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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
MEMORY STUDIES
Researching Memory
and Identity in Russia and
Eastern Europe
Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Edited by
Jade McGlynn
Oliver T. Jones
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Series Editors
Andrew Hoskins
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
John Sutton
Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University
Macquarie, Australia
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends
that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to
that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes
in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory;
panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination
with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of
trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to
an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years.
Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect
what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This
groundbreaking series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’ under
these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its
interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoreti-
cal and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?
Jade McGlynn • Oliver T. Jones
Editors
Researching Memory
and Identity in Russia
and Eastern Europe
Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Editors
Jade McGlynn Oliver T. Jones
Middlebury Institute of International University College
Studies at Monterey University of Oxford
Monterey, CA, USA Oxford, UK
ISSN 2634-6257 ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic)

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-99913-1 ISBN 978-3-030-99914-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99914-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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old Russian Soviet Revolutionary lapel badges. Image ID: DWHY86
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we would like to thank the authors who have contrib-
uted to this volume. We were consistently impressed by the quality and
coherence of their chapters and findings and it has been a privilege to edit
such a fine selection of chapters. As well as our contributing authors, we
would like to thank Polly Jones for her support and guidance for this proj-
ect from the very (pre-pandemic) beginning. The idea for this volume was
sparked during the organisation of workshop at University College
Oxford, entitled ‘Space, Text, Speech: Memory in the Russian and East
European Context’, which was planned for April 2020 but cancelled due
to the Covid-19 pandemic. We would like to express our gratitude to
University College, The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities, and
CEELBAS for their generous funding of that workshop and support on its
cancellation. Finally, our thanks go to Mitch Riding and James Utley as
well as to Palgrave Macmillan, and specifically to Ruby Panigrahi, Mala
Sanghera-Warren and Lauriane Piette, for their support during the prepa-
ration and editing of this manuscript.
v
Praise for Researching Memory and Identity
in Russia and Eastern Europe
“It is visible to even the most casual observer that narratives about history are a
critical element to understanding politics across Eastern Europe. Covering this
region where the deep scares of past violence are misused and instrumentalised in
the conduct of everyday politics, the well-crafted volume represents an extremely
timely contribution. Throughout the book, readers get acquainted with the
numerous ways in which the past can be studied to appreciate why practices of
remembering have such profound political and social implications. The multi-dis-
ciplinary volume includes extensive discussions of the theoretical starting points
and displays the variety of methodological approaches so that we may gain a better
understanding of the logics underpinning the perpetual presence of past experi-
ences. The volume considers how the position of researchers determines the object
of study itself, evaluates the different type of actors that are involved in shaping
representations of the past and it does put at the centre of our attention the fact
that narratives of the past circulate across borders.”
—Félix Krawatzek, Senior Researcher, Centre for East European and
International Studies (ZOiS), Germany and Associate Member of Nuffield
College, University of Oxford, UK
“Oliver Jones and Jade McGlynn’s volume is a timely and useful collection of inno-
vative chapters dealing with numerous methodological issues that students of cur-
rent memory politics in Eastern Europe and beyond have to deal with. It critically
examines the approaches and methods of disciplines as different as psychology,
moral philosophy, literary studies, history, sociology, and political science, in search
of a productive dialogue between researchers involved in this increasingly impor-
tant multidisciplinary field.”
—Nikolay Koposov, Distinguished Professor of the Practice,
School of History and Sociology and School of Literature, Media, and
Communication, USA
Contents
1 Memory
Methods: An Introduction 1
Jade McGlynn and Oliver T. Jones
Part I Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory 21
2 How
to Make Subjectivity Your Friend and Not Your
Enemy: Reflections on Writing with and Through the
“Authorial Self” 23
Juliane Fürst
3 Unveiling
the Researcher’s Self: Reflexive Notes on
Ethnographic Engagements and Interdisciplinary
Research Practices 41
Alina Jašina-Schäfer
4 Dark
Heritage Research Methods: A Case Study from
Contemporary Russia 57
Margaret Comer
ix
x Contents
Part II Locating and Situating the Past 73
5 New
Museums, New Challenges: Reflections on The
Study of Online Museums in Central and Eastern Europe 75
Tadeusz Wojtych
6 Uncommemorated
Sites of Violence: From Topographical
to Topological Research Methods 91
Roma Sendyka
Part III Representation and Production of Cultural Memory 107
7 Recollections
May Vary: Researching Perpetrators
Accounts of the 1932–1933 Famine109
Daria Mattingly
8 Memory
Studies and the Analysis of Crossover Literature:
Methodology and Case Study (Poland)125
Karoline Thaidigsmann
9 Beyond
Analogy: Historical Framing Analysis of Russian
Political Discourse141
Jade McGlynn
Part IV Memory Reception and the Grassroots 161
10 Reception
of Great Patriotic War Narratives: A
Psychological Approach to Studying Collective Memory
in Russia163
Travis C. Frederick and Alin Coman
11 Beyond
the State Agency: Anti-Communist Memory
Work in Post-Milošević Serbia183
Jelena Đureinović
Contents xi
12 Prisoners
of a Myth: Soviet PoWs and Putinist Memory
Politics199
Howard Amos
Index215
Notes on Contributors
Howard Amos is a Russia-focused journalist and writer who has written

for publications including The Guardian, The Associated Press, Newsweek,
Politico, and The New Republic. He completed an MA at UCL’s School
of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies in 2020, and is currently the
editor-in-chief of The Moscow Times.
Alin Coman is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at
the Princeton University. His research focusses on Social Networks,
Collective Memory, and Socially constructed cognition. He has published
widely in leading academic journals in his field (Psychological Science, Social
Psychology and many others).
Margaret Comer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Tallinn University.
Margaret’s research focusses on the heritage of mass repression, Soviet and
post-Soviet memorialization and heritagization, grievability and memory,
and contested memory. She completed her PhD in Archaeology (Heritage
Studies) at the University of Cambridge in 2019.
Jelena Đureinović is Scientific Coordinator of the research platform
“Transformations and Eastern Europe” at the University of Vienna.
Interested in questions concerning memory politics and memory cultures
in the twentieth and twenty-first century, she holds a PhD in History from
Justus Liebig University in Giessen. Her book The Politics of Memory of the
Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and
Retribution was published with Routledge.
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Travis C. Frederick is a PhD candidate in security studies at Princeton

University where his research examines the impact of strategic narratives
on collective memory and national security in Russia. He is a graduate
research fellow at the Centre for East European and International Studies,
the Clements Center for National Security, and the Princeton Cognitive
Science Program.
Juliane Fürst is the Head of Department of Communism and Society,
Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Potsdam, and a Senior
Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. She has just completed a
monograph on the culture and history of the Soviet Hippie movement
titled Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in the Soviet Hippieland,
forthcoming with OUP in 2020.
Alina Jašina-Schäfer is a post-doctoral fellow in a project on
“Ambivalences of the Soviet” at the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und
Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa. She holds a PhD in
Cultural Studies from the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, and
has published on the topics such as belonging, lived citizenship as well as
the notions of home, and place.
Oliver T. Jones did his DPhil in German & Russian at the University of
Oxford. His research interests lie in comparative literature and memory
studies. He previously studied in London, Berlin, St Petersburg and
Moscow, and was a visiting fellow at the Davis Center for Russian &
Eurasian Studies at Harvard.
Daria Mattingly is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and an Affiliated
Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. She is a his-
torian of Soviet Union, communist and post-communist Russia and
Ukraine. Her book on the identifiable and memorial traces of the rank-
and-file perpetrators of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine is forthcoming.
Jade McGlynn is a senior researcher at the Middlebury Institute of
International Studies at Monterey. She completed her DPhil (Russian) at
the University of Oxford, where she also worked as a lecturer. She fre-
quently comments on Russia for the media. Her monograph, Memory
Makers is forthcoming.
Roma Sendyka is an associate professor in the Department of
Anthropology of Literature and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Polish Studies,
at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She is a co-founder and Director
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
of the Research Center for Memory Cultures. Focussing on bystanders’

policies of memory, she cooperates with museum panels, artists and cura-
tors addressing difficult pasts.
Karoline Thaidigsmann is postdoctoral researcher and lecturer of Polish
and Russian literature at the Slavic Department of the University of
Heidelberg. Her research interests include trauma narratives and memory
studies as well as children’s and crossover literature. Her most recent
monograph is A Poetics of Shifting Borders: Patterns of Children’s Literature,
Crosswriting and Cultural Identity in Polish Literature since 1989.
Tadeusz Wojtych is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History at the
University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the politics of history, his-
torical education, and museums in Germany, Poland, and Russia. He is com-
pleting his PhD thesis on online museums in Central and Eastern Europe.
Abbreviations
AfD Alternative for Deutschland

DOMID Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany
Dulag Durchgangslager (transit camp)
POW Prisoner of war
RMHS Russian Military Historical Society
RuNet Russian language internet
WRON Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego (Military Council of National
Salvation)
WWII World War Two
xvii
List of Figures
Fig. 10.1 Six Phases of the research design 168

Fig. 10.2 Timing and design of data collected during the 24 June 2020
Victory Day celebration 170
Fig. 10.3 Timing of data collected during the 24 June 2020 Victory
Day celebration including publication of Putin’s “The Real
Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War Two” (2020) 174
Fig. 10.4 Participant’s self-rated Russian military history knowledge
compared to objective WWII battle knowledge. Points
represent average treatment group scores. For example, the
Speech and article group indicated that they both watched
Putin’s 75th anniversary Victory Day speech and read his
article “The real lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War
Two.” Based on the control group baseline, we would have
predicted self-evaluations for the speech and article group to
be more than 20 points lower, commensurate to their
relatively low average battle recognition score. Error bars
represent mean standard error 176
Fig. 12.1 Dulag-100 memorial in 2008 before the start of the second
phase of construction. (Author photo) 201
Fig. 12.2 Close-up of the completed dulag-100 memorial in 2018.
(Author photo) 202
Fig. 12.3 The dulag-184 memorial in 2018. (Author photo) 206
Fig. 12.4 Completed dulag-100 memorial and surrounding landscaping
in 2018. (Author photo) 207
xix
CHAPTER 1
Memory Methods: An Introduction
Jade McGlynn and Oliver T. Jones
1.1 Memory Studies and Methodology

