It's perhaps unsurprising that many commentators are embedding yesterday's plane crash in a wider chain of tragic events in Polish history, particularly the Katyn massacre itself. For example, in the Guardian, Neil Ascherson imagines that the Poles are now asking themselves, 'have we truly escaped from the nightmares of Poland's past? Or have the demons returned to surround us once again, those giant bloodstained phantoms who came out of the forest to destroy every Polish generation for two centuries?' And in the New York Times, Liz Robbins notes that the death of Wojciech Seweyrn, a diaspora Pole and the son of an officer killed at Katyn, is seen by his friends as being part of a 'circle. It's terrible, after 70 years he survived, and then he died in that area close to his father'. I think it's important to recognize that the Poles have suffered a hell of a lot in their history, but I worry about too much emphasis on cycles of victimization and on determinism. My hope is that the Poles, and the world that's now watching them, will use this horrible event to press for internal political reconciliation as much as to raise awareness about their history.

Another theme is the hope that this tragedy will move Poland and Russia closer. In the New York Times piece mentioned above, Liz Robbins quotes Michael Kennedy, dean of Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, who finds it encouraging that both Polish and Russian reports on the crash have focused more on sympathy and grief than on politics. He claims that 'the great variable for me is how Russia will recognize this moment as an opportunity to move ahead. It's a great opportunity for Medvedev and Putin to go beyond the rapprochement that existed yesterday'. Paul Lavelle said something similar in Russia Today's coverage of the crash. But I don't completely understand the connection between this tragedy and potential historical reconciliation. If the Kremlin has motives for keeping some Katyn archives closed, I can't imagine that a plane crash would change that. Conversely, if calculations were already shifting, as Putin's joint commemoration with Tusk signaled, then the wheels were already in motion and this event will serve more as a catalyst than a turning point. And in the wider scheme of the Kremlin's historical policy, let's not forget that Katyn is one among many issues - internally, for example, there's still the problem of how to remember Stalin, while externally the Holodomor has been an ongoing thorn in the side of Russian-Ukrainian relations (which may improve now that Yanukovych is in office...). Thus, I think we need to place the role of the crash in bringing about a rapprochement between Poland and Russia in its wider context. I hope for the best, because I feel that Katyn needs more recognition and awareness, but we should be realistic about the fact that it is one dimension of a deeper issue.

I awoke to the shocking news that the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, along with several top officials, was killed in a plane crash in the forests outside Smolensk. The picture to the side highlights that Poland is understandably in national mourning, as the tributes pile up outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. Kaczynski was a high-profile if controversial figure in Poland and internationally. He and his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw (who he appointed Prime Minister after his election to the Presidency in 2005) started out as child actors, were later involved with Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, and finally broke with the movement to form their social conservative party Law and Justice (which his brother currently chairs), which after taking power promised a 'moral revolution' in Poland.

It's very early on, but already some trends are evident in the press coverage of the crash. Everyone's commenting on the irony - Poland's intellectual elite has died in Russia, en route to commemorate the Katyn massacre in which Soviet secret police officers murdered 15,000 Polish officers (the cream of Polish society) on Stalin's orders. It's also worth noting that Kaczynski was heading to the site of the massacres independently from the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who earlier this week jointly commemorated the dead with Russian Prime Minister Putin - see Anne Applebaum's interesting commentary on this historic event. Kaczynski's politics, particularly his embrace of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia and his championing of a US missile defense shield in Poland, were a thorn in the side of Polish-Russian relations, which is partly why the apparent 'rapprochement' over Katyn is so interesting... But to return to the subject of the crash, lots of people are also asking questions about what will happen to Poland now that there's such a huge gap in public life - its President, the head of the army, and the head of the central bank have all been killed. For my part, I can't help but wonder how this tragic accident will affect Poland's politics of memory, given that those individuals in charge of World War II memorials and the Institute of National Remembrance also perished.

I've just had a look at my 2010 Reading Resolutions, and I can't say I'm doing spectacularly. But a recent crisis of confidence has inspired some reading that could have been a resolution in its own right, and I think partly fulfills my intention to read something that I think couldn't possibly interest me. Someone recently asked me what would happen to the Prime Minister if there was a hung parliament - would he stay in office? I was also asked about why the new healthcare bill in the US might be considered fascist. I couldn't answer either of these questions, and I panicked. Now, I know that neither British politics nor domestic policy in the States is my 'area,' but since I have two degrees in political science and a third one in progress, I felt unbearably guilty for being so uneducated. Perhaps it comes down to insecurity, in the sense that political science is a wide field and I have a different set of interests within it. But I ran right out and bought some introductory texts on British politics and fascism - and one on Communism, for good measure. And to my surprise, what started as an attempt just to sound smarter became truly educational, in the sense that I find myself more genuinely interested in these topics than I thought I would be. For example, I'm less inclined to skip the nitty-gritty articles on the election campaign in Britain when I read The Guardian each morning, and I definitely understand more than I used to. I'm actually following the campaign now because I want to, because I find it increasingly fascinating, rather than just because I'm afraid someone might ask me something I won't be able to answer. This is a good feeling. So what's next? Well, since I've started with three books in Blackwells' Very Short Introduction series, I think I'll continue with it - I'm eyeing the Scotland volume, having just spent a long weekend there, and I know I could brush up on Northern Ireland and The American Presidency. But (almost) any topic is fair game...luckily they're 3 for 2!

Now as to the politics of memory, Russian and Polish leaders will for the first time mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre together...questions about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, are raised again...and memories of the Prague Spring are influencing Czech citizens' perceptions of the new arms control treaty between Russia and the US.

In the near future, look out for some musings on the press coverage of the recent Moscow metro bombings, and by extension, on views of the Chechen wars in general...

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!!!