Return to history...

It's been awhile. My blog resolution fell by the wayside once the new term started. But there's no reason not to pick it up again, so without further ado...

A new story in RFE/RL's 'Persian Letters' about remembering dead loved ones in Iran reveals 'A Government that's Afraid of Gravestones'. The interesting thing here is the question of who can be remembered, rather than the usual focus on how to remember (or forget). Yes, this is a form of forgetting, imposed from above - the authorities are making it extremely difficult for those whose loved ones were killed during the post-election protests to visit their graves on this last Thursday of the Iranian year, when Iranians traditionally remember their dead. But the fact that a government can tell families that their loved ones are not allowed to be mourned, for political reasons - this must be intolerable. Time will tell whether Iranians will put up with it. But history suggests that those who are murdered rarely go unmourned forever. Just look at the most recent attempt at passing an Armenian genocide resolution in Congress as an example.

In other news, 16 March saw this year's 'Nazi Parade' on the streets of Riga, Latvia. Efraim Zuroff argues in The Guardian that these ceremonies should be banned. Denis McShane, also in The Guardian, agrees and worries about the Tories' alliance with Latvia's For Fatherland and Freedom Party, which supports the event. But we must also take note of the question that's becoming increasingly popular in academia - which was worse, Nazism or Stalinism? I'm not prepared to answer either way, but does it really matter? Both were unjust, oppressive, brutal systems with horrible consequences. Condemning one does not logically mean the glorification of the other. And yet I worry whether it's possible to commemorate defeating Stalin without making an inherently positive assessment of the Nazis, as the juxtaposition to Stalin - is there a way to remember without taking sides? This problem is also exemplified in independent Ukraine, in the debate over Ukrainians as victims of Holodomor versus Ukrainians as perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Finally, watch this space for some book reviews - I've got my eye on Father Desbois' Holocaust by Bullets, Finkelstein's Holocaust Industry (and I plan to re-read Novick's The Holocaust in American Life in conjunction with this, since Finkelstein's controversial book arose out of his critical review of Novick), and Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt.

2010 Reading Resolutions

Wayne Gooderham posted his 2010 Reading Resolutions in today's Guardian. Among them are to stop re-reading old favorites and explore new authors, to delve into some contemporary fiction, and to look up every unknown word. At the end of his piece, he invites us to share our own Reading Resolutions. And as a hopeless bibliophile, this is an invitation I cannot ignore:

1. Re-read some old favorites - something, unlike Mr. Goodham, that I don't do enough of! I've just finished Du Maurier's Rebecca, which I haven't read since I was 16 (although I've read lots of Du Maurier since then) and I got so much out of it that I can't wait to revisit the novels that meant something to me when I was younger. I'm thinking Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, Dickens' Great Expectations, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but the list could go on and on.

2. (A corollary to #1). Re-read some favorite children's books, like Anne of Green Gables, Edith Nesbit, Lloyd Alexander, and maybe even those American Girl stories and some Babysitters Club, The Saddle Club and Sweet Valley High for good measure. Clearly I'm not one for intellectual snobbery...

3. Finally read those books that have been sitting on my shelf for years and years, taunting and tempting me. These include Middlemarch, War and Peace and At Swim Two Boys (by Jamie O'Neill).

4. Read something that my mother loved, and something my father loved. For my father, Caleb Carr's The Alienist is a possibility, as is something to do with Native Americans or with the Civil War (I know I've got his books lying around here somewhere!). For my mother, it will likely be a memoir or a biography or perhaps Mitch Albom. And then there's always Mary Higgins Clark to consider - I do love my mysteries!

5. Try something I would never consider, something that seems like it couldn't possibly interest me. Perhaps I'll choose this from a newspaper book reviews section, or from a friend's recommendation.

6. Read more non-fiction.

7. Stick to the habit of reading every night before bed, even if it's just for 5 minutes.

So now, like Mr. Gooderham, I'm going to pass the torch and ask you: what are your 2010 Reading Resolutions??

Some Holodomor news

Ukraine's security service (the SBU) has accused certain Holodomor perpetrators by name. These include Stalin and other high officials of the USSR. This is the latest development in Ukraine's criminal case - against whom, exactly? - which is attempting to prove that Holodomor was indeed a genocide against the Ukrainian people.