Following the pioneering work of Maurice Halbwachs (1992), the basic
premise of the epistemological paradigm of “collective memory” is that it
extends beyond the individual mind and the realm of private remem-
brances of the past. Instead, memory is better understood as an ever-
evolving artefact that exists within, and is moulded by, society (Connerton
1989). As such, it is established, interpreted, and disseminated by various
social and cultural institutions and actors, taking multiple forms, from laws
to monuments, archives to art (Assmann and Czaplicka 1995; Schudson
1997). The rich array of cultural, social and political artefacts and institu-
tions that form and propagate memory means that academic research on
the topic—grouped together under the moniker of “memory studies”—
does not fit comfortably into any one particular discipline. The varied
J. McGlynn
Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Monterey, CA, USA
e-mail: jmcglynn@middlebury.edu
O. T. Jones (*)
University College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
e-mail: oliver.jones@univ.ox.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
J. McGlynn, O. T. Jones (eds.), Researching Memory and Identity
in Russia and Eastern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99914-8_1
2 J. MCGLYNN AND O. T. JONES
nature of the field has been viewed as one of its key strengths. Jeffry Olick
(2009, 250) has argued that “the wide variety of mnemonic products and
practices, forms, and functions, that have been addressed under the rubric
of collective memory signals the vibrancy of the field”. Certainly, memory
studies offers exciting opportunities for scholars interested in collabora-
tion between and across the humanities and social sciences, with impor-
tant work developing out of disciplines including literary and cultural
studies, anthropology, media studies, history, sociology and political
science.
Yet profound practical challenges accompany these theoretical oppor-
tunities. Rather than dialogue over the potential promise of cross-
disciplinary innovation, such a wide-ranging field risks siloisation, with
scholars in any one particular discipline drawing on their own method-
ological expertise to further knowledge in their specific area. As Astrid Erll
wrote a decade ago, memory studies is “constituted in such widely varying
manners that it seems that we are dealing with a different object on each
occasion” (2011a, 38). She observed that the seeds of “cross-fertilisation”
were beginning to emerge, with scholars increasingly interested by “inter-
disciplinary exchange” (38). However, she noted that this would require
the expansion of methodological knowledge and awareness of technical
work across the field as a whole. Notwithstanding Erll’s important inter-
vention, this process of methodological knowledge-sharing has remained
largely in the background of the field in the last ten years, with wide-
ranging—and undeniably significant—theoretical work still offering the
most easily practicable route towards cross-disciplinary collaboration (in
the Eastern European context see e.g. Blacker et al. 2013). As such, mem-
ory studies is a vibrant field, continuing to grow at pace. However, it
remains essentially “multidisciplinary” rather than “interdisciplinary”
in nature.
This volume aims to aid the breakdown of such disciplinary siloes by
foregrounding the process of designing, implementing and improving
methodologies in research on memory and identity in Russia and Eastern
Europe. We present a series of distinct case studies that reflect on how
scholars investigate, understand and interpret various aspects of memory
studies, providing a forum via which researchers can learn about the
potential opportunities and challenges of methodological innovations in a
variety of disciplines. In so doing, we interrogate a range of practical ques-
tions that are often underexplored in academic work, but which are of
fundamental importance to scholars of memory, and of its relationship
1 MEMORY METHODS: AN INTRODUCTION 3
with identity formation, at all career stages. These questions include: how
do we measure collective memory? How do we address the focus on pro-
duction over reception? How do we ensure the subjectivity of the
researcher does not interfere with the memory study? How can we be sure
of representativeness of memory in media and literary production?
Of course, the vast majority of research on memory contains robust and
detailed methodological exposition. However, we propose that the gap in
the field lies in the lack of comparative consideration of methodology
between disciplines and the reluctance to explicitly focus on methodology
and its impact on findings, perhaps understandable given that little space
is generally given to methodological reflections in traditional academic
publishing formats. There are some existing publications that examine
memory and methodology that have sought to address these problems in
the general context. For example, Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering’s
Research Methods for Memory Studies (2013) is the first textbook on
research methods in memory studies. This guide provides students and
researchers with a clear set of outlines and discussions of particular meth-
ods of research in memory studies. It offers not only expert appraisals of a
range of techniques, approaches and perspectives in memory studies, but
also focuses on key questions of methodology in order to help bring unity
and coherence to the field.
However, our volume is a collection of practical reflections by research-
ers actively pursuing research “on-the-ground” rather than a textbook or
a “how-to” guide. In this sense, the volume builds on works such as
Susannah Radstone’s recently updated Memory and Methodology (2020).
The fact that Radstone’s volume has been updated and re-released several
times demonstrates the demand for works that focus on methodological
innovation. Yet her volume focuses mainly on history, cultural studies and
theoretical conceptions of memory and does not focus on how to apply
different methods or ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of the
various examined approaches. Finally, it does not consider the specificities
of the Eastern European context, which is a consistently productive field
of memory research and merits its own work on methodologies. The latter
point also holds true for other significant interventions into the field with
a methodological focus, including Dannielle Drozdzewksi and Carolyn
Birdsall’s impressive Doing Memory Research: New Methods and Approaches
(2018). This innovative collection is inspiring in its breadth and scale,
including chapters on participatory and community-engaged practices of
cultural memory and research. Its emphasis on “doing” memory also
brings the editors and authors into close communion with the link between
memory and identity, much as the cases seek to do in the current volume.
Zheng Wang’s Memory Politics, Identity and Conflict (2018) similarly
probes the intersection between these concepts and the various methods
used to study them in the context of social science research. His overview
includes a wide range of approaches such as public opinion polling, study
of educational programmes and textbooks, and analysis of monuments
and other memory sites. Our case studies bring together qualitative and
quantitative social science methodologies in a similar way, but crucially
also integrate approaches from the humanities in order to highlight the
political, social and cultural aspects of memory and its relationship with
identity formation.
As such, there is a small but growing scholarly interest in method-
ological innovation and knowledge-sharing to which this volume seeks to
contribute and expand. As well as showing the researchers’ findings, the
case studies included here interrogate the advantages and disadvantages
of original methods emerging from literature, history, anthropology,
media studies, experimental psychology and political science amongst
other disciplines. The contributions are deliberately self-reflective, with
the authors encouraged to think critically about their research process as
a means of creating developmental frameworks for researchers seeking to
determine the range of available approaches to memory studies today. We
hope that this fresh format can provide practical solutions to the field’s
most pressing challenges, including the subjectivity of memory, reception
versus production of discourse, and the inclusion of marginal perspectives
often neglected in scholarly investigations. In this way, the volume should
be relevant to researchers working on issues related to memory and iden-
tity across geographical contexts. Yet, we also seek to make a specific
contribution in the area of Russian and Eastern European Studies by
focussing on the intersection between memory and identity in the post-
communist and post- socialist region. Thus, before introducing the
included cases, we examine the importance of these concepts in the
Central and Eastern European area and the imperative of refining the
methods used to study them.
1.2 Memory Politics and Identity Construction

in Post-Communist Europe
The question of how history is mediated and consecrated in Eastern

Europe—and then used to remould and securitise national and group
identities—has pressing political, social and cultural ramifications across
this region and beyond, as demonstrated by Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine, fuelled by a warped and intense preoccupation with history.
Although these chapters were written before the war began, they pro-
vide insights into the dynamic political uses of history that Russian poli-
ticians have used to justify their invasion as well as clarifying the regional
context. While far from exclusive to this area, the politicisation of his-
tory for the purposes of identity-formation has long been especially
profound in post-communist and -socialist Europe. This “instrumen-
talisation” of the past is perhaps inevitable given that, after the fall of
the Berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
many Central and Eastern European countries needed to create new
pasts to shape their new futures. The past became an especially emotive
and contested source of legitimacy, sparking memory wars with neigh-
bours and creating tensions in the narratives of European integration
and belonging. These conflicting forms of remembrance are linked to
what Michael Rothberg has labelled “competitive” (2009) memory, i.e.
a jostling of memories rooted in a sense that there is inadequate space
in the public sphere to commemorate the extreme historical traumas
that are “entangled” across this region (Snyder 2011). These historical
events include the Holocaust, World War Two and Nazi occupation,
the crimes of Stalinism, and the violence of later communist and/or
socialist regimes. The hope of many observers was that the 1990s
marked a moment of stabilisation, a sense that these multiple atroci-
ties—each with their own specificities and requirement for independent
“memories”—could finally remain in the purview of the past, their vic-
tims remembered, mourned and respected across national and political
boundaries.
Yet political events over the last decade have laid to rest the misplaced
confidence that 1989 heralded an “end of history” or the “inevitability”
of liberalism.1 Perhaps ironically, much of the counter-revolutionary back-

lash that has eroded this confidence is located in nostalgic and reactionary
re-imaginings of the past. History has not “ended” but has become a
dominant theme in how many Eastern European politicians choose to
depict the present. While in this study we argue that this intense preoc-
cupation with the past seen in Eastern Europe does have its own, specifi-
cally post-communist attributes, there are some important caveats to this
suggestion. First, this region is not a historically or politically homogenous
space: the past and present experiences of the Balkan nations, Central
European nations such as Poland and Czech Republic, the Baltic states,
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are distinct from each other and demand spe-
cific appreciation. Second, other regions, including Western Europe, are
far from immune to the politics of memory. Across contexts, cultural
memory has exerted ever increasing influence over our politics, our under-
standing of the present, how we define our identity (politically and cultur-
ally), and how we respond to crises.
Thus, in focussing on post-communist European nations, we are not
asserting that many of the characteristics that we identify in this volume will
not be found in other countries, especially those that have emerged relatively
recently from dictatorship. Nor are we proposing that post- communism
defines this diverse region. We are simply acknowledging that, by its very
nature, Marxism imposed a teleological view of history as a process that
aimed from the start towards a final culmination. The correct interpretation
of this history was presented as being of the upmost importance for society
and humankind. This way of thinking about the past, and the process of tran-
sitioning away from such conceptualisations of history and politics, has inevi-
tably left an impact in these societies that creates certain communalities.
For example, in his recent study of the politics of the past in Russia,
Ukraine, and Poland, Milan Subotić (2020) argues that a preoccupation
with history and historiography is a particularly (albeit not exclusively)
post-communist phenomenon because of the ontological insecurity of
these nations following the collapse of communism. This issue of “onto-
logical insecurity” is one reason why identity construction and
1
Milan Subotić (2020, 10) has convincingly argued that, when looking to understand the
current politicisation of history in the region, we need to place less emphasis on the optimistic
assessments of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall and pay more attention to the breakdown
of Yugoslavia and its aftermath, where Slobodan Milošević was recalling the medieval battle
of Kosovo to rally Serb nationalism. The historical framing of the 1990s wars as reruns of the
Yugoslav experience of World War Two belongs to a pattern of intense politicisation and
exploitation of history in post-socialist states in Europe that has become increasingly familiar.
reconstruction has been such a focus of European memory politics and

