This article was downloaded by: [University of Windsor]On: 05 July 2014, At: 11:25Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Nationalities Papers: The Journal ofNationalism and EthnicityPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnap20

FORGETTING DOES (NOT) HURT.Historical Revisionism in Post-SocialistSloveniaOto Luthara

a Zrc Sazu, Ljubljana, SloveniaPublished online: 05 Dec 2012.

To cite this article: Oto Luthar (2013) FORGETTING DOES (NOT) HURT. Historical Revisionismin Post-Socialist Slovenia, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 41:6,882-892, DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2012.743510

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.743510

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

FORGETTING DOES (NOT) HURT

Historical Revisionism in Post-Socialist Slovenia

Oto Luthar∗

Zrc Sazu, Ljubljana, Slovenia

(Received 11 April 2011; final version received 1 August 2011)

After the fall of socialism, besides the attempts to reach national reconciliation, radicalreconfigurations and reinterpretations of the past were used to negotiate local, nationaland transnational identities and strengthen national agendas. In most of the formerlysocialist countries, the historical interpretation significantly resembles the struggleover the legitimacy and authenticity of this representation. The author argues that inpost-socialist Slovenia instead of the anticipated democratization and break withideologically predestined historical work after 1989, at least three competingpolitically contaminated ways of interpreting the past gained momentum: the so-called liberal-conformist position, which insists that we have to look at the future andforget the traumas of the past; the revisionist standpoint which, at least in Slovenia, isthe most aggressive one; and the objectivistic approach practiced by most Slovenianhistorians after 1991. To do that the author investigates how collective memories aremobilized in general, formal and in particular more personalized and/or emotionalnarratives and traces the changes in Slovenian memorial landscape divided intocategories: the authoritarian type, defined by a desire for direct colonization of theinterpretation of the past related to the Second World War; the conciliatory type thattries to achieve “reconciliation”; the conflicting type that clashes with theiconography of an existing partisan monument as an alternative interpretation.

Keywords: historical revisionism; Slovenia, post-socialist historiography; collaboration;resistance

Introduction

One of the best ex-Yugoslav contemporary writers, Miljenko Jergovic, writes that forget-

ting does not hurt; this is a surprising statement coming from a person whose biography

and work indicate quite the opposite – that forgetting can be extremely painful. And

even more so if it is related to the systematic distortion and/or suppression of what

should not and cannot ever be forgotten.

This article is a commentary on two things:

(1) It is a narrative about distortion, i.e., about the radical reinterpretation of traumatic

events of the 20th century and their redefined role in the framework of a new

national (self-) identification;

(2) And at the same time it is a story about the suppression of the attempts to demo-

cratize Slovenian historiography that started already before the end of socialism.

# 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities

∗Email: Oto.Luthar@zrc-sazu.siThis article was originally published with errors. This version has been amended. Please seeCorrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2013.863513)

Nationalities Papers, 2013

Vol. 41, No. 6, 882–892, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.743510

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

In reconstructing / analysing / commenting on these phenomena I focus on the following

questions:

. How do the interpretations of the past and the new practices of remembering define

individual, local and national narratives?. How are memory communities formed and how do they utilize memory practices?. And finally, what is the role and significance of attempts at historical revisionism on

the national level?

Why bother?

But before I start with the first part, let me explain why one should bother with an issue that

has divided, disturbed and frustrated the whole nation for half a century already.

The simplest answer is the one Margaret Macmillan offers in her latest book, The Uses

and Abuses of History, where she argues that there will always be some people ready to

deal with this and they may or may not handle it well (Macmillan 2009, 39). In her

case the expression some people refers to the political leaders who “often get away with

misusing or abusing the history for their own ends . . . because the rest of us [i.e., histor-

ians] do not know to challenge them” (36). Although I completely agree with her, I believe

there are some more important aspects to this problem – and not just in Slovenia. Over the

past 20 years, the concept of memory, particularly when attached to traumatic memories,

has gained prominence all over the world; as Dominick LaCapra would put it, “[t]rauma

and its symptomatic aftermath pose particularly acute problems for historical represen-

tation and understanding” (LaCapra 2001, ix–xi).1 For the people living in Central and

Southeastern Europe, traumatic events of the last century have been a prevalent preoccu-

pation. Nevertheless, it was the “East” where most of the fighting and killing in the Second

World War took place. Civilians in the “Bloodlands,” as Timothy Snyder has called

Ukraine, Poland, and Soviet Russia, did most of the dying. The brutality was on a

totally different scale from the war in the West. To name just one example: “On any

single day in autumn 1941, as many Soviet POWs died as British American prisoners

over the entire course of the war” (Snyder 2010, 182, see also 135–139, 175–180).

