with history teachers, which are then analyzed against the contrasting film of historical images transported through textbooks. History teachers are thereby addressed in their double function as specialists of their own biography and as mediators of state sanctioned images of the past. Two questions are submitted in the analysis of the memory narrative: a) As a first step it is examined to what extent teachers, within the framework of their biographical memory, fall back on collective patterns of interpretation as preserved in official historical images and in academic educational media. b) In a second step this will be analyzed in reverse: what influence the biographical experiences of the teacher have on how they translate the official images of the soviet past in their daily teaching practices. Chronologically the project will concentrate on memories of the Breschnev time period, which due to a series of evidence are remembered very differently in cultural knowledge memory than they are in biographical experience memory.

Integration in Existing Research

So far there is little existing systematic research on the effectiveness and reception of textbook narratives. The representation of socialism in textbooks thus far has also barely been researched systematically and has not been comparatively researched at all. The project can, however, tie into a line of research on the interaction between individual and collective memory. It does this in that it uses textbooks as the source of the reconstruction of collective memories and reads the memory narrative of history teachers from the perspective of questioning the changing relationship between collective and individual memory.

Goals

• First, the project will develop an innovative approach to the empirical examination of the mediative function of teachers in the translation of academic knowledge into academic practice.

• Second, it closes a gap in the comparative research of representations of socialism in textbooks.

• Third, it renders an innovative contribution to current research on memory cultures through the systematic comparison of the changing relationships between individual and collective memory in three post-dictatorial societies.

Methodology

Oral history interviews; Content Analysis of Textbook Products 2008: Two Lectures at International Conferences on Global Memory and Remembering Communism; Essay manuscript for a cross-referenced journal.

Cooperation: AUCA Bischkek/Kyrgyzstan (M. Ablezova); National University Tbilis/Georgia (P. Buchrashvili/I. Tschavtschawadze); Lithuania Institute for History Vilnius/Lithuania (S. Grybauskas/A. Nikzentaitis); Institute for “Middle East, Central Asian and Caucasus Studies”, St. Andrews/Great Britain (S. Cummings)

Duration: October 2008 – October 2011

Financing: VW-Foundation