why the intersection between these two concepts provides such an impor-
tant area of study in the region. The importance of memory in collective
identity formation has, of course, long been highlighted in memory stud-
ies. Aleida Assmann (2008) and Avishai Margalit (2002) independently
conceptualise memory as selective and they see the interaction between
memory and forgetting as essential for the creation of identities.2 Moreover,
a growing body of recent literature specifically explores the relationships
between memory and the ontological security of states, which acknowl-
edges that memory is essentially important for nation states to make sense
out of their being and develop a coherent narrative of Self. Karl Gustafsson
(2014) points out that political, or collective, memory provides the mem-
bers of a community with a sense of who they are. Maria Mälksoo (2015),
Bahar Rumelili (2018), and Jelena Subotić (2019) demonstrate that
remembering in a particular way and focussing on particular events in the
history of states are essential stages in the process of constructing a consis-
tent biographical narrative, the main element of ontological security.
However, many states engage in the securitisation of memory, or, in the
words of Mälksoo (2015), “defending memory”—that is, privileging
some memories over others and possibly criminalising alternative remem-
brance narratives. Both Mälksoo and Rumelili (2018) argue that this is a
dangerous phenomenon with potentially destabilising consequences in
international relations and domestically. According to Faye Donnelly and
Brent J. Steele (2019), the desecuritisation of memory is extremely diffi-
cult if not impossible to achieve due to the “active process of collective
retelling” that states are engaged in, which involves the ritualisation
of memory.
At a time when these forms of memory securitisation have an increas-
ingly significant role in global politics, we argue that the post-communist
European region provides a rich source of analysis for students of memory
to reflect critically on the research process itself. Memory studies in this
2
We do not propose that the relationship between memory and identity should be viewed
as intrinsically positive or constructive in nature. Michael Rothberg (2009) argues that the
formation of transnational, “multidirectional” memories between contexts requires the
decoupling of memory and identity, suggesting that this process can inspire new forms of
solidarity between marginalised groups. Nonetheless, given the way that memory has been
instrumentalised by states in the post-communist region we suggest that it behoves scholars
to understand the nature of its link to identity construction as it has developed over recent
decades.
space has given rise to a wide and varied field of academic research that has
developed over the last thirty years in particular. For the purposes of this
introduction, we have identified a number of key approaches to the study
of Central and Eastern European memory politics that have recently dom-
inated academic research. These include a focus on political transforma-
tion and democratisation; narratives of “Europeanisation’; thematic
studies of war memory; and a focus on theory. Here, we give a brief and
thus undoubtedly incomplete overview of these approaches for the pur-
poses of illuminating the basis for this methodologically focussed volume
and its position within the literature.
The specificities of the post-socialist and/or post-communist experi-
ence have meant that, with some notable exceptions (see e.g. Lebow et al.
2006), Eastern Europe has tended to be treated as its own separate mne-
monic region in memory studies. Much of the initial focus within the field
has fallen upon on the role of memory politics in facilitating post-
communist political transformation. Numerous scholars have noted that
memory politics is often conceptualised as an integral part of Eastern
European democratic transition (see e.g. Assmann and Shortt 2012;
Barahona de Brito et al. 2001, and Tismaneanu and Iacob 2015). This
transitional focus emphasises processes of lustration and legal justice. For
example, Vello Pettai and Eva-Clarita Pettai (2018) analyse the various
approaches to transitional justice that have been adopted in Eastern
Europe, highlighting the uses of criminal-judicial, political-administrative,
or symbolic-representational types. They relate these mechanisms of tran-
sitional justice to the development of memory politics, arguing that
“memory moulds transitional justice” (159). The suggestion that memory
acts as a mechanism for political transformation even extends into the
realm of cultural studies. In his influential work on Soviet and post-Soviet
Russian memory of Stalinism, the cultural historian Alexander Etkind
(2013) suggests that the development of public memorialisation—i.e. via
political rituals, museums and memorials, which he groups under the
moniker of memory “hardware”—is crucial for facilitating Russia’s
democratisation.
Considering memory in terms of justice and transformation has cer-
tainly been productive. However, the focus on democratisation also risks
repeating the mistakes of the “end of history” thesis, i.e. viewing the
course of memory formation as a linear journey towards an essentially
liberal democratic endpoint rather than a complex process that has the
potential to inspire conflict as well as lead to stabilisation. Aleida Assmann
and Linda Shortt (2012) argue that, when political transitions take place,
new memories are invoked and conflicts related to struggles over repre-
sentation of the past erupt. They show that memory struggles are linked
to the processes of legitimation of new political orders and that sometimes
memory can become an impediment to successful political change rather
than a catalyst for it. Furthermore, scholars such as Lea David (2020) have
recently critiqued the notion of a normative connection between memory
formation and human rights. Citing examples from the Western Balkans
and Israel and Palestine, David argues that memorialisation processes car-
ried out in the name of a human rights agenda have recurrently led to the
reinforcement of ethnic and political divisions, once again serving as a
catalyst of conflict rather than change.
The prevailing emphasis on the relationship between memory and
democratisation is also relevant when considering how post-communist
Europe has been considered in the context of a broader turn towards
transnational and comparative work across the field as a whole (Bond and
Rapson 2014; Wüstenberg 2019). This emerging transnational field
focuses on the “incessant wandering of carriers, media, contents, forms,
and practices of memory, their continual ‘travels’ and ongoing transforma-
tions through time and space, across social, linguistic, and political bor-
ders” (Erll 2011b, 11). Likewise, there has been engagement with
“transcultural” memory, which can be distinguished from its “transna-
tional” counterpart as follows: if transnational memory involves going
across the border, then transcultural functions as the enabling “the imag-
ining of new communities and new types of belonging” (Törnquist-Plewa
2018, 302).
While there have been some attempts to compare Eastern Europe with
other global regions in this context (see e.g. Konczal and Mansfeld 2012),
comparative studies on the post-communist space have mainly centred on
the region’s political response to europeanisation, the European Union
and the continent’s changing memory landscape (Mälksoo 2009, 2014;
Sierp 2014; Pakier and Stråth 2010; Milošević and Trošt 2021). Generally,
such studies foreground the continent’s “divided” remembrance culture
(Assmann 2013), arguing that East European actors have attempted to
enlarge European memory by seeking recognition of their own historical
experiences, and particularly a condemnation of communism, and thus
challenging the prevailing emphasis on the Holocaust as the central event
of European memory (Kucia 2016). For example, Maria Mälksoo (2014)
uses a genealogical approach to argue that East European actors have
created an emerging “transnational mnemopolitics” that includes both

demands for recognition of a “distinctly eastern European experience”
and pressure for “universal condemnation of the communist legacy”.
Providing case studies from Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, Jelena Subotić
(2020) argues that when promoting the importance of remembrance of
communist repression these countries have adapted and “appropriated”
the imagery and symbols of Holocaust memory, often deflecting from
questions of complicity and collaboration in the Nazi genocide. Similarly,
in his recent study of Central and Eastern European museums of commu-
nism, Stephen M. Norris (2020) suggests that these memory sites recur-
rently present overarching narratives of national victimhood, overlooking
more complex questions of historical responsibility, guilt and atonement
in order to allow new post-communist regimes to develop “usable
pasts” (9).
There is a similarly rich body of thematic literature that explores the
importance of war memory both from a general perspective and in the
post-communist region more specifically. Jay Winter (2006) has argued
that World Wars One and Two were essential for the increased public
interest in historical memory in Western Europe, with consequences for
the rest of the continent, during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
This development was known as the “memory boom”. Furthermore,
Bernhard Giesen (2005) has advanced the theory that triumph and trag-
edy/trauma function as the two extremes against which national identity
is discursively constructed. Unsurprisingly given the prominence of war,
and especially World War Two, on the Eastern European memoryscape,
such broader work is theoretically and practically applicable to this region.
Indeed, a number of studies have focussed on war memory in Eastern
Europe, most notably Julie Fedor et al.’s volume (2017), which demon-
strates the centrality of World War Two memory in Russia, Ukraine, and
Belarus—three former Soviet countries that were especially affected by
this conflict. There are innumerable other studies that investigate the for-
mation of war memory in the region, with a particularly rich strand of
scholarship exploring how and why states, perhaps most especially Russia,
rely so heavily on remembrance of World War Two both to construct their
own national identity narratives or indeed to contest those of others,
whether via memory wars or diplomacy (see e.g. Edele 2017; Koposov
2018; McGlynn 2021).
Overall, the intensity of such battles for identity and recognition can
lead scholars to focus more attention on narratives (what history is told) as
opposed to means of inculcating memory (how history is told). It also

leads to an increased emphasis on production over reception, and most
notably on theory over methodology, as reflected in major theoretical
investigations, such as that brought together by Uilleam Blacker et al.
(2013) on memory theory in Eastern Europe. Such theoretical work is
clearly very significant, pushing the conceptual boundaries of Eastern
European memory studies both as its own mnemonic region and in rela-
tion to other areas. Yet considerable space exists to probe the method-
ological approaches that enable scholars to test such theoretical
developments and assumptions and, crucially, to interrogate how our
scholarly findings are affected, enhanced, and diminished by such opera-
tional decisions. Furthermore, while the aforementioned debates over
political transformation, europeanisation, and the importance of war
remembrance practices highlight the powerful role that memory plays in
identity construction, there has yet to be a collection that focusses above
all other things on the nature of this intersection in the region. This vol-
ume brings together these methodological and thematic foci, placing the
techniques used to investigate memory at the core of its purpose via ten
chapters that examine not only research questions and findings, but also
the decisions made, challenges faced, and opportunities taken in order to
answer them.
1.3 Case Studies in Memory Methods

By foregrounding research on countries where the past is highly politi-
cised, including Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, Russia and the Baltic States, the
volume analyses the diverse—and often conflicting—ways in which his-
torical narratives emerge from these states’ efforts to create new pasts that
shape their respective visions of the future. The selected chapters explore
a variety of methodological approaches that are collected from different
disciplines, spanning psychology, literary studies, anthropology, historical
and political sociology, among others. When asking the authors to con-
sider how their research methodologies examine and inform understand-
ing of the intersection between memory and identity, we gathered a
spectrum of perspectives that engaged with the question in a wide variety
of ways. Some explained how their methods helped them to examine the
ways that their subjects, be they states, (sub-)cultural networks, or indi-
vidual actors, utilised the past in order to shape or mould forms of collec-
tive or personal self-perception. This approach centres the importance of
decisions surrounding the tools used to examine memory and identity in

gathering recent findings on the subject. Others, however, approached the
intersection between the thematic concepts studied here in a different
way: they focussed less on the ways that memory shapes the self-perception
of the societies or individuals that they study than on ascertaining to what
extent their own identities as researchers affects the way that they approach
their research into memory itself.
While this sort of self-reflective emphasis on the subjectivity of the
researcher is a relatively well-established feature of certain disciplines such
as anthropology, it is perhaps a less common aspect of the other forms of
historical, literary and political study that are also included here. On read-
ing and editing the contributions, we have come to understand that this
self-critical enquiry is, in fact, a crucial aspect of the research process
regardless of discipline, and one that deserves to be foregrounded in such
a collection about the methodologies employed in memory and identity
studies at large. Thus, we have gathered the case studies under thematic
headings that relate to the methods used, their content, and their broader
approach to the intersection between memory and identity. To close this
introduction, we offer a brief summary of these sections and the included
cases as an explanation of these decisions and a guide to the reader.
1.4 Part I: Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory

