Koposov Nikolay. Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia

Cambridge University Press, 2017. — 338 p. — ISBN: 978-1-108-41972-7.Laws against Holocaust denial are perhaps the best-known manifestation of the present-day politics of historical memory. In Memory Laws, Memory Wars, Nikolay Koposov examines the phenomenon of memory laws in Western and Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia and exposes their very different purposes in the East and West. In Western Europe, he shows how memory laws were designed to create a common European memory centred on the memory of the Holocaust as a means of integrating Europe, combating racism, and averting national and ethnic conflicts. In Russia and Eastern Europe, by contrast, legislation on the issues of the past is often used to give the force of law to narratives which serve the narrower interests of nation states and protect the memory of perpetrators rather than victims. This will be essential reading for all those interested in ongoing conflicts over the legacy of the Second World War, Nazism, and communism.Nikolay Koposov is a Russian historian currently teaching at Emory University, Atlanta, having previously worked at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and The Johns Hopkins University. He was Founding Dean of Russia's first and only (to date) liberal arts college - Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture of Saint-Petersburg State University and Bard College, New York. His research deals with various aspects of modern historiography and historical memory, from Early Modern France to post-Soviet Russia. His book How Historians Think (2001) was translated into French by Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales as De l'imagination historique (2009).The Rise of Memory and the Origins of Memory Laws
The Memory of the Shoah
The Social-Liberal Consensus and the Culture of Victimhood
The Democratic Revolution in Historiography
Human Rights, the Crisis of the Future, and the Historic Turn
Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and the Memory Boom
Memory Laws and the Logic of Proper Names
Memory Laws in Western Europe
The Emergence of Anti-Fascist Legislation
The Development of Anti-Racist Legislation
The Point of Departure: The German Memory Law of 1985
The Classical Memory Law: The French Gayssot Act of 1990
The Internationalization of Holocaust Denial Legislation
Expanding the Criminalization of the Past to Other Topics
Resistance and Failures
Memory Laws in Eastern Europe
The Rise of Memory in Eastern Europe
Anti-Fascism and Law in the People’s Democracies
De-communization Laws
Criminalizing the Past in Eastern Europe
Memory Laws in Ukraine
History Politics
Legislation about the Past
Memory Laws in Yeltsin’s Russia
History Politics
Legislation about the Past
Memory Laws in Putin’s Russia
The Politics of History under Putin
The Cult of the War
The First Drafts (2009)
The Draft of 2010: Why Nuremberg?
Putinism Mark II
The Battle of Two Bills (2013—2014)