On the other hand, there is a Europe which compensates for a lack of change and

certain events with remembering or, as Peter Sloterdijk maintains, replaces the absence

of events with their commemoration. The author of the rather provoking Theory of the

Post-War Periods (Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten) also believes that post-historical

event-deprivation is part of the price Western Europe has to pay for its “emancipation

from heroism and tragedy” (Sloterdijk 2008, 10). Nevertheless, I believe that contempor-

ary memory landscapes are not just represented by monuments and anniversary commem-

orations, and are not just construction sites for shared myths about a nation’s common past;

they are also instrumental for all sorts of identity-building processes at the everyday life

level, in the interpretation of politics, culture, and the arts.

In the “New Europe,” memories and remembering have become crucial for producing

and understanding a series of phenomena in everyday life strategies that figure as funda-

mental driving forces in creating and reshaping contemporary individual, local, national

and transnational identities. Therefore, it is not just “nice to have memories,” because “for-

getting does not hurt a bit,” as Jergovic (2006, 9) puts it. Rather, memorial practices are the

essential, dynamic building blocks which act as foundations for our conceptualization of

who we are and our role and position within global socio-political constellations. Studying

the enactment of collective memory in everyday life enables one to approach significant

Nationalities Papers 883

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

aspects of social realities that would otherwise go unnoticed, including relationships to the

past, identity management and practices of citizenship. In the following pages, I will offer

an insight into how collective memories are mobilized in general, formal and in particular

more personalized and/or emotional narratives. Particular voices can, nevertheless, be

crucial in understanding the dynamic between collective memories and everyday life, in

illuminating the ways the past is read through the lens of the present.

After the fall of socialism, besides the attempts to reach national reconciliation,2 radical

reconfigurations and reinterpretations of the past were used to negotiate local, national and

transnational identities and to strengthen national agendas. In most of the formerly socialist

countries, the historical interpretation significantly resembles the struggle over the legiti-

macy and authenticity of this representation. The revisionist approach3 to the past has

become not only the site of struggles over meanings of past events and structures, but

also a part of the new quest for the ideal “we” of the present. What appears to be a discussion

about the past and a reconstruction of historical truth, reveals more about the “cultural wars,”

present fragility and plurality of identities and politics aimed at fixing the definition of

national identity. In short, it is a struggle over the interpretative resources within a society.4

∗

The other problem in Central and Southeastern Europe in general, and Slovenia in particu-

lar, is the historians’ complete ignorance of serious theoretical conceptualizations of the

ongoing processes.

Instead of the anticipated democratization and break with ideologically predestined

historical work after 1989, at least three competing politically contaminated ways of inter-

preting the past gained momentum. The first is the so-called liberal-conformist position,

which insists that we have to look at the future and forget the traumas of the past.

Within the re-revisionist standpoint which, at least in Slovenia, is the most aggressive

one, the trauma of the Second World War is seen as the basis for the founding of (a

new) identity, rather than the questioning of (the old) one. The third objectivistic approach

is more or less practiced by most Slovenian historians after 1991. Without any clear pol-

itical agenda they would like to end the ongoing cultural war by claiming that what hap-

pened in Slovenia during the Second World War and in its aftermath is everybody’s

responsibility. The Partisans, particularly the communists, were guilty of ideologically

colonizing the multiparty Liberation Front, the collaborators of their collaboration with

the Axis, and the official Catholic Church of not supporting the resistance movement or

of banning it. From a methodological aspect, this is a sort of “documentary or self-suffi-

cient research model” (LaCapra 2001, 1–8)5 of which positivism is the extreme form. In

its Slovenian version, this model brings with it an emphasis on quantitative methods and a

tendency to conflate objectivity with objectivism, and it confines historiography to more or

less constative or referential statements.