The first section focusses on perhaps the most glaring of all methodologi-
cal issues: the subjectivity of the researcher and how this can interfere with
the collection and analysis of data, as well as the ethical problems to which
it can give rise. In the first chapter, Juliane Fürst provides personal insight
into how she has grappled with questions of selective bias within oral his-
tory, including by taking into consideration another bias: the subjectivity
of the historian and interviewer. She reframes the interview not as a source,
in which one side furnishes the other with knowledge, but as a conversa-
tion in which a joint document is created and refracted via the partici-
pants’ viewpoints and historical assumptions. This allows the historian
unusually deep analytical and critical potential, since, unlike in archival
sources, they are part of the genesis of the source and indeed its active
participant. Fürst demonstrates this point by dissecting interviews con-
ducted for her recent history of Soviet hippies. Her interrogation of the
different subjectivities inherent within the interviewees’ accounts reveals
layers of textures and meaning within them that would be difficult to oth-
erwise ascertain.
In the second chapter of this section, Alina Jašina-Schäfer builds on
Fürst’s discussion of bias, subjectivity, and its ethical ramifications.
Specifically, Jašina-Schäfer provides critical reflections on her own ethno-
graphic research into the complex manifestations of belonging among
Russian speakers in post-Soviet Estonia (particularly Narva) and
Kazakhstan, and their relationship to memories of localities and territorial
associations. In doing so, the chapter not only underlines the importance
of aggregating methods from different disciplines—interviews, visual
sources, participant observation, “dwelling” and “hanging out”—but also
turns the researcher’s gaze back onto herself and her geo-cultural belong-
ing as an Estonian Russian speaker, raising important questions about the
impact of methodological decisions on the researcher and the
researched alike.
In the third and final chapter of this section, Margaret Comer continues
this ethical focus as she describes and explains methods for conducting
critical heritage studies research, with specific reference to sites of histori-
cal violence and Soviet repression (or, broadly, “dark heritage sites”) in
Moscow and Yekaterinburg. This study includes an examination of the
process of choosing fieldwork sites when one’s potential pool of research
locations reaches into the thousands, and an analysis of researcher posi-
tionality. Both of these points will be of interest to scholars studying heri-
tage in its various forms, within Russia and globally. Exploring the practical
application of a combination of methods drawn from heritage studies as
well as the wider fields of anthropology, archaeology, museology, critical
geography, and others, Comer also interrogates the potential and limita-
tions of various participant-observer ethnographic methods and the ethi-
cal issues surrounding this type of fieldwork.
1.5 Part II: Locating and Situating the Past

Following on from the previous section’s concern with situating the
researcher, the chapters included here examine various challenges that
arise as we consider the spatial and geographical characteristics of memory
and memorialisation. Tadeusz Woytych examines the role of online exhibi-
tions and their impact on museum studies. Based on ongoing research
into six museums in Germany, Poland and Russia, Woytych provides a
systematic analysis of the methodological challenges encountered when
attempting to assess and evaluate the output of online museums in con-

trast to their physical equivalents, arguing that a combination of approaches
is necessary to maximise the utility of digital sources. This interdisciplinary
approach has ramifications not only for memory studies but also for
research on the politics of history, new museology, social science of the
Internet, and transnational history. Woytych also stresses the importance
of collaboration between curators, academics, and the public when adopt-
ing such methods.
Also looking beyond the national framework, Roma Sendyka examines
clandestine “uncommemorated” post-genocide sites, still abundant in
Central and Eastern Europe. Arguing that such sites pose challenging
questions about memory practices and policies, the status of victims, the
role of bystanders and post-bystanders, and the ontology of human
remains and sites, this chapter discusses the possibilities for expanding
research techniques to capture memory when its expression is not explicit.
Drawing into conversation researchers, artists and professionals, this chap-
ter outlines various ways to create new operational tools, summarising
methodological findings from an interdisciplinary project on “uncom-
memorated” genocide sites and their impact on collective memory, cul-
tural identity, ethical attitudes and intercultural relations in
contemporary Poland.
1.6 Part III: Representation and Production

of Cultural Memory
If the second section examined arguably neglected or forgotten spaces

within memory studies, then the third section is instead focussed on more
traditional arenas for memory studies, looking at the representation and
production of cultural memory across different fields and in different
countries. In so doing, the chapters gathered in this section consider the
benefits and limitations of different methods for understanding and evalu-
ating the ways in which historical narratives and cultural memory are (re)
produced. For example, Daria Mattingly explores the challenges of incor-
porating perpetrators’ memoirs into the study of the 1932–1933 famine
in Soviet Ukraine. She relates this to the issue of defining the boundary
between fact and fiction, a traditionally difficult area for historians and
other academics working with cultural memory texts. Mattingly proposes
borrowing methodological approaches from Perpetrator Studies in order
to position the texts within their historical context but also to allow for
different and new perspectives.
Karoline Thaidigsmann also proposes a new perspective for a traditional
form of cultural memory analysis. Specifically, she outlines a model for a
nuanced analysis of “crosswriting” and crossover literature, a term used in
(children’s) literary studies to denote texts that transcend age boundaries
on various levels. With direct relevance for studies of memory and identity
across a growing body of literary texts and films, this chapter draws on
Jacek Dukaj’s The Crowman to offer a new model that differentiates three
levels of communication on which crossover texts may interact with their
readerships and create meaning: expression, reflection and association. In
so doing, Thaidigsmann also reiterates the importance of understanding
cultural memory as a fluid process dependent on processes of reception, of
meaning making and of identity building.
Echoing many of these same conclusions but with an eye to a different
audience and national context, Jade McGlynn examines the uses of the
past in Russian media and political discourse between 2013–2018.
Specifically, McGlynn outlines “historical framing” both as a form of dis-
course analysis and as a conceptualisation of how Russian political and
media actors instrumentalise the past for the purposes of policy legitima-
tion and identity formation. To detail how historical framing analysis
works as a methodology, the chapter draws on findings from three case
studies of Russian political and media discourse: the Ukraine Crisis, the
EU and USA’s imposition of third-wave sanctions on Russia, and Russian
military intervention in Syria in 2015. She also provides critical reflections
on the uses and limitations of historical framing analysis, including how
the methods discussed could be enhanced to improve reproducibility.
1.7 Part IV: Memory Reception

and the Grassroots
The fourth and final section examines the reception of memory and its
engagement with the grassroots, two spaces traditionally neglected in
studies of memory in the humanities and social sciences. Travis C. Frederick
and Alin Coman argue that Russians’ collective memories of World War
Two show an unusual degree of consensus but tend to focus on events
that are quite distinct from those “remembered” by erstwhile allies and
enemies. To explain and explore this distinction, Frederick and Coman
apply an experimental paradigm from the field of cognitive psychology to

examine how community-specific individual memories may be changing
in response to efforts of Russian (state) elites to shape the population’s
cultural memory of World War Two. Examining changes in participant
memories in response to state narratives, this approach seeks to empirically
measure the effectiveness of a narrative through its diffusion and internali-
sation in a given population.
Of course, the state is far from the only mnemonic actor. In her chapter,
Jelena Đureinović examines how the post-Milošević period in Serbia has
been characterised by drastic changes in hegemonic discourses on World
War Two and its aftermath. Detailing how, after 2000, official memory
politics sought to delegitimise socialist Yugoslavia, this chapter examines
anti-communist memory work from below, discussing the multifaceted
approach to memory politics in Serbia, and the multi-level nature of mem-
ory work, its actors and hierarchies. This chapter addresses important
questions related to the implications of doing research on an ongoing
phenomenon and how the contemporary nature of the subject influences
the researcher’s approach. It also reflects on the methodological nuances
and flexibility required to scrutinise slippery concepts such as agency, mul-
tiplicity and perception, all of which are integral to attaining a fuller under-
standing of post-Milošević memory politics.
In the final chapter, Howard Amos examines the treatment of the once
politically sensitive issue of prisoners of war (POWs) between 2000 and
2019. Amos’s analysis is based on primary research conducted in Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Porkhov and Vyazma in 2018 and 2019, as well as books,
films and official discourse. This chapter reflects on the advantages and
limitations of various approaches, including using case study memorials to
illustrate broader trends in monument-building, such as the finding that
local commemorative forms and actors have significant agency when it
comes to shaping Russian cultural and local memory. As such, this chapter
reconstructs the story of the POW monuments, making the case that
understanding the complex interplay between state and grassroots actors
requires an interdisciplinary and mixed-methods approach. Moreover,
drawing on the author’s considerable experience as a journalist in the
region, it also considers how the journalistic practices can supplement the
academic researcher’s traditional toolkit, as well as the potential limita-
tions of both approaches.
Through the totality of these chapters, we hope to contribute to an
increased focus on methodology in memory studies of the region to
further the interdisciplinarity that typifies the exciting potential of studies

of memory and identity. This means developing conversations that are not
always fully formed, that raise as many research questions as they answer,
and that, hopefully, provoke an interest in exploring these debates. We
hope that the reader finds the chapters interesting and informative in and
of themselves, but also that the highlighted studies provoke deeper con-
sideration about methodologies, and the possibilities and challenges of
interdisciplinary research.
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PART I
Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory

CHAPTER 2
How to Make Subjectivity Your Friend

and Not Your Enemy: Reflections on Writing
with and Through the “Authorial Self”
Juliane Fürst
2.1 Introduction
I am a historian of people. Sometimes I try to understand people by look-
ing at their spaces or materialities, or by dissecting their ideas, habitats or
context. Yet ultimately, I am interested in what people think and do (or
not do) and why they think what they think and do what they do (or not
do). I have tried to be a different historian—to concentrate on structures,
to let myself be guided by theory, or to write the grand histories that sell
well in bookshops. Yet I am too interested in the minutia of people—in
their subjectivities and their identities—to excel in histories that do not
have their nose close to the ground. I like thinking about my subjects so
intensively that I can feel their hopes and pains. Sometimes they live with
me in a more real way than the people who are physically part of my life.
J. Fürst (*)
Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: fuerst@zzf-potsdam.de
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2022
J. McGlynn, O. T. Jones (eds.), Researching Memory and Identity
in Russia and Eastern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99914-8_2
24 J. FÜRST
This essay is an attempt to frame these very unprofessional feelings into a

more workable and professional argument. It is an attempt to make sense
of the entanglement of my “authorial self” with the process of researching
and writing my protagonists’ subjectivities.
I started researching Soviet hippies in 2008 as part of a project looking at
activist networks around 1968.1 In 2021, after 135 interviews taken in the
post-Soviet space, USA, Israel, Germany and France, my book Flowers
through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland came out. Alongside the
interviews it contained the traces of many archival visits, many hours in the
library and a significant amount of time surfing the web. Yet long before I
ever made anything out of my topic, it shaped increasingly what I was. I
spent a lot of time with my topic. All the time not taken up by my children.
My topic, as often is the case, became my identifier and my identity at work-
shops, conferences and my place of work. Yet it was also true, that as time
progressed my topic became more and more what I, Juliane Fürst, German
émigré to England specializing in Soviet history and youth, made it. The
history of Soviet hippies was formed through my words and refracted
through my views and my identity. Unlike some chroniclers of youth sub-
culture, I never was a member of “the tribe”, nor did I share age or national-
ity with my subjects. Yet I very soon became acutely aware that the border
between my subjects and me, between their information and my processing
of this information, was weirdly blurred—at least a lot more blurred than
what my historical training had set as the gold standard for writing history.
Subjectivity hopelessly surrounded me. It was everywhere I turned, includ-
ing and especially within myself. And it was kind of fun. I had been taught
in my historical training to eradicate, or at least mitigate, subjectivity, but I
kind of liked its perky existence. I wanted to find a way to make sense of it,
not kill it. I wanted to make it useful rather than distracting. I wanted to
make clear that the biases were an integral part of my work and indeed my
friends rather than my enemies in the process of writing.
2.2 The Authorial Self

