The article describes the modern European situation with historical politics, which is characterized by the fact that the most important concepts for Germany of overcoming and processing the past, as well as the concept of historical politics in France, are not known - the attitude towards the past here is connected with the issue of memory and comes from a completely different strategy for working with the past .

Historical politics- this is not an official interpretation of history; it forms socially significant historical images and images of identity, which are realized in ritual and discourse. History turns out to be both memory and identity.

Strategy for working with memory and history in Germany:

1. Germany (before reunification)

In Germany there was a long process of formation of “working through the past” (see “”). The culture of memory that dominates today was formed in the 1970s and 1980s. around the memory of the victims of Nazism

2. GDR

The GDR was called an “anti-fascist state”, the period of National Socialism was viewed as someone else’s history (the GDR, like the USSR, was considered the victor), the emphasis was on glorified communist resistance, Jews were not mentioned as a separate category of victims, the GDR did not take part in compensation to victims, research was carried out only on post-war history

3. United Germany(since 1990)

Characterized by a great interest in history. Interest in the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust has increased. Past of the GDR also became the object of the politics of the past (including the legal study of the past of the GDR as a non-legal state): given the experience of processing the National Socialist past, research is characterized by a very fast pace, a parliamentary commission was created in 1992, later - special institutes and historical museums , memorials. The focus of historical research on the GDR is the state security service (Stasi).

Culture of memory in France

In the late 1970s, Pierre Nora's article on collective memory was popular, and later the collection “Places of Memory,” published under his editorship (1984-1992), where places of memory were seen as symbols of national identity. There is a lot of literature about memory, but its roots are different from those in Germany. In the theoretical field, there are the concepts of “debt of memory” and “political use of the past.” Two main themes for French historical politics: the Second World War and the Algerian War.

1. Memory of the German occupation during the Second World War

The capitulation of 1940 and the German occupation until the summer of 1944 pose a challenge to French memory culture:

• For a long time after the war, De Gaulle's interpretation was popular (history served a therapeutic and pedagogical function): the non-participation of the majority of the population in the fascist regime was identified with the Resistance, which, in turn, was seen as internal war by other means. That. it was believed that France was not responsible for the Vichy regime, and the nation was exalted (Jacques Chirac recognized the responsibility of the French state for the deportation of Jews only in 1995)
• Since the 1970s, the French myth of the Resistance has been deconstructed: evidence of Jewish survivors has appeared, a law was passed on the opening of archives after 30 years, which initiated research into the Vichy regime, the Institute of Contemporary History was founded in 1980, the publication and translation of thematic books, historical discussions
• trials of war criminals took place in the 1990s; TV shows were filmed based on these stories
• Due to the fact that there were voices denying the gas chambers, in 1990 the “Gaiso Law” (named after the author) was passed to punish the denial of crimes against humanity (in particular the genocide of Jews during the Second World War), and together with He also has two more “laws of memory” - about responsibility for denying the Armenian genocide, as well as slavery and the slave trade. The Gaiso Law prescribes criminal liability from one to three years.

2. Memory of the war in Algeria(1954-1962)

In 2005, a “memory law” was also adopted concerning Algeria; Article 4, in particular, required that school lessons emphasize the positive role of the French presence in North Africa. Historians and teachers opposed the “laws of memory” (arguing that this is an area where judgment should be made not by power, but by science); a year later the Algerian law was withdrawn.

For historical politics Nicolas Sarkozy in contrast, Chirac is characterized by a desire to restore the merits of the Resistance and again relieve France of responsibility. Intervention in school curricula is also typical: schools should read a letter from a executed 17-year-old Resistance member (as a lesson in patriotism and heroism to the younger generation), and every schoolchild should take patronage of the memory of one of the 11 thousand deported Jewish children.

Teachers criticize this direct government intervention. In 2008, a ban was passed on the adoption of other memory laws with criminal liability (only resolutions are allowed). Pierre Nore's open letter “Appeal from Blois” became widely circulated, in which the researcher spoke out against the control of history by politics

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Jutta Scherrer

Jutta Scherer is a professor of Russian history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, a researcher at the Marc Bloch Center in Berlin, and director of the Center for Russian Studies.

In the last two decades, the concepts of historical politics have dominated the socio-political discourse and historical studies of Western countries. In the 70s, the silencing of the crimes of the Third Reich ceased in Germany, and recognition of the genocide of Jews formed the basis of the political identity of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, such a landscape of historical memory is beginning to show cracks - a different view of the Second World War is becoming stronger, representing the Germans as its victims. In France, the excesses of the new official "memory policy" caused confusion and resistance in the scientific community.

