Politics, history and collective memory in East Central Europe

The essays included in this volume show different aspects of dealing with the past in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine and its political context and consequence. The four countries in this study remain historically intertwined and politically closely connected. Many “places of memory”, as for instance the cities Vilnius/Wilno, Grodno and Lviv/Lwów, are geographically the “same” and simultaneously have different meaning in each narration. The common historical past, although often contested, is an important reference point in the process of creation or reformulation of national identity. All four countries also have to deal with their communist past. The way in which they are doing it and how they politically and economically use their freedom is influenced by their new collective self-definitions.