De facto historians have long agreed that objectivity does not exist—the
1960s French philosophers did away with that. But they have failed to give
any indication of what it could be replaced by. The obvious answer is that
1
This was an AHRC sponsored project “Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories”
under the leadership of Robert Gildea, Oxford, 2007–2010.
2 HOW TO MAKE SUBJECTIVITY YOUR FRIEND AND NOT YOUR ENEMY… 25
if we cannot have objectivity, because it is an unreachable utopia, then we

are left with a form of subjectivity. It was my work as an oral historian (the
1968 project was explicitly conceptualised as an interview-based investiga-
tion), which opened my eyes to the chasm between what we preach and
what we practice. Oral history still at times evokes strange reactions from
reviewers and journal editors, forcing oral historians into a bizarre ritualis-
tic dance at the beginning of their books and articles, in which they criti-
cise their methodology to the point of destruction and then proceed to do
one of two things: they ignore all their misgivings and use evidence from
interviews as if no subjectivity were involved or they end up discussing the
subjectivity of their sources to the point of writing a history of the inter-
views rather than the story their interviewees tell them. Both strategies
have contributed hugely to the enlargement of what history can do: the
first because it illuminated areas of history that found little reflection in the
archives and hence had been hitherto underrepresented.2 The second
because it highlighted the importance of the here and now for historical
memory and the complexity of shifting individual identities within a col-
lective framework of memory.3 Yet very few works attempted to make the
two lines of enquiry speak to each other. Fewer still recognised that the
middleman between the two was the author and his or her subjectivity.
For a while I ran a bolshie line when presenting my project, defiantly stat-
ing that I was interviewing Soviet hippies solely for the historical informa-
tion they could give me. I admitted that I realised that said information
was distorted by their and my subjectivities, but that compromised infor-
mation was better than no information, which in the case of Soviet hippies
was the alternative to interviewing. At the same time, I entertained friends
and colleagues with my stories of how I travelled across the world in the
search of former Soviet hippies, how adventurous or bizarre some of my
interview situations were, and how difficult it was to make sense of this
amorphous interview material and all the observations I had about place,
nature and spirit of interviews into a single academic text. I was well aware
of the schizophrenic nature of my usage of my sources: I practiced an
almost complete separation of the personal from the academic—and of the
emotional from the intellectual. For a while I had fancy ideas about
2
This is in particular true for the recovery of women’s voices. See e.g. Armitage et al.
(2002), Armitage (1989) and Gluck and Patai (1991).
3
On Oral History as memory studies see Passerini (1996), Wierling (2003) and Charlton
et al. (2007).
26 J. FÜRST
producing a travel-cum-history book for the trade market, but lost confi-
dence. I ended up writing a more standard academic book with a sprin-
kling of personal self-reflection built in, but shying away from fully
executing what in the absence of a good established paradigm I will call
“radical transparency”—a true analysis of what is happening when a histo-
rian filters a topic through his or her own subjectivities in order to produce
a historical narrative. The term—manipulated from 1989 term “radical
empiricism” by Michael Jackson—and the ideas behind it rely heavily on
the long line of work done by ethnographers and anthropologists who
have been much more acutely aware of the implication of their “selves” on
their work (see e.g. Davies and Spencer 2010).
There is as yet no good term to describe history writing that gives equal
weighting to both the subjectivities of the subject as well as author.
However, there are several historians who have broken through the divide
of personal and academic over the years (not to mention the countless
anthropologists who recognised the interference of the self much earlier,
see e.g. Rabinow (1977), Visweswaran (1994, 95–113), Geertz (1988),
Clifford and Marcus (1986) and Starn (2015)). There have also been
attempts to conceptualise the act of writing, especially writing trauma, as
a “middle voice”, an interlocutor for the victim to the wider world. Rather
than privileging the subjectivity of the author, however, it marginalises it
in favour of the voice of primary source, whose sanctity cannot be touched
by authorial corruption. Dominick LaCapra is hence very critical of such a
postulation on the authorial voice, which he considered to leave out the
“concern of empathy”—an emotion that both underlined yet also inter-
preted the victim’s experience and thus conceded agency to the author
(LaCapra 2001).
Compared to a decade or two ago—or indeed the time when I was
writing my first undergraduate history essays at university in the 1990s—
the “I” has become a much more accepted cypher in historical texts than
previously. Carolyn Steedman has been a pioneer in the field, when in her
Landscape for a Good Woman (1986) she broke down the borders
between source and author by using her memories to comment on histori-
cal paradigms, while using her training in history to make sense of her and
her mother’s life. In the field of Eastern European history Kate Brown
(2004, 2020) has actively practiced and campaigned for the inclusion of
the first person in the narrative, reflecting its constant presence in the
research process. The advent of blogging in the historical sphere has given
the authorial voice a different weight. Historians such as Matt Houlbrook
have used their blog to get them over writing blocs or methodologically
difficult moments, declaring that “Being open about the struggles that
historians often prefer to keep private is my way of demystifying what we
do. I hope it might also start an ongoing conversation about how history
is worked on and written”.4 The most outspoken and consistent call for
inclusion of the “I” has been voiced in recent work related to “decoloniz-
ing” history and re-centring attention away from white historical agents.
Robin Mitchell (2021), historian of black women in nineteenth century
France, asserted that: “I am a Black woman writing about Black women in
European history. I bring myself with me wherever I go”. It is not surpris-
ing that in the wake of Black Lives Matter and a world in which personal
identity receives unprecedented attention, the factors that make us “us”
should have relevance for and in the work we do. It seems oddly out of
step with the general public discourse to think so hard about who we are,
how we are described and how this description shapes, and is reflected, in
society, and yet not apply these considerations to one of the most impor-
tant professions for shaping public discourse: the writing of history. “I
have no desire to write or to read history that assumes that my rage, my
sorrow, and my other emotions have no place in the discipline, or in the
writing. They do.”, writes Robin Mitchell (2021) defiantly. She is right to
anticipate a push-back on the idea of authorial emotions and affect.
Indeed, one has to go as far as the full rejection of the “holy grail” of his-
tory—objectivity and impartialness—in order to make space for the
author’s emotions, identity and personal history—in short, the “autho-
rial self”.
How much the debate surrounding the “racial turn” is beginning to
influence Eastern European studies has become apparent in the latest
Slavic Review, in which the personal identities of both subjects and
researchers find equal attention. Rightly, attention to the role of “race” in
Slavic Studies is not only a question of whom and what we study, but also
who is doing the studying. And as one of the contributors to the issue,
Maria Mogilner (2021, 208), highlights: it might also extend to how we
study history: “my hope is …. that the discovery of “race” as a useful cat-
egory of analysis will be accompanied by a thorough epistemological cri-
tique and deconstruction of the existing canons and paradigms”. While
Mogilner was in this instance thinking more about the re-definition of
4
This blog can be accessed at https://tricksterprince.wordpress.com/about/ (accessed
20 September 2021).
28 J. FÜRST
empire and colonial as paradigms, I would argue that this deconstruction

also has to include an awareness that the process of “making history”
includes the identity of the historian. “Race” has only been the most
prominent of a variety of identity markers that have forced the historical
academy to rethink its paradigms, its hierarchies and its subjectivities (I
deliberately refrain from the usage of the term “bias” for its negative con-
notations). “Decolonisation” has laid bare a number of colonial and post-
colonial relationships within and to Eastern Europe, ranging from
attention to the lives and identities of the non-white nations, ethnicities
and cultures to the complex (sometimes labelled as post-colonial) interac-
tions between Western and Eastern historians in the post-socialist world.
Several scholars have rightly drawn attention to the fact that the historical
racialisation of Eastern Europe (as done most obviously, but not exclu-
sively, by Nazi ideology) complicates the picture of “whiteness” in Europe
(West Ohueri 2021; Drews-Sylla and Makarska 2015). The question who
is writing whose history and with what right and what effect is suddenly
very much part of the historical debate. It is obvious that this question can
only be answered by having a good and serious authorial self-introspection.
In short: we live in a world where we cannot ignore our historians’ selves
any longer. This is true for Eastern European historians as much as for
any others.
Eastern European historians are the products of historical develop-
ments, who have been shaped by historical events in their lifetime—and
very likely these events took place in the very region we study. A few years
back there were several social media posts, for instance, about the extent
to which Chernobyl has shaped my generation of historians. While the
emphasis was on those who lived through the catastrophe as children in
the region, I can certainly say that Chernobyl’s quite literal downfall (in
the form of radioactive rain) in non-socialist Bavaria also left a significant
caesura in my life. With hindsight it might be the event of my generation.
We are also increasingly aware that it is not only our own lives, but the
lives of those with whom we are closest aligned that shape our psyche and
hence our historical consciousness. The traumas of our immediate family
have long had the musty smell of genealogical research done by one’s
grandaunt. Yet both natural and social sciences have revealed them to be
narratives that are transferable and have serious influence on people’s per-
ception of themselves and the world (see e.g. Schwab 2010; Huber and
Plassmann 2012). We are humans who love, grieve, fight, suffer and are
joyful, while we are researching and writing history. And at times history
helps us to make sense of our own personal lives. In an unflinchingly per-

sonal account of her times as a graduate student at Berkeley, Joy Neumeyer
(2021) has recently revealed how her training as a historian helped her
disentangle the competing narratives that were shaping her own life as a
victim of domestic violence and re-find confidence in the facts she knew
were true. Her impressive article also reminds us that while often we do
identify with historical figures who share our main identities, we connect
via a wide variety of markers, some of which only become apparent in the
course of research or teaching. Hence Nikolai Bukharin came to be the
voice of the past reminding Neumeyer of the futility of following the nar-
ratives of others.
2.3 The Authorial I
My personal history (or better the lack of any obvious personal history
that would connect me with my subjects or region of interest) has forced
me to think about my role in the Eastern European and Soviet field. When
writing my first book—a history of youth under late Stalinism—I rarely
asked myself about the legitimacy of my project. My eyes were focused
hard on my archival sources and on the need to build an academic career.
It was the luxury of stable employment but also the strong group identity
of the subjects of my second book, Soviet hippies, that made me question
why I was doing what I was doing and what my justifications were. From
the very beginning of when I started to research youth culture, I was
aware that most people who studied subculture were deeply into “subcul-
ture” and mostly part of “subculture”. I was no hippie and had never been
a hippie (even though over the course of my research I found that I do
possess bits of the hippie soul). With the appearance of Alexei Yurchak’s
book on the last Soviet generation, late socialism as such was established
as a kind of insider community whose complex and often ironic rituals,
gestures and language were best decoded by insiders. It highlighted what
had been an elephant in the Slavic studies room for many years: how good
could non-native historians write Soviet/post-Soviet history, given that no
amount of study could replace the knowledge acquired through upbring-
ing and socialisation? I certainly felt, acutely, both distances—the one
between my non-subcultural me and my radically non-conformist hippie
subjects and the one between me as a Westerner (I cannot even claim East
German credentials) and my post-socialist interview partners. It made me
think long and hard about what I could bring to my topic and how I could
30 J. FÜRST
turn my “deficiencies”—including my Western, bourgeois subjectivity—