And that in a way is the biggest surprise of the 1990s. Nevertheless, after the collapse

of socialism, one would expect the new democracy in Slovenia to be strongly marked by

theoretical and methodological considerations of historical writing practices. Due to the

re-establishment of a democratic society, a critique of the old practices of “doing

history” was not just permitted but impatiently expected.

Surprisingly, it turned out differently.

Although many people were interested in theory and methodology in general, only a

few showed an interest in new forms and means of historical explanation. Most Slovenes

shared the view that the discussion of the nature of historical narrative is nothing more

884 O. Luthar

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

than a set of rather esoteric philosophical assumptions. It seems that the initial enthusiasm

on the part of Slovenian historians and social scientists to question the forms of historical

explanation that marked the “revolutionary” 1980s entered the phase of disenchantment

and was facing difficulties in “synchronizing” national identities with democratic identity

formation. The opening of the mono-truthful memorial landscape initiated by civil move-

ments of the 1980s and the new governments after 1989 followed trends in democratization,

but it also revitalized very traditional concepts of the nation-state and its memory cultures.

∗

What followed was a rise in a tendency to convert/transvalue traumatic events, which

gave way to the establishment of the so-called “founding traumas.” One of the reasons

that this was possible was “objective relativism,”6 which was typical of previous elite

historians. By claiming that the general understanding of the history of the Second

World War and historiography in general suffered, with just a minor change a whole

new history of the Second World War was created.

Henceforth, it was much easier for the Slovenian revisionists to deliberately overlook

the fact that, after the formation of the Liberation Front in 1941, right-wing political

parties, together with the Italian occupying authorities, started recruiting men into their

Milizia Voluntaria Anticomunista (MVAC), which after the Italian capitulation in 1943

was reorganized into a collaborationist group called the Domobranci (Home Guards).

The Domobranci, because they had been fighting side-by-side with the Germans against

the Partisans and because of crimes they had committed against Partisan families, retreated

with the Germans to Austrian territory at the end of the war, from where they were sent

back to Slovenia by the British. The young were released, while most of the rest, including

the officers, were executed without trial. Official Slovenian history quotes a number of

10,000 killed, while some scholars maintain that over 24,000 people were executed, per-

secuted or expelled. According to revisionist interpreters, the collaborators recognized the

danger of communism and were, in the name of patriotism, forced into collaboration with

the occupiers. Furthermore, nowadays their activities are interpreted by the revisionists as

even “national-liberating and heroic” (Ahacic 1992, 14).

Although this is not (yet) an accepted argument throughout the post-socialist Slovene

historiography, some historians in Slovenia argue that it was the risky and provocative

actions of the resistance movement that drove the occupying forces to adopt repressive

measures. These actions, in the next instance, served as a mobilizatory push for the collab-

oration to emerge. Advocates of this viewpoint even go as far as to systematically accuse

the anti-Partisan movement of collaboration with the Axis, or to maintain that the behav-

iour and deeds of individual collaborators must be evaluated according to their actual

effects. They have held that one has to distinguish between functional or harmless collab-

oration on the one hand, and harmful collaboration, on the other. Here the harmful collab-

oration is associated with “collaboration connected with ideological and political

identification with the occupying authorities” (Mlakar 1999, 11).7

A special example of this reinterpretation involves the new textbooks on history.

Renaming a series of phenomena (“liberation” into “occupation”; “collaboration with

the occupiers” into “anti-communism” and the “resistance” into “Party Hell and avant-

garde hatred”) (Dezman 2003, 44–48) simultaneously supplies the phenomena with

new meanings. Furthermore, it facilitates the easy acquisition of moral responsibility

and the dilution of guilt (Kern et al. 2000, 117–148). According to this interpretation,

the source of collaboration (and with it the blame for it) is not the political, moral, or

Nationalities Papers 885

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

ideological project of the collaborators, but communism, revolution, and the resistance

movement, which prompted the “counter” movement of the collaborators. This is

further radicalized in a high school textbook in which collaboration echoes “Partisan vio-

lence” (Gabric and Dolenc 2002, 153–154).

