Remembering Katyn

Abstract

Katyn– the Soviet massacre of over 21,000 Polish prisoners in 1940 – has come to be remembered as Stalin’s emblematic mass murder, an event obscured by one of the most extensive cover-ups in history. Yet paradoxically, a majority of its victims perished far from the forest in western Russia that gives the tragedy its name. Their remains lie buried in killing fields throughout Russia, Ukraine and, most likely, Belarus. Today their ghosts haunt the cultural landscape of Eastern Europe. This book traces the legacy of Katyn through the interconnected memory cultures of seven countries: Belarus, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States. It explores the meaning of Katyn as site and symbol, event and idea, fact and crypt. It shows how Katyn both incites nationalist sentiments in Eastern Europe and fosters an emerging cosmopolitan memory of Soviet terror. It also examines the strange impact of the 2010 plane crash that claimed the lives of Poland’s leaders en route to Katyn. Drawing on novels and films, debates and controversies, this book makes the case for a transnational study of cultural memory and navigates a contested past in a region that will define Europe’s future.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,449

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

  • Only published works are available at libraries.

Similar books and articles

Class, Nation, and the Katyn Massacre.David Ost - 2011 - Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2011 (156):183-192.
The Katyń Massacre. Katyń—a Crime that Continues.Tadeusz Pieńkowski - 2010 - Dialogue and Universalism 20 (9-10):149-158.
Paracuellos-Katyn. [REVIEW]Felipe Giménez Pérez - 2005 - El Catoblepas: Revista Crítica Del Presente.
The Katyń court case.Anna Jopek-Bosiacka - 2016 - Journal of Argumentation in Context 5 (3):271-314.
Hybrid threat to Central and Eastern Europe: «Lands, where almost everything is possible».E. Magda - 2015 - Epistemological studies in Philosophy, Social and Political Sciences 5:109-117.
The Katyn Massacre: “Class Cleansing” as Totalitarian Praxis.Victor Zaslavsky - 1999 - Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1999 (114):67-107.
The International Significance of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.Witold Kieżun - 2006 - Dialogue and Universalism 16 (7-9):35-43.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-06-29

Downloads
22 (#1,015,764)

6 months
6 (#572,300)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Alexander Etkind
European University Institute

Citations of this work

Musine Kokalari and the Power of Images: Law, Aesthetics and Memory Regimes in the Albanian Experience.Agata Fijalkowski - 2015 - International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 28 (3):577-602.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references