into building blocks rather than obstacles.
Ironically, I found inspiration in this endeavour in the same post-
colonial theories that have made me question my place in the Eastern
European academy in the first place. I was an outsider—and to my subcul-
tural hippie subjects doubly so. I was a Western academic with a Western
background. I had to learn the Soviet codes (and it would be hubris to
insinuate that this learning ever reached the proficiency of a native) and on
top of that I had to learn the hippie codes (for which the same applies).
Yet, while very conscious of my defects, I also instinctively believed that
there was something I—the non-Soviet, non-hippie—could bring to the
project. Post-colonial and translation studies have highlighted that the
“native” is not necessarily the only or indeed the best vector to establish
identity (Chow 2014). Indeed, “natives” need the “non-natives” to estab-
lish their normative credentials. Only with the sound of an accent can
norm be defined—which, of course, only emerges as another accent. I was
undoubtedly and on every level the person with the accent. I spoke with
an accent, I looked like the person with an accent and I listened with
an accent.
From the very beginning I knew that these facts were helpful as well as
difficult. The fact that I was not an insider by geography usually caused
more curiosity than aversion. The fact that I was not of the hippie crowd
or some other part of the Soviet underground ironically made people feel
more comfortable. First, my presence allowed former hippies to look at
their history as they assumed I was doing—as an outsider with no precon-
ceived notion—and hence allowed them to reconsider even basic tenets of
their history or reveal memories that were not considered part of the
accepted canon. Second, I fulfilled a complicated internal function to the
hippie community, which, however, I could use to my advantage in de-
coding hidden messages. There were hierarchies and layers within the hip-
pie crowd, which are not less complex than those of the official Soviet
bureaucracy. These hierarchies and layers of social standing are based on a
complex system of weighing date and length of hippie “service”, accom-
plishments in hippie-accepted fields such as song, poetry and art, and local
and national reputation. I was seen as a canvas on which memories could
be projected, which in turn served to cement or re-align these hierarchies
and layers. In short, I, the outsider was instrumentalised in a number of
ways, very few of which would have been conscious but all of which built
on the very qualities of my outsider status. And all of them worked
towards, not against, my primary aim of collecting information. When,

after a decade of taking interviews with former hippies, I turned to the
transcripts of my first conversations, I was surprised that in terms of infor-
mativeness they were no worse, indeed, often superior to my later inter-
views, when I had traded my initial innocence against some insider
knowledge. My style had turned to asking more precise, but also more
leading question. My mind had turned from complete openness to pursu-
ing certain story lines and biographies. There were merits in both. But the
early transcripts—including all their naïve questions and obvious moments
of confusion—were a strong reminder that paradoxically difference can
breed familiarity. I was in many ways the proverbial stranger who is the
catalyst revealing the story. And nothing confirmed my “stranger” creden-
tials more than my “accent”—or, as my Russian phonetics teacher once
had called it—my “defects”.
What was possibly even more interesting than “speaking and looking
with an accent” was “listening with an accent”. Undoubtedly, there is a
fine line between “listening with an accent” and “misunderstanding
things” (and where that line lies, is subject to debate). I will illustrate what
I mean by “listening with an accent” by telling the story of a particular
interview. I had been pointed by several people to a female hippie from
Moscow who was herself interested in hippie history. Her hippie creden-
tials (I never asked for “credentials,” but in this case it became a dominant
trope in the interview) were derived from her husband, whom she intro-
duced as a leading voice in the hippie community of the late 1970s and
1980s. Their courtship and marriage corresponded to her rise from an
unruly, music-loving youngster into a hippie of the Moscow sistema, the
informal network of hippies all across the Soviet Union. His sudden death
after nine years of marriage was the great rupture of her life and triggered
a descent into alcohol, which she overcame, finding a new life in the post-
socialist world as a translator, hence managing a better transition into the
capitalist world than many others. There were several interesting lines she
uttered with reference to her relationship to her husband, whom she
adored and loved despite his frail mental health, his frequent self-harming
and his drug addiction. But there was also a slightly rebellious streak in her
account—at least that is what I heard. She told me that he proposed with
the words: “Now you are a nobody, but if you marry me, you will be the
wife of X” (Fürst 2021, 407). The impression that there was a slither of
resentfulness against his assumed dominance was strengthened by her
account how he made her go back to university for a philology degree
32 J. FÜRST
because he was ashamed to have a scientist wife (hence displaying all the
prejudices of the classical Soviet intelligentsia). My interview correspon-
dent asked for a transcript of the interview, which I provided and which
was approved after some minor correction, but none that related to the
remarks about her husband.
I took the freedom to interpret her interview in my book as what I
heard at the time: a mild, but noticeable thorn in her flesh that was at odds
with the strong veneration otherwise displayed towards her husband’s
memory. In short, a protest against her treatment as a woman. I thought
I heard a flicker of indignation that he assumed the right to have opinions
on her significance and education. And I took this flicker of indignation
and put it centre-stage, because to my ear it yelled like a siren. I was in the
privileged situation to have collective feedback from my subjects after
publication via a specially established Facebook group. When the group
reached the relevant chapter, my interviewee became very anxious and
claimed that her remarks had been “stiob”—an ironic detachment of what
was said—and should not be read as a criticism of her husband. While her
protest was likely grounded to no small extent in the group dynamics of
this Facebook group, some of it was undoubtedly also the result of my
own subjective listening to her testimony. But I would contest that this
was not a matter of “correct” or “incorrect” hearing. Rather our reception
was conditioned by our different backgrounds, both of which are ulti-
mately revealing to the story as a whole.
My interviewee heard her words as they would have been understood
in the world of Sovietness—as an anecdote that was to be laughed at rather
than dissected for its societal meaning. Of course, having a degree from
the faculty of philosophy was of a higher order than an engineering degree
and, of course, romantic alliances made “people”, especially if the maker
in question had a very distinguished Soviet pedigree as the scion of a great
military family. I had been brought up hearing the insulting subtext of
male banter. I heard insult in her story. And indignation in her description.
I could hear her reclaiming agency after she had done his bidding. So, was
I wrong to hear these things? After all my interviewee distanced herself
from my interpretation. Or was I right, because I heard exactly what she
wanted me to hear but could not even admit to herself that this is what she
wanted to say? After all, she offered her husband’s words to me, which are
hard not to interpret at least as ambiguous statements. There is no defini-
tive answer to these questions. But there is undoubtedly a wider range of
possible interpretations, because I was “listening with an accent”. My
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Observations on
the new constitution, and on the Federal and
State conventions, by a Columbian patriot
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Observations on the new constitution, and on the Federal and