∗

Besides textbooks, a whole range of other texts – ranging from monuments to historical,

political, and media discourses – are being mobilized with the aim of reclaiming the “true”

history. In the following, as already stressed, I will focus on the changing landscape of war

memorials that pose as material reinterpretations of public memory, as well as on the natu-

ralization of a revisionist narrative. Nevertheless, their construction and integration into

the national narration is even more arresting than the cenotaphs and tombs of unknown

soldiers that Benedict Anderson discusses.

The politics and textuality of the new memorial landscape

Like many before me, such as Anderson, Nora and Winter, I too consider the role of monu-

ments, memorial plaques and tombstones as one of the various forms of public expression

which have been involved intensively in the creation (and revision) of the past and in the

reification of historical events. In addition, I am interested in the role that these material

artefacts have played in the reinterpretation of the meaning of the Second World War

and in the construction of a mythical memory for historical events. In my view, memorials

are the objectification of memory into material form, and so I too read them in a phenom-

enological manner as a “site for symbolic exchange where the living pay their respects to

the memory of the fallen” (Winter 1995, 94). Because of this I cannot understand them as

simply expressions of mourning and the preservation of memory, but as artefacts that

create new meanings in new interpretations. In doing so I want to determine upon what

kind of rhetoric, symbolism and choreography it rests – in which kind of symbolic

guise it tries to impose and legitimize itself. Monuments to the Domobranci are a part

of a political rhetoric which, with the aid of conventional memorial iconography, inter-

prets loss, death, and the events that caused them in a specific way, linking the past to

the present. The key role of the Domobranci memorials is to construct the executions as

a one-sided national trauma. By simply exchanging the roles of victim and perpetrator,

their creators and initiators aim at reinterpretation of the meaning of the resistance move-

ment, collaboration and communism. In short, the new monuments fix the interpretation of

“civil war” and avoid the discussion of the battle between the resistance and the occupying

forces and their local collaborators.

The placement of the struggle for the reinterpretation of the past within the sociologi-

cal concept of “national trauma” is important, since it gives a theoretical framework for the

treatment of the cultural struggle, which lies in the background of the reinterpretation of

collaboration and links the struggle for memory with the problem of collective identity.

This is used in the historical and sociological analyses of the same sorts of phenomena

elsewhere (i.e., the collective trauma of the Nazi perpetrators as the basis of German

post-war national identity, the trauma of the victims of the holocaust, and so on.).

Placing the particular Slovenian case (i.e., the reinterpretation of history and the process

of exchanging the roles of victims and perpetrators) into a series of related problems

is of key importance for understanding it as a part of what was going on in the other

parts of Europe. Meanwhile, from an academic perspective, the “unique phenomenon”

886 O. Luthar

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

approach allows a non-theoretical, epistemologically non-reflexive, and politicized treat-

ment of the past and a struggle for memory in the present. National trauma is not a term for

an actual event, but is instead constituted through a method whereby the executions of the

Domobranci are presented in various spheres of the public arena: from politics, popular

culture, and academic reflection in historiography, to objectification in the material arte-

facts of mourning. Therefore, I suggest that memorials are best understood as a means

for the material reinterpretation of an actual event and the public memory of it, for con-

stituting trauma and the transformation of historical events into “symbolic executions,”

for trying to present collaboration as a failed tragic struggle for the interests of the Slo-

venes, and for the usurpation of the status of the victim. The memorials themselves

recall past traumatic events and those who authorize the erection of these memorials

wish to resolve the trauma with the aid of an act of closure in the interpretation of the past.

The difference between the conditions in Slovenia and those in other transition

countries, where revisions of the interpretation of the past similarly arise, is mostly that

the changing memorial landscape in Slovenia has a greater impact on the revision of

public memory than do other discourses. In the central Slovenian regions there is at

present almost no place without a memorial or a “parish plaque” dedicated to the Domo-

branci, and this is without comparison in the other transition countries. The planners of the

new memorial landscape took advantage of the most effective form of historical revision

through the colonization of the central areas of parish cemeteries. So now perhaps every-

one, including those that only occasionally participate in weekly, monthly or annual rou-

tines of village, county or suburban communities, may meet with a reworked interpretation

of the national past during each visit to mass or to the cemetery.