Historical Politics: Vocabulary and Concepts

Germany's crushing defeat in World War II required a fundamental change in its political orientation. In particular, the governments that came to power in the western and eastern parts of Germany had to decide on their attitude to the recent past. Moreover, the memory of National Socialism and the Resistance in the two German states was by no means common. In Germany, recognition of guilt for the Holocaust has become an integral element of political culture. On the contrary, in the GDR, which declared itself an anti-fascist state, National Socialism was viewed as a phenomenon of someone else’s history, external to it, and East Germany itself was proclaimed the crusher of the National Socialist dictatorship. After the reunification of both German states in 1990, “the study of the dictatorship of the GDR” also became relevant ( Diktaturaufarbeitung der DDR), as indicated in the official discourse of Germany. As for France, the historical policy of De Gaulle and his followers was determined for decades by the memory of resistance(Resistance). Only over time, changed historical and political circumstances made it possible to critically rethink the issue of collaboration with the Vichy regime and the deportation of Jews from France, and later make it a matter of “debt of memory” ( devoir de mémoire) the war in Algeria and the torture practiced during it by the French military.

In the last two decades, concepts of historical politics have dominated public socio-political discourse, journalism and historical research in Western countries ( Geschichtspolitik), politicians of the past ( Vergangenheitspolitik), identity politics ( Identitätspolitik) and memory policies ( Erinnerungspolitik). This allows us to connect together such concepts as memorials and memorials, culture of memory ( Erinnerungskultur), culture of history ( Geschichtskultur) and historical consciousness ( Geschichtsbewusstein), but first of all to determine the relationship between history and memory (as well as individual, collective, national, social, communicative and cultural functions of memory). All these concepts have to do with identity or the search for identity of one kind or another. The concepts of “politics of the past” and “historical politics” originally appeared in West Germany in connection with the somewhat vague and therefore difficult to translate concept of “overcoming the past” ( Vergangenheitsbewaltigung). While “overcoming the past” is only very distantly related to the memory of the terrorist regime and the Holocaust it perpetrated, the terms “politics of the past” and “politics of history” are oriented towards a more pragmatic and at the same time realistic assessment of the past.

Today German Vergangenheitsbewaltigung(“overcoming the past”) is used in other languages, primarily English and French, without translation, but only in relation to the Federal Republic of Germany and the Third Reich. On the contrary, the later concept of “working through the past” ( Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit), dating back to a 1959 article by Theodor Adorno, is not limited to the Federal Republic only, but extends to other states as well. “Ruthless comprehension ( schonungslose Reflexion)” of the past, Adorno argued, must act effectively from within, as introspection, and not serve external forces as a propaganda weapon. Therefore, “working through the past” means critically working on the memory of the past.

In German, the concept of “past politics” refers to the German past and its overcoming, or at least working through it. It is clear that the politics of the past deals with the institutional and personal legacies of the previous system and aims to introduce, in a relatively short time, some legislative and judicial decisions related to this past. On the contrary, historical politics in general is aimed at the formation of socially significant historical images and images of identity (Geschichts- und Identitätsbilder), which are realized in rituals and discourse, undergoing changes with the change of generations or as the social environment evolves. In democratic societies, historical politics is by no means limited to the political sphere itself; along with politicians and publicists, it also involves actors from various other professional groups with different interests and strategies that they bring to the process of understanding history. In the political formulation of historical ideas, a decisive role belongs to historians acting in the areas of their professional competence: scientists and teachers, archivists and curators of exhibitions, museum workers and memorial staff. Moreover, the very nature of pluralistic societies presupposes the formation in them of different and even contradictory interpretations of the past.

Therefore, historical politics is a much broader phenomenon than history in the service of politics. It is also more than just the formation and consolidation of a normative or dogmatic worldview, since it involves the transmission of a wide variety of memories and experiences, as well as the search for forgotten facts and traces of rejected alternatives. Historical politics is also a topic of scientific research with the aim of finding answers to questions about how historical interpretations turn into political confrontation, who does this and for what purpose, and what it leads to.

In this article I use the concept of “historical politics” in a broad sense, as it is usually used in modern historical and political science, as well as in political sociology, and to a much lesser extent I resort to the concepts of “politics of the past” and “politics of memory”, having meaning a public appeal to history and memory. The use of history for state and political purposes undoubtedly belongs to this category, but in no case should historical policy be reduced only to an official interpretation of history.

GERMANY

In relation to the National Socialist past, the successor states of the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR, adhered to completely different strategies, which were determined by the respective occupation authorities.