State conventions, by a Columbian patriot
Author: Mercy Otis Warren
Author of introduction, etc.: Lawrence W. Towner
Dubious author: Elbridge Gerry
Release date: January 5, 2024 [eBook #72627]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: The Old South Association, 1955
Credits: Bob Taylor, Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NEW CONSTITUTION, AND ON THE
FEDERAL AND STATE CONVENTIONS, BY A COLUMBIAN
PATRIOT ***
Old South Leaflets
No. 226
Observations on the
New
Constitution, and on
the Federal
and State Conventions
By a Columbian Patriot
Sic transit Gloria Americana
[Mercy Otis Warren, Boston, 1788]
with a Prefatory Note by
Lawrence W. Towner
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Published by
THE OLD SOUTH ASSOCIATION
Old South Meeting-house, Boston, Massachusetts
Copyright 1955 by the Old South Association.
Reproduction permitted to all who give credit
to the Association.
T HIS pamphlet, first printed in Boston shortly after Massachusetts
ratified the Federal Constitution on February 6, 1788, achieved
its largest circulation in New York where it was issued both in
pamphlet form and in a newspaper series during the spring of that
year.[1] At the time of publication the Anti-Federalist cause still
seemed hopeful, for despite the fact that Massachusetts was the
sixth state to ratify (in the two previous months, Delaware,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut had voted
affirmatively), the approval of three more states was required before
the Constitution would become operative. Even when Maryland,
South Carolina, and New Hampshire would make the total nine
(between April 26 and June 21), no continental government could be
effective without Virginia and New York, where strong opposition
existed (they ratified June 25th and July 26th, respectively).
The objections to the new Constitution expressed in the
Observations are typical of Anti-Federalist thought from New
England to Georgia.[2] Many of the details seem querulous today;
many were met, as far as the author was concerned, by the Bill of
Rights.[3] Still, the underlying questions asked are as vital now as
they were then. Essentially, the problem facing that generation was
how to organize political power so that it could be placed safely in
the hands of men. Government had to be made strong enough to
survive, yet it had to be kept properly tender about individual life,
liberty, and property. As might be expected, the problem was seen in
terms of rights against government rather than in terms of the
citizen’s responsibility to government, but in the twentieth century’s
era of absolutism it is useful to be reminded, in Mrs. Warren’s words,
“that man is born free and possessed of certain unalienable rights....”
For many years this pamphlet was attributed to a leading Anti-
Federalist, Elbridge Gerry. However, the publication of Mercy Otis
Warren’s statement of authorship in a letter of May, 1788, and
evidence within the work that she was its author and Gerry was not,
would seem to indicate that she should be given the honors.[4]
The reproduction of the Observations here made is from the
original in the Massachusetts Historical Society with the kind
permission of Mr. Stephen T. Riley. The first four and one-third pages
have been omitted.
Observations on
The New Constitution
A LL writers on government agree, and the feelings of the human
mind witness the truth of these political axioms, that man is born
free and possessed of certain unalienable rights—that government is
instituted for the protection, safety and happiness of the people, and
not for the profit, honour, or private interest of any man, family, or
class of men—That the origin of all power is in the people, and that
they have an incontestible right to check the creatures of their own
creation, vested with certain powers to guard the life, liberty and
property of the community: And if certain selected bodies of men,
deputed on these principles, determine contrary to the wishes and
expectations of their constituents, the people have an undoubted
right to reject their decisions, to call for a revision of their conduct, to
depute others in their room, or if they think proper, to demand further
time for deliberation on matters of the greatest moment: it therefore
is an unwarrantable stretch of authority or influence, if any methods
are taken to preclude this reasonable and peaceful mode of enquiry
and decision. And it is with inexpressible anxiety, that many of the
best friends of the Union of the States—to the peaceable and equal
participation of the rights of nature, and to the glory and dignity of
this country, behold the insidious arts, and the strenuous efforts of
the partisans of arbitrary power, by their vague definitions of the best
established truths, endeavoring to envelope the mind in darkness the
concomitant of slavery, and to lock the strong chains of domestic
despotism on a country, which by the most glorious and successful
struggles is but newly emancipated from the spectre of foreign
dominion.—But there are certain seasons in the course of human
affairs, when Genius, Virtue, and Patriotism, seems [sic] to nod over
the vices of the times, and perhaps never more remarkably, than at
the present period; or we should not see such a passive disposition
prevail in some, who we must candidly suppose, have liberal and
enlarged sentiments; while a supple multitude are paying a blind and
idolatrous homage to the opinions of those who by the most
precipitate steps are treading down their dear bought privileges; and
who are endeavouring by all the arts of insinuation, and influence, to
betray the people of the United States, into an acceptance of a most
complicated system of government; marked on the one side with the
dark, secret and profound intrigues, of the statesman, long practised
in the purlieus of despotism; and on the other, with the ideal projects
of young ambition, with its wings just expanded to soar to a summit,
which imagination has painted in such gawdy colours as to intoxicate
the inexperienced votary, and to send him rambling from State to
State, to collect materials to construct the ladder of preferment.
But as a variety of objections to the heterogeneous phantom, have
been repeatedly laid before the public, by men of the best abilities
and intentions; I will not expatiate long on a Republican form of
government, founded on the principles of monarchy—a democratick
branch with the features of aristocracy—and the extravagance of
nobility pervading the minds of many of the candidates for office,
with the poverty of peasantry hanging heavily on them, and
insurmountable, from their taste for expence, unless a general
provision should be made in the arrangement of the civil list, which
may enable them with the champions of their cause to “sail down the
new pactolean channel.” Some gentlemen, with laboured zeal, have
spent much time in urging the necessity of government, from the
embarrassments of trade—the want of respectability abroad and
confidence of the public engagements at home:—These are obvious
truths which no one denies; and there are few who do not unite in
the general wish for the restoration of public faith, the revival of
commerce, arts, agriculture, and industry, under a lenient, peaceable
and energetick government: But the most sagacious advocates for
the party have not by fair discussion, and rational argumentation,
evinced the necessity of adopting this many headed monster; of
such motley mixture, that its enemies cannot trace a feature of
Democratick or Republican extract; nor have its friends the courage
to denominate a Monarchy, an Aristocracy, or an Oligarchy, and the
favoured bantling must have passed through the short period of its
existence without a name, had not Mr. Wilson, in the fertility of his
genius, suggested the happy epithet of a Federal Republic.—But I
leave the field of general censure on the secrecy of its birth, the
rapidity of its growth, and the fatal consequences of suffering it to
live to the age of maturity, and will particularize some of the most
weighty objections to its passing through this continent in a gigantic
size.—It will be allowed by every one that the fundamental principle
of a free government, is the equal representation of a free people.—
And I will first observe with a justly celebrated writer, “That the
principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the absolute rights
which were vested in them by the immediate laws of nature, but
which could not be preserved in peace, without the mutual
intercourse which is gained by the institution of friendly and social
communities.” And when society has thus deputed a certain number
of their equals to take care of their personal rights, and the interest of
the whole community, it must be considered that responsibility is the
great security of integrity and honour; and that annual election is the
basis of responsibility,—Man is not immediately corrupted, but power
without limitation, or amenability, may endanger the brightest virtue
—whereas a frequent return to the bar of their Constituents is the
strongest check against the corruptions to which men are liable,
either from the intrigues of others of more subtle genius, or the
propensities of their own hearts,—and the gentlemen who have so
warmly advocated in the late Convention of the Massachusetts, the
change from annual to biennial elections; may have been in the
same predicament, and perhaps with the same views that Mr.
Hutchinson once acknowledged himself, when in a letter to Lord
Hillsborough, he observed, “that the grand difficulty of making a
change in government against the general bent of the people had
caused him to turn his thoughts to a variety of plans, in order to find
one that might be executed in spite of opposition,” and the first he
proposed was that, “instead of annual, the elections should be only
once in three years:” but the Minister had not the hardiness to
attempt such an innovation, even in the revision of colonial charters:
nor has any one ever defended Biennial, Triennial, or Septennial,
Elections, either in the British House of Commons, or in the debates
of Provincial assemblies, on general and free principles: but it is
unnecessary to dwell long on this article, as the best political writers
have supported the principles of annual elections with a precision,
that cannot be confuted, though they may be darkened, by the
sophistical arguments that have been thrown out with design, to
undermine all the barriers of freedom.
2. There is no security in the profered [sic] system, either for the
rights of conscience or the liberty of the Press: Despotism usually
while it is gaining ground, will suffer men to think, say, or write what
they please; but when once established, if it is thought necessary to
subserve the purposes, of arbitrary power, the most unjust
restrictions may take place in the first instance, and an imprimatur on
the Press in the next, may silence the complaints, and forbid the
most decent remonstrances of an injured and oppressed people.
3. There are no well defined limits of the Judiciary Powers, they
seem to be left as a boundless ocean, that has broken over the chart
of the Supreme Lawgiver, “thus far shalt thou go and no further,” and
as they cannot be comprehended by the clearest capacity, or the
most sagacious mind, it would be an Herculean labour to attempt to
describe the dangers with which they are replete.
4. The Executive and the Legislative are so dangerously blended
as to give just cause of alarm, and every thing relative thereto, is
couched in such ambiguous terms—in such vague and indefinite
expression, as is a sufficient ground without any objection, for the
reprobation of a system, that the authors dare not hazard to a clear
investigation.
5. The abolition of trial by jury in civil causes.—This mode of trial
the learned Judge Blackstone observes, “has been coeval with the
first rudiments of civil government, that property, liberty and life,
depend on maintaining in its legal force the constitutional trial by
jury.” He bids his readers pause, and with Sir Matthew Hale
observes, how admirably this mode is adapted to the investigation of
truth beyond any other the world can produce. Even the party who
have been disposed to swallow, without examination, the proposals
of the secret conclave, have started on a discovery that this essential
right was curtailed; and shall a privilege, the origin of which may be
traced to our Saxon ancestors—that has been a part of the law of
nations, even in the feudatory systems of France, Germany and Italy
—and from the earliest records has been held so sacred, both in
ancient and modern Britain, that it could never be shaken by the
introduction of Norman customs, or any other conquests or change
of government—shall this inestimable privilege be relinquished in
America—either thro’ the fear of inquisition for unaccounted
thousands of public monies in the hands of some who have been
officious in the fabrication of the consolidated system, or from the
apprehension that some future delinquent possessed of more power
than integrity, may be called to a trial by his peers in the hour of
investigation.
6. Though it has been said by Mr. Wilson and many others, that a
Standing-Army is necessary for the dignity and safety of America, yet
freedom revolts at the idea, when the Divan, or the Despot, may
draw out his dragoons to suppress the murmurs of a few, who may
yet cherish those sublime principles which call forth the exertions,
and lead to the best improvement of the human mind. It is hoped this
country may yet be governed by milder methods than are usually
displayed beneath the bannerets of military law.—Standing armies
have been the nursery of vice and the bane of liberty from the
Roman legions to the establishment of the artful Ximenes, and from
the ruin of the Cortes of Spain, to the planting of the British cohorts
in the capitals of America:—By the edicts of an authority vested in
the sovereign power by the proposed constitution, the militia of the
country, the bulwark of defence, and the security of national liberty is
no longer under the controul of civil authority; but at the rescript of
the Monarch, or the aristocracy, they may either be employed to
extort the enormous sums that will be necessary to support the civil
list—to maintain the regalia of power—and the splendour of the most
useless part of the community, or they may be sent into foreign
countries for the fulfilment of treaties, stipulated by the President and
two thirds of the Senate.
7. Notwithstanding the delusory promise to guarantee a
Republican form of government to every State in the Union—If the
most discerning eye could discover any meaning at all in the
engagement, there are no resources left for the support of internal
government, or the liquidation of the debts of the State. Every source
of revenue is in the monopoly of Congress, and if the several
legislatures in their enfeebled state, should against their own feelings
be necessitated to attempt a dry tax for the payment of their debts,
and the support of internal police, even this may be required for the
purposes of the general government.
8. As the new Congress are empowered to determine their own
salaries, the requisitions for this purpose may not be very moderate,
and the drain for public moneys will probably rise past all calculation:
and it is to be feared when America has consolidated its despotism,
the world will witness the truth of the assertion—“that the pomp of an
eastern monarch may impose on the vulgar who may estimate the
force of a nation by the magnificence of its palaces; but the wise
man judges differently, it is by that very magnificence he estimates
its weakness. He sees nothing more in the midst of this imposing
pomp, where the tyrant sets enthroned, than a sumptuous and
mournful decoration of the dead; the apparatus of a fastuous funeral,
in the centre of which is a cold and lifeless lump of unanimated
earth, a phantom of power ready to disappear before the enemy, by
whom it is despised!”
9. There is no provision for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the
perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well
timed bribery, will probably be done, to the exclusion of men of the
best abilities from their share in the offices of government.—By this
neglect we lose the advantages of that check to the overbearing
insolence of office, which by rendering him ineligible at certain
periods, keeps the mind of man in equilibrio, and teaches him the
feelings of the governed, and better qualifies him to govern in his
turn.
10. The inhabitants of the United States, are liable to be draged
[sic] from the vicinity of their own country, or state, to answer the
litigious or unjust suit of an adversary, on the most distant borders of
the Continent: in short the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme
Federal Court, includes an unwarrantable stretch of power over the
liberty, life, and property of the subject, through the wide Continent of
America.
11. One Representative to thirty thousand inhabitants is a very
inadequate representation; and every man who is not lost to all
sense of freedom to his country, must reprobate the idea of
Congress altering by law, or on any pretence whatever, interfering
with any regulations for time, places, and manner of choosing our
own Representatives.
12. If the sovereignty of America is designed to be elective, the
circumscribing the votes to only ten electors in this State, and the
same proportion in all the others, is nearly tantamount to the
exclusion of the voice of the people in the choice of their first
magistrate. It is vesting the choice solely in an aristocratic junto, who
may easily combine in each State to place at the head of the Union
the most convenient instrument for despotic sway.
13. A Senate chosen for six years will, in most instances, be an
appointment for life, as the influence of such a body over the minds
of the people will be coequal to the extensive powers with which they
are vested, and they will not only forget, but be forgotten by their
constituents—a branch of the Supreme Legislature thus set beyond
all responsibility is totally repugnant to every principle of a free
government.
14. There is no provision by a bill of rights to guard against the
dangerous encroachments of power in too many instances to be
named: but I cannot pass over in silence the insecurity in which we
are left with regard to warrants unsupported by evidence—the daring
experiment of granting writs of assistance in a former arbitrary
administration is not yet forgotten in the Massachusetts; nor can we
be so ungrateful to the memory of the patriots who counteracted
their operation, as so soon after their manly exertions to save us
from such a detestable instrument of arbitrary power, to subject
ourselves to the insolence of any petty revenue officer to enter our
houses, search, insult, and seize at pleasure. We are told by a
gentleman of too much virtue and real probity to suspect he has a
design to deceive—“that the whole constitution is a declaration of
rights,”—but mankind must think for themselves, and to many very
judicious and discerning characters, the whole constitution with very
few exceptions appears a perversion of the rights of particular states,
and of private citizens.—But the gentleman goes on to tell us, “that
the primary object is the general government, and that the rights of
individuals are only incidentally mentioned, and that there was a
clear impropriety in being very particular about them.” But, asking
pardon for dissenting from such respectable authority, who has been
led into several mistakes, more from his predilection in favour of
certain modes of government, than from a want of understanding or
veracity. The rights of individuals ought to be the primary object of all
government, and cannot be too securely guarded by the most
explicit declarations in their favor. This has been the opinion of the
Hampdens, the Pyms, and many other illustrious names, that have
stood forth in defence of English liberties; and even the Italian
master in politics, the subtle and renowned Machiavelli
acknowledges, that no republic ever yet stood on a stable foundation
without satisfying the common people.
15. The difficulty, if not impracticability, of exercising the equal and
equitable powers of government by a single legislature over an
extent of territory that reaches from the Mississippi to the Western
lakes, and from them to the Atlantic Ocean, is an insuperable
objection to the adoption of the new system.—Mr. Hutchinson, the
great champion for arbitrary power, in the multitude of his
machinations to subvert the liberties of this country, was obliged to
acknowledge in one of his letters, that, “from the extent of country
from north to south, the scheme of one government was
impracticable.” But if the authors of the present visionary project, can
by the arts of deception, precipitation and address, obtain a majority
of suffrages in the conventions of the states to try the hazardous
experiment, they may then make the same inglorious boast with this
insidious politician, who may perhaps be their model, that “the union
of the colonies was pretty well broken, and that he hoped to never
see it re[n]ewed.”
16. It is an undisputed fact that not one legislature in the United
States had the most distant idea when they first appointed members
for a convention, entirely commercial, or when they afterwards
authorized them to consider on some amendments of the Federal
union, that they would without any warrant from their constituents,
presume on so bold and daring a stride, as ultimately to destroy the
state governments, and offer a consolidated system, irreversible but
on conditions that the smallest degree of penetration must discover
to be impracticable.
17. The first appearance of the article which declares the
ratification of nine states sufficient for the establishment of the new
system, wears the face of dissension, is a subversion of the union of
Confederated States, and tends to the introduction of anarchy and
civil convulsions, and may be a means of involving the whole country
in blood.
18. The mode in which this constitution is recommended to the
people to judge without either the advice of Congress, or the
legislatures of the several states is very reprehensible—it is an
attempt to force it upon them before it could be thoroughly
understood, and may leave us in that situation, that in the first
moments of slavery in the minds of the people agitated by the
remembrance of their lost liberties, will be like the sea in a tempest,
that sweeps down every mound of security.
But it is needless to enumerate other instances, in which the
proposed constitution appears contradictory to the first principles
which ought to govern mankind; and it is equally so to enquire into
the motives that induced to so bold a step as the annihilation of the
independence and sovereignty of the thirteen distinct states.—They
are but too obvious through the whole progress of the business, from
the first shutting up the doors of the federal convention and resolving
that no member should correspond with gentlemen in the different
states on the subject under discussion; till the trivial proposition of
recommending a few amendments was artfully ushered into the
convention of the Massachusetts. The questions that were then
before that honorable assembly were profound and important, they
were of such magnitude and extent, that the consequences may run
parallel with the existence of the country; and to see them waved
and hastily terminated by a measure too absurd to require a serious
refutation, raises the honest indignation of every true lover of his
country. Nor are they less grieved that the ill policy and arbitrary
disposition of some of the sons of America has thus precipitated to
the contemplation and discussion of questions that no one could
rationally suppose would have been agitated among us till time had
blotted out the principles on which the late revolution was grounded;
or till the last traits of the many political tracts, which defended the
separation from Britain, and the rights of men were consigned to
everlasting oblivion. After the severe conflicts this country has
suffered, it is presumed that they are disposed to make every
reasonable sacrifice before the altar of peace.—But when we
contemplate the nature of men and consider them originally on an
equal footing, subject to the same feelings, stimulated by the same
passions, and recollecting the struggles they have recently made, for
the security of their civil rights; it cannot be expected that the
inhabitants of the Massachusetts, can be easily lulled into a fatal
security, by the declamatory effusions of gentlemen, who, contrary to
the experience of all ages would perswade them there is no danger
to be apprehended, from vesting discretionary powers in the hands
of man, which he may, or may not abuse. The very suggestion, that
we ought to trust to the precarious hope of amendments and
redress, after we have voluntarily fixed the shackles on our own
necks should have awakened to a double degree of caution.—This
people have not forgotten the artful insinuations of a former
Governor, when pleading the unlimited authority of parliament before
the legislature of the Massachusetts; nor that his arguments were
very similar to some lately urged by gentlemen who boast of
opposing his measures, “with halters about their necks.”
We were then told by him, in all the soft language of insinuation,
that no form of government, of human construction can be perfect—
that we had nothing to fear—that we had no reason to complain—
that we had only to acquiesce in their illegal claims, and to submit to
the requisition of parliament, and doubtless the lenient hand of
government would redress all grievances, and remove the
oppressions of the people:—Yet we soon saw armies of mercenaries
encamped on our plains—our commerce ruined—our harbours
blockaded—and our cities burnt. It may be replied that this was in
consequence of an obstinate defence of our privileges; this may be
true; and when the “ultima ratio” is called to aid, the weakest must
fall. But let the best informed historian produce an instance when
bodies of men were entrusted with power, and the proper checks
relinquished, if they were ever found destitute of ingenuity sufficient
to furnish pretences to abuse it. And the people at large are already
sensible, that the liberties which America has claimed, which reason
has justified, and which have been so gloriously defended by the
sword of the brave; are not about to fall before the tyranny of foreign
conquest: it is native usurpation that is shaking the foundations of
peace, and spreading the sable curtain of despotism over the United
States. The banners of freedom were erected in the wilds of America
by our ancestors, while the wolf prowled for his prey on the one
hand, and more savage man on the other; they have been since
rescued from the invading hand of foreign power, by the valor and
blood of their posterity; and there was reason to hope they would
continue for ages to illumine a quarter of the globe, by nature kindly
separated from the proud monarchies of Europe, and the infernal
darkness of Asiatic slavery.—And it is to be feared we shall soon see
this country rushing into the extremes of confusion and violence, in
consequence of the proceedings of a set of gentlemen, who
disregarding the purposes of their appointment, have assumed
powers unauthorized by any commission, have unnecessarily
rejected the confederation of the United States, and annihilated the
sovereignty and independence of the individual governments.—The
causes which have inspired a few men to assemble for very different
purposes with such a degree of temerity [a]s to break with a single
stroke the union of America, and disseminate the seeds of discord
through the land may be easily investigated, when we survey the
partizans of monarchy in the state conventions, urging the adoption
of a mode of government that militates with the former professions
and exertions of this country, and with all ideas of republicanism, and
the equal rights of men.
Passion, prejudice, and error, are characteristics of human nature;
and as it cannot be accounted for on any principles of philosophy,
religion, or good policy; to these shades in the human character
must be attributed the mad zeal of some, to precipitate to a blind
adoption of the measures of the late federal convention, without
giving opportunity for better information to those who are misled by
influence or ignorance into erroneous opinions.—Litterary talents