Apart from this, Domobranci monuments are well adapted to the usual Christian rou-

tines and traditions. Similarly to the red five-pointed star in the mise-en-scene of the monu-

ments dedicated to the resistance movement and the revolution, the crucifix is the

operative and central piece – the main decoration of the monument to the victims of com-

munism. The figures used in the inscriptions also follow the Christian liturgy. Besides the

usual Christian farewell captured in phrases such as “rest in peace,” there are frequent

references to God as the supreme moral adjudicator or sole source of consolation: You

are now united with the Crucified; Pacem in domino; Accept, oh Lord, my wounds,

offered to Thee in my hour of death; Rest in peace till we meet in the eternal homeland;

I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies; and so

on. Furthermore, the entire monument is dominated by Christian symbolism such that the

memorial, which has become a part of the liturgical commemoration, blends without dif-

ficulty into the existing structure of the cemetery.

On the other hand, it dominates the entire memorial area by occupying the central

portion of the cemetery. In cases in which it was impossible to erect a monument or a

memorial site beside the most highly traveled cemetery path or it did not occupy the

central part of the cemetery, a well-marked path leads to it. Thus, the Domobranci mem-

orials have in most cases become an essential part of community life, since the configur-

ation of the past in this manner blends in with the awakening cult of the dead, within which

our ancestors appear as moral arbiters of the living. In this way, they have become inte-

grated into the rituals of mourning and visits to the cemetery, and have become an essential

part of the ordinary routine of visits (lingering at the plaques, crossing oneself, remember-

ing dead relatives, and so on). When they are erected outside cemeteries, or alongside

roads or well-traveled footpaths, these plaques also become an essential part of the

visual landscape, because of which they are often designed so that passers-by can see

them from afar, and where necessary parking lots are provided at the memorials.

Nationalities Papers 887

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

On the basis of an analysis of more than 100 memorials, or rather their contents and

how they were put up, I have differentiated among three groups or types with regard to

the kind of interpretation of collaboration, resistance, and the executions that they offer

by their spatial positioning and relation to existing memorials and Christian symbolism,

as well as by their entire iconography:

(1) The authoritarian type, defined by a desire for direct colonization of the interpret-

ation of the past related to the Second World War.

(2) The conciliatory/consensual/heroic type that tries to achieve “reconciliation,”

and thus neutralize the fault of both sides by honoring the memory of all of the

dead, including those from the First World War.

(3) The conflicting/opposing type that clashes with the iconography of an existing

partisan monument as an alternative interpretation.

Authoritarian type

I classify as the “authoritarian type” those memorials that occupy the central place in a

cemetery as the central public space of a village or locality. The authoritarian type inten-

tionally colonizes the central place of the cemetery and thus dominates the entire memorial

landscape. The central crucifix of the cemetery most often accompanies it, by which the

alliance between Christianity and “anticommunism” is also established and reinforced

on the symbolic level. That alliance is first established on the level of historical interpret-

ation within which an essential linkage between the Slovene Catholic Church and the

Domobranci is stressed, then again at the level of ideology whereby it is nationally, patri-

otically and self-sacrificially equated with Christianity or even Roman Catholicism.

In the mise-en-scene of the authoritarian type there is no interest in so-called “recon-

ciliation,” the attainment of a consensus and forgetting, but rather the wish to dominate the

interpretation of history and the definition of values in the present. Upon inspection of a

greater number of memorials from this group, it appears that the authoritarian type does

not establish any communication with the heroic memorial landscape (memorials of the

First World War or partisan memorials), but generally ignores the resistance monument

with which it does not communicate with its own placement and iconography. This is cer-

tainly worth mentioning in those cases where indeed there are Partisan memorials within

the parish cemetery. In villages and smaller localities the Partisan memorials are thus

usually found outside the cemeteries, usually at the locations of important events or in

the administrative center, such as on the wall of a co-operative building or structure of

the local community or administrative unit.

Conciliatory type

In contrast to the authoritarian type, the conciliatory or consensual type communicates

with the other war monuments, although it strives to unite at least two war/warrior

stories, that is the Domobranci victims and the fallen in the First World War. In some

cases the new installations aspire to complement all existing war memorials. In such

instances, the new monument/plaque appears as an extension of an already existing

two-part story in which the First World War takes the primary position, while the memor-

ial to the resistance movement takes the secondary. This is also the case when the Domo-

branci memorial represents the last chapter in a uniform heroic narration whose political

nature is suggested as an accidental and totally unintended consequence. In some of these

monuments we find palliative messages which communicate the message that all fallen or

888 O. Luthar

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

killed persons should attain reconciliation (Build a sturdy bridge across the chasm, so that

brother can once again reach brother). Less supportive of this idea of harmony are the

inscriptions that speak of the senselessness of their deaths (Because none / did we

harm / we were freed, / but when the road / led us home / we were murdered here).

