Memory lane becomes a battleground

A 'memory war' is raging between countries of the former USSR in a cultural conflict that perpetuates animosity between millions of people. That is the claim of Dr Alexander Etkind, a Cambridge academic, who used a debate at the University's Festival of Ideas last night to demonstrate how Russia, Poland and Ukraine are embroiled in campaigns that could damage their own national interests. He also used the lecture to officially launch a three-year multinational research project that looks specifically at these memory wars, as well as the means and prospects of reconciling them. It is thought to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world. While traditional conflicts between the three countries have taken place on the battlefield in a past that now feels distant, memory wars are being fought daily through newspaper columns, television programmes, novels, theatre productions and on the cinema screen. Etkind's project will examine how the same Soviet-era tragedies and traumas are remembered, promoted, revised and censored in different ways by the countries involved. "The memories of World War Two, Stalinism, and Soviet socialism live on and are constantly being renewed in remarkably different and antagonistic ways," said Dr Etkind.