My doctoral project examines competing narratives on “August 23rd”, the European Day of Remembrance for the victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes introduced by the EU Parliament in 2009. “August 23rd” commemorates the historic date of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that was resolved on the 23rd of August 1939, for European memory cultures. Consequently, the day initially was to be dedicated to the remembrance of victims of Stalinism and National Socialism. Despite the deliberate diversification in name, it is still referred to in this former sense.
Even before its introduction, it was heavily disputed both in public and in academia whether “August 23rd” would make for a joint European Remembrance Day. Among other things, it was prominently criticized for creating a narrative link – and thus, as was cautioned, an implicit equation – between the Holocaust and political crimes of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, its introduction was welcomed as an extension of previous predominantly Western European EU history politics by perspectives and historical experiences in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
My research project is dedicated to analysing narrative strategies regarding the significance of “August 23rd” for today’s conception of history, considering attributions to the historical date as well as to the Remembrance Day. The focus is therefore to first systematically record, contextualise, and compare such narratives that were and still are present in the region most directly affected by the Pact historically, which is the Baltic Sea region. Subsequently, my project determines the debates surrounding “August 23rd” as an example for memory conflicts and for competitions over the (historical) authority of interpreting Europe’s violent history of the 20th century.