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Researching Memory and Identity in

Russia and Eastern Europe:

Consumption and Advertising in Eastern Europe and

Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe Alexei

Sustainable food supply chains : planning, design, and

Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory 1st ed.

Memory Politics, Identity and Conflict: Historical

Palgrave Memory Studies Agonistic Memory And The Legacy

Achieving Democracy Through Interest Representation:

Constructing Catalan Identity: Memory, Imagination, and

ISSN 2634-6257 ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic)

Part I Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory 21

Part II Locating and Situating the Past 73

Part III Representation and Production of Cultural Memory 107

Part IV Memory Reception and the Grassroots 161

Howard Amos is a Russia-focused journalist and writer who has written

Travis C. Frederick is a PhD candidate in security studies at Princeton

of the Research Center for Memory Cultures. Focussing on bystanders’

AfD Alternative for Deutschland

Fig. 10.1 Six Phases of the research design 168

Memory Methods: An Introduction

Jade McGlynn and Oliver T. Jones

1.1 Memory Studies and Methodology

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

1.2 Memory Politics and Identity Construction

The question of how history is mediated and consecrated in Eastern

of liberalism.1 Perhaps ironically, much of the counter-revolutionary back-

reconstruction has been such a focus of European memory politics and

created an emerging “transnational mnemopolitics” that includes both

opposed to means of inculcating memory (how history is told). It also

1.3 Case Studies in Memory Methods

decisions surrounding the tools used to examine memory and identity in

1.4 Part I: Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory

1.5 Part II: Locating and Situating the Past

attempting to assess and evaluate the output of online museums in con-

1.6 Part III: Representation and Production

If the second section examined arguably neglected or forgotten spaces

1.7 Part IV: Memory Reception

apply an experimental paradigm from the field of cognitive psychology to

further the interdisciplinarity that typifies the exciting potential of studies

———. 2011b. Travelling Memory. Parallax 17 (4): 4–18.

in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Stephen M. Norris, 1–17. Bloomington,

Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory

How to Make Subjectivity Your Friend

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

This essay is an attempt to frame these very unprofessional feelings into a

2.2 The Authorial Self

if we cannot have objectivity, because it is an unreachable utopia, then we

empire and colonial as paradigms, I would argue that this deconstruction

helps us to make sense of our own personal lives. In an unflinchingly per-

turn my “deficiencies”—including my Western, bourgeois subjectivity—

towards, not against, my primary aim of collecting information. When,

Title: Observations on the new constitution, and on the Federal and

Author: Mercy Otis Warren

Author of introduction, etc.: Lawrence W. Towner

Dubious author: Elbridge Gerry

Release date: January 5, 2024 [eBook #72627]

Original publication: Boston: The Old South Association, 1955

Credits: Bob Taylor, Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

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Part I Subjectivity and the Ethics of Memory 21

Part II Locating and Situating the Past 73

Part III Representation and Production of Cultural Memory 107

Part IV Memory Reception and the Grassroots 161

Fig. 10.1 Six Phases of the research design 168