Seminar: “Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia”. Ekaterian Haskins in conversation with Elizaveta Gaufman and Alexandra Yatsyk
At this PoSoCoMeS seminar, Ekaterina Haskins discusses her book entitled Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia (Penn State University Press 2024) with Elizaveta Gaufman and Alexandra Yatsyk.
Zoom link: https://lmu-munich.zoom-x.de/j/61182078743?pwd=TEpTM1BGRGZueXkyekpTaGpvU2tMUT09
About the book
The book explores the appeal of the cult of the Great Patriotic War and the waning public interest in Soviet political terror as intertwined trends in contemporary Russia. The author argues that these developments are driven not only by the weaponization of the official memory of World War II but also by familial pieties and deep-seated habits of memory. Haskins uncovers how widely shared practices of remembrance have taken root and flourished through recurring exposure to war films, urban environments, popular commemorative rituals, and digital archives. Combining scholarship and personal biography, Haskins illuminates why, despite the staggering toll of World War II and internal political violence on Soviet families, most Russian citizens continue to proudly embrace their family’s participation in the war effort and avoid discussion of domestic political persecution.
Author
Ekaterina Haskins is a Professor of Rhetoric and Visual Studies at Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research and teaching encompass political rhetoric, memory studies, and visual culture. Her recent scholarship investigates the rhetoric and politics of public memory in Russia and post-Soviet countries. A recipient of multiple academic awards, Haskins has published numerous articles and three university press monographs, including Popular Memories: Commemoration, Participatory Culture, and Democratic Citizenship (University of South Carolina Press 2015).
Discussants
Elizaveta Gaufman is an Assistant Professor in the Research Centre for the Study of Democratic Cultures and Politics at the University of Groningen. Her research is situated at the intersection of political theory, international relations, media, and cultural studies. She is the author of Security Threats and Public Perception (Palgrave 2017) and Everyday Foreign Policy (Manchester University Press 2023).
Alexandra Yatsyk is a researcher at IRHIS – CNRS at the University of Lille and a lecturer at Sciences Po, France. Her expertise covers nation-building in Russia and Eastern Europe, biopolitics and art. She is the author of numerous articles and books on the topics, including co-authored the Critical biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Population to Nation (Lexington, 2019), Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), the co-edited Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Ibidem Verlag & Columbia University, 2018), New and Old Vocabularies of International Relations After the Ukraine Crisis (Routledge, 2016), and others.