Course Learning Outcomes

We will analyze experiences of shaping memory of a difficult past in societies of different countries, and you will be able to independently formulate proposals on which practices of working with the past can be applied in the post-Soviet space.

Knowledge Assessment Format

An essay of 5–7 pages, aimed at resolving one of the problems of collective perception of the past through a specific case.

Course Topics

1. The experience of working with collective memory of the totalitarian past in Germany and Spain: acceptance or oblivion?
2. The experience of working with a difficult past in Japan and Poland: how the victim complex hinders the work of accepting responsibility.
3. The experience of working with a difficult present in Argentina and South Africa: how civil society defeats dictatorship, and reconciliation instead of justice.
4. Working with memory of state terror in the USSR and Russia: did we have a chance?
5. Tools for future trauma recovery in the post-Soviet space.