And finally there are the occasional metaphorical verses which, though indirectly,

blame the resistance fighters for having provoked the violence of the occupying forces.

That more implicit than explicit accusation tries to convince us of the senselessness of

the executions, for which most of the blame lies with the communists who first drove some

of their contemporaries into a hopeless conflict with the occupying forces, others into col-

laboration and finally into a settling of accounts with political adversaries. One can often

find hints to this effect on memorials through rhetorical questions on the sense of the sacri-

fice (Most did not fall in battle, they were betrayed and murdered, and the place of their

final home is unknown. . .). It is precisely this group of Domobranci memorials that rep-

resents the war as a fratricidal tragedy and national trauma and seeks to settle it by advo-

cating the spreading of guilt and the pursuit of reconciliation.

Conflictual type

We are dealing with the conflictual type when a Domobranci memorial stands in opposi-

tion to an existing partisan memorial. This is the case when, by partially copying the exist-

ing mise-en-scene of a memorial dedicated to the resistance and even by copying its

composition and size, a new monument attempts to establish a balance in the memorial

landscape. In such cases, the Domobranci memorial is often supported by a crucifix or

some other Christian symbol, and so additionally enhances its position in opposition to

the Partisan memorial within the cemetery.

In search of such support, memorial planners frequently resort to borrowing the stylis-

tic touches of older (characteristic) Christian memorials so that the new monument

occupies at least the same position of importance within the cemetery that, in their

view, the partisan memorial already has. This kind of opposition most often arises in

cases where the Partisan memorial “threatens” the center of the cemetery or the conse-

crated area around the cemetery chapel.

From reconciliation to lustration?

While the construction of new memorials was followed by the obliteration, destruction and

replacement of the old ones, the aura of the Partisan monuments started to fade long before

1989. Particularly during the 1980s, the monuments dedicated to the resistance and revo-

lution were variously sporadically criticized, ignored, or used as carriers of symbolic

messages to the communist government. When the prices of groceries were going up,

the statue of the first president of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia was, for example,

repeatedly “decorated” by a loaf of bread put under his arm. The first critical comments

on them were, however, directed at their aesthetical dimensions. This was particularly

so after the dismissal of socialist realist rhetoric in the late 1960s and early 1970s,

when city centres were colonized by more abstract and quite monumental sculptures.

As noted by the Bulgarian anthropologist Nikolai Vukov, similar developments took

place in Bulgaria where the memorials were becoming ever bigger and eventually

turned into vast “memorials of doubtful artistic quality” (Vukov 2006, 216).

Such monuments were the first to be criticized or even removed after the events of

1989 in Slovenia. In Ljubljana, for example, the first non-communist mayor had the

Nationalities Papers 889

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

metal masts that symbolized the resistance against the Italian occupation of the Slovenian

capital cut down. At the same time, the Jewish cemetery in Ljubljana’s central cemetery

was desecrated.

∗

Twenty years later, the process of rearranging the memorial landscape is far from over. On

the contrary, the latest revisionist argumentation indicates a shift from advocating a

symbolic reconciliation to an actual reckoning with the perpetrators. If the revisionists

had earlier on put themselves out to transfer the trauma into a dream of reconciliation,

it now seems that the process has taken a different turn. In the latest stage of reinterpreta-

tion, the revisionists insist on the replacement of the crimes of one side with the crimes of

the other. Even more so, according to the extremist revisionists, not necessarily (all) his-

toriographers, there was no collaboration but rather an insurrection against the “commu-

nist terrorists” who “in the name of . . . [the] communist commonwealth attacked their own

nation” (“Aktualni kulturnopoliticni komentar revije Zaveza” 2010, 10).