And I'm a bit late in the game on this one, but a statue of Hryhoriy Petrovsky, a former Communist head of Ukraine, no longer stands in Kyiv's Europe Square. It was removed in late November, in conjunction with Holodomor commemorative ceremonies in Ukraine. Yushchenko himself ordered this as a tribute to the memory of Holodomor victims, since Petrovsky was against Ukrainian nationalism and is considered to be one of the main perpetrators of the man-made famine, along with Lazar Kaganovich.

Antony and Cleopatra

As an armchair Egyptologist, I'm super excited that archaeologists may have found the mausoleum where Antony and Cleopatra spent their final hours together. Why? What accounts for my own fascination? Perhaps it's because although my own imagination can - and does - conjure images of such a dramatic scene, I know that those images would be a lot less blurry with the help of some physical evidence. It reminds me of how excited I was to see the first Harry Potter film, to see the characters I loved in my head come to life outside of it. I was also deeply curious to see how different Harry and his gang, and Hogwarts, would look from how I imagined them - I always relish conversations that start with, 'if you were casting this book as a film, who would you choose for...'?

But while seeing the place where it all happened can make the story come alive, I know I've experienced a strange sense of anticlimax in the past when I've been to historical sites - for instance, Bulgakov's house in Kyiv this past summer. It might be because when I'm actually confronted with these places, I realize all too well that they're devoid of the lives lived in them. The relics are there, the souvenirs of life, but the energy, the passion, the fear are things now merely suggested and symbolized. Historical sites at times feel like shells or like frameworks, waiting for us to come along and project our own visions onto them. But I wonder, if we all compared the images in our own heads, how many different narratives of the same event - how many different details - could we come up with?

But in spite of all this, I admit I'm desperate - show us pictures!!!

American St. Nick in wartime Europe

Every year, a little Luxembourg town remembers some holiday cheer amid the darkness of WWII.  In 1944 an American soldier named Dick Brookins dressed up as St. Nick to lighten the burden of suffering for the children of Wiltz, during a holiday party put on by the GIs.  This is such a heartwarming story, and I know that's very cliche to say at this time of year.  But what strikes me most is that this was a man fresh from battle, a man probably suffering himself, who made a choice (along with the other GIs who thought up the party idea) to transcend his own pain for the sake of restoring tradition.  Holiday details like Santa Claus and parties are things we take for granted, and it's nice to be reminded that we make a choice to be happy at this time of year, and to be together, and to celebrate.  I like the way that suffering seems to have met suffering here and come up with something bright and happy that has managed to create its own, lasting ritual of gratitude and compassion.

A little news roundup

Does French identity still rest on the ideals of the French Revolution?  Agnes Poirier comments in The Guardian on the controversy arising over Sarkozy's debate.  She argues that history is still the ultimate deciding factor in shaping our mindsets.  Nevertheless, how much room for maneuver do political entrepreneurs really have?

Pope Pius XII's role in the Holocaust is again a source of controversy, writes a blogger for CNN's Connect the World, as the Vatican recognizes his 'heroic virtues'.  This article's timing is good for me, since I'm just about to finish Peter Novick's fascinating The Holocaust in American Life.  With this book in mind, I want to ask - what purpose does this debate really serve, and for whom?  Who's got what to gain or lose?

Yesterday was Stalin's birthday, and lots of poll results are coming out of Russia about people's attitudes towards the Soviet past.  The Levada Center finds that 60% of Russians regret the fall of the Soviet Union, which marks only a slight decline from the peak in December 2000.  On Stalin himself, Lyudmila Alexandrova reports for ITAR-TASS that Russians remain ambivalent about his role - particularly how to balance his leadership to victory in WWII against his brutal repression at home.  Meanwhile, the lasting legacies of the gulag system are back in the news, as Maria Golovnina writes for the New York Times about how victims' and their descendants fears about the rehabilitation of Stalin and Russia's refusal to 'face up' to their past.  This is a really interesting piece, particularly the part about mass graves, which isn't much discussed in the Western press.  It's great to call attention to these issues and for that I appreciate the article, but I can't help but find much of this sort of writing on Russia repetitive, and even somewhat oversimplified.

Update

The Auschwitz sign has been recovered, cut into 3 pieces - each containing one of the 3 infamous words, 'Arbeit Macht Frei'.  Polish authorities arrested 5 men in connection with the theft.  Who are these men and what motivated them?  Was the mutilation of the sign symbolic, or just a way to make its removal easier?