Apart from being entirely political, the revisionist narrative is problematic because of

its ignorance of the chronology of events and because of its misinterpretation of the

Second World War during which Slovenia was not occupied but involved in the “European

Civil War” (1).

The reason, at least the one concerning the discussion of resistance and collaboration,

is obvious. The coexistence of various ample narratives can in no way contribute to the

intended erasure of the (Slovenian) society’s involvement in collaboration, genocide,

and, finally, communism. What we experience is a sort of deja vu of victim narratives

which are known from the Western Europe post-war myths, the overcoming of which

(and which is still not complete) provides the precondition for a new European culture

of commemoration.

Such reinterpretations, therefore, are being handled with no reference to contemporary

events in Europe. Instead of international comparisons, the revisionists in Slovenia pro-

fessed a rewriting of history which arrogated a moral right to interpret contemporary

and future national interests by a colonization of the past.

Conclusion

In her book The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Katherine Verdery wrote that revising

history in Eastern Europe by snipping out and discarding sections of the timeline, then

attaching the pre-communist period to the present and future as the country’s true or auth-

entic trajectory will hardly help us put the communist past behind. As shown above, the

changing memorial landscape and the memorial power-struggle in Slovenia indicates

that the past can be and is put aside or behind. Therefore, I can only agree with Regine

Robin-Marie who shows that in a refurbished, re-read, corrected, transformed and mythi-

cized interpretation of the past, even shame can change sides (Robin-Marie 2009, 29–30).

I tend to agree even more with her when she claims that wherever one looks nowadays, one

sees a past not only commemorated and celebrated but also transformed, re-invented,

stashed away, silenced and even desecrated (Ibid.).

Therefore, the best that we can get is not a “shared history” but asymmetrical, different

– and not necessarily conflicting – accounts of the past. In Slovenia this will not be the

case soon unless the elemental intrusion of the political enables Slovenian historiography

to review anew its foundations, i.e. to revise the uncritically accepted presuppositions.

890 O. Luthar

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

Nevertheless, not only politics, but history as well has been shattered, and what we are left

with is, according to Hannah Arendt, a fragmented past. What I wanted to show through

the Slovenian battle for memory is precisely how very fragmented that same past remains

even 40 years after Arendt has written about it in her final, never completed book The Life

of the Mind. Or, to put it more precisely, I have tried to point this out by interrogating two

competing patterns in the construction of historical memory: the ongoing nationalization

of history in which the revisionist side defends its own objectives and frames of legitima-

tion and the attempt for a pluralization of history that tends to pacify conflicts and com-

memorate all victims – or at least agree on a polyphony of commemorations.

Notes

1. LaCapra goes even further, saying that “there are reasons for the visions of history – or at leastmodern and even more postmodern culture – as traumatic, especially as a symptomatic responseto a felt implication in excess and disorientation which may have to be undergone or even actedout . . ., ” 2001, ix–xi.

2. Here I refer to a failed attempt to reach national reconciliation in 1990 after the first multi-partyelections, by the joint commemoration of the president of the state and the Catholic Church.Similar inability to reach national reconciliation throughout the 1990s was marked by the unsuc-cessful legislative provisions and the proposal to erect a joint monument to all the victims ofSecond World War.

3. Here the term (historical) revisionism is understood as a practice of radical reinterpretation of thepast that is unequally founded on the penchant for therapeutic values over cognitive values.Similar to Aviezer Tucker I understand it as revised historiography that is immune to theeffect of evidence (see Tucker 2008, 3). Furthermore, the term is used here to describe theprocess of post-socialist radical reinterpretation of the most traumatic aspects of the past ofEastern European countries in the twentieth century. The term is, needless to say, inadequate.But for the time being I see no alternatives. Negationism, monopolization of the memory, distor-tion of history, rewriting, reinventing, redefining, re-evaluating, re-reading, abusing, erasing,changing, colonizing, . . . the past do not cover the whole spectrum, therefore the search for amore adequate term continues.

4. Perhaps the best example of such attempts is a reader edited by Drago Jancar (Jancar 1998).5. I borrow the term from Dominic LaCapra who distinguishes two approaches to historiography.

The first is what he terms a documentary or self-sufficient research model, and the secondapproach – which is the negative mirror of the first – and that is radical constructivism. Thesecond one has received its most articulate defenders in such important figures as HaydenWhite and Frank Ankersmit, who accept the distinction between historical and fictional state-ments on the level of reference to events, but question it on the structural level. See LaCapra2001, 1–8.

6. As in trauma, numbing (the objectification and splitting of object from subject including self-as-subject from self-as-object) is for the Slovenian historian functioning as a protective shield orpreservative against unproblematic identification with the experience of others and the possibilityof being traumatized by it. But, as LaCapra argues: “objectivity should not be identified withobjectivism or exclusive objectification that denies or forecloses empathy, just as empathyshould not be conflated with unchecked identification, vicarious experience, and surrogatevictimage.” Ibid: 40.

7. See also pages 370 through 398.

References

Ahacic, Draga. 1992. Osvobodilna ali drzavljanska vojna? / War of Independence or Civil War?Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba.

“Aktualni kulturnopoliticni komentar revije Zaveza.” Zaveza 78, 2010. Print.Assmann, Aleida. 1993. Arbeit am nationalen Gedaechnis: Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen

Bildungsidee. Frankfurt am Main – New York: Campus.

Nationalities Papers 891

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4

Assmann, Jan. 1997. Das Kulturele Gedaechnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitaetfruehen Hochkulturen. Munich: C.H. Beck.

Braun, Robert. 1997. “Holocaust and the Problems of Representation.” In The Postmodern HistoryReader, edited by Keith Jenkins. London - New York: Routledge.

Dezman, Joze. 2003. “Naj se zgodovina odpre.” Interview. Mag 9–10: 44–48. Print.Gabric, Ales and Ervin Dolenc. 2002. Zgodovina 4. Ucbenik za 4. letnik gimanzije (History 4, text-

book for the 4th grade in high school). Ljubljana: DZS.Godesa, Bojan. 1995. Kdor ni z nami, je proti nam. Slovenski izobrazenci med okupatorji,

Osvobodilno fronto in protirevolucionarnim taborom (Who is Not with Us is Against Us.Slovenian Intellectuals between Occupying Forces, Liberation Front andCounterrevolution). Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba.

Jancar, Drago. 1998. Temna stran meseca. Kratka zgodovina totalitarizma v Sloveniji 1941—1990(The dark side of the Moon. A short history of totalitarianism in Slovenia 1941—1990).Ljubljana: Nova revija.

Jergovic, Miljenko. 2006. Historijska citanka 1. Zagreb: vbz.Kern, Ana Nusa, Necak, Dusan, Repe, Bozo. 2000. Nase stoletje: zgodovina za 8. razred osnovne

sole (Our Century: History for the 8th grade primary school). Ljubljana: Modrijan.Kopecek, Michal, (ed). 2008. Past in the Making. Budapest: Central European UP.Koselleck, Reinhart. 1979. “Kriegsdenkmale als Identitaetsstiftungen der Ueberlebenden.” In

Identitaet, edited by Marquard Odo and Karlheinz Stierle. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore – London: The John

Hopkins UP.Macmillan, Margaret. 2009. The Uses and Abuses of History. London: Profile Books.Mlakar, Boris. 1999. Slovensko domobranstvo od ustanovitve do umika iz domovine (Slovene Home-

Guard from Funding until the Retreat from the Homeland) (PhD thesis). Ljubljana: Filozofskafakulteta – Univerza v Ljubljani.

Robin-Marie, Regine. 2009. “The Bifurcation of Memory.” In Politics of Collective Memory.Cultural Patterns of Commemorative Practices in Post-War Europe, edited by SophieWahnich, Barabara Lasticova, and Andrej Findor. Muenster: LIT.

Sloterdijk, Peter. 2008. Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Snyder, Timothy. 2010. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. London: Bodley Head.Tucker, Aviezer. 2008. “Historiographic Revision and Revisionism. The Evidental Difference.” In

Past in the Making. Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989, edited byMicahal Kopecek. Budapest: Central European UP.

Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postosocialist Change.New York: Columbia UP.

Vukov, Nikolai. 2006. “Public Monuments as Visualization of Death in Socialist Bulgaria between1944 and 1989.” Centropa 6/3 (September 2006): 215–227.

Winter, Jay. 1995. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

892 O. Luthar

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f W

inds

or]

at 1

1:25

05

July

201

4