Germany (before reunification with East Germany)

The transition from dictatorship to democracy was an extremely difficult and lengthy process. The year 1945 did not become a zero reference point, marking the beginning of a completely new German history. There was no ready-made norm to which one could move. Be that as it may, immediately after the end of the war there was no decisive break with the past of the Third Reich. The vast majority of Germans sought material and psychological rebirth, pushing out of their consciousness the realities of the Third Reich, which had just become the past. Concerned about achieving at least some degree of “normalization,” the German population reacted with apathy or negative emotions to the Nuremberg trials, which, according to the plans of the victorious powers, were supposed to play an educational role. There was no awareness of the criminal nature of National Socialism. The prevailing opinion was that everything that was happening was simply a trial of the victors over the vanquished. The crimes of the Third Reich in the public consciousness were equated with the damage caused to German cities by Allied bombing, and the recognition of mass National Socialist organizations as criminal was perceived as a sweeping collective accusation of the entire people. The exceptions were only a few socially significant figures and politicians who, like the philosopher Karl Jaspers, the Protestant theologian Karl Barth and the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany Theodor Hayes, spoke about collective guilt and collective shame, about the “collective responsibility” of the German people for the Holocaust, bearing in mind the need recognition of one's guilt and the obligation to atone for it. It was from the awareness of responsibility for continuity and discontinuities in culture and society that the concept of “working through the past” was born.

Working through the past in 1949 and further in 1950 allowed the historian Norbert Frey to talk about “the politics of the past.” This policy, which was formed as the Federal Republic of Germany increasingly integrated into the community of Western states, including as the framework of historical policy expanded, meant first of all:

· criminal legal and judicial qualifications of violent crimes committed by the Nazis;

· political and legal attitude towards the National Socialist past, that is, compensation for damage to various categories of victims of National Socialism and personal legal prosecution of specific National Socialist criminals;

· critical analysis of the National Socialist past and its elaboration in historical works, literature, art and philosophy.

All these three dimensions of the politics of the past were to a certain extent identical to the political and social determinants of “overcoming the past.” In the first two decades of the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, there was extensive political debate about the crimes committed by the National Socialists, about compensation for damage to various categories of victims, about restitution, reparations, anti-Semitism and the trials of National Socialists.

Denazification imposed by the Western Allies in West Germany was not very successful. Already in 1949, an amnesty law was passed, which opened the way for numerous former National Socialist officials and career military personnel into government structures and into the newly formed army. And it is unlikely that the economic revival and rearmament of Germany could have taken place without the experience and knowledge of representatives of the former National Socialist regime. During the Adenauer era, past policies justified the refusal to further prosecute the Nazis by citing the desirability of social pacification and political stabilization. In the mid-1950s, almost no one feared persecution by the state or the judiciary for their National Socialist past. However, the line was drawn not only under the past of 3.6 million denazified and tens of thousands of amnestied Germans. For the most part, those who were convicted in the Nuremberg trials or Allied military courts for war or Nazi crimes in 1945-1949 were also released.

Despite the displacement of the “accursed” past from consciousness in the first two post-war decades, the spirit of overcoming the past was alive in literature, theater, cinema and other forms of art, influencing the emerging historical consciousness. Suffice it to mention Rolf Hochhuth’s provocative play “The Viceroy” (1963) and two of the most famous and successful novels in West German literature dedicated to the study of the National Socialist past: “The Tin Drum” (1959) by Günter Grass and “The German Lesson” (1968) by Siegfried Lenz.

As part of overcoming the past, the main task of which in relation to modern history was the critical study of the Nazi past and the crimes of National Socialism, the Institute of Contemporary History was created in Munich in 1952. In the 1960s, departments of modern history began to be created at history faculties. However, the process of introducing explosive questions about the causes of the Holocaust and the contamination of the entire society with National Socialist ideology into school curricula proved long and difficult. Even in the 1960s, the borders of Germany in geographical atlases were indicated as of 1937, and the German eastern regions were designated as “under Polish administration.”

Only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did the leading media gradually begin to discuss the previously repressed past, which ultimately led to the formation of that specific political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany, the most important element of which is the moral rejection of the Nazi past . The trials of Eichmann in Jerusalem (1961-1962), of the executioners of Auschwitz in Frankfurt (1963-1964) and other major trials against former National Socialists, as well as disputes about the statute of limitations in the Bundestag, led to a noticeable increase in public interest in the National Socialist past. First of all, the change of generations clearly contributed to the fact that a demand for a critical examination of the past appeared on the agenda of the politics of the past. In the 1960s, the idea of ​​an “unconquered past” emerged, which led to numerous protests from people who supported or even actively participated in National Socialism. But a change in guidelines occurred, and this was largely facilitated by the “generation of 1968.”

The reassessment of political and cultural values ​​in the 1970s and 1980s, in the context of which the dominant memory culture in Germany today, centered around the victims of Nazism, was formed, presupposed open critical discussion and admission of guilt. An important stage on this path was Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, which oriented the policies of the past, based on the recognition of German responsibility for Nazism, towards a historical policy aimed at influencing the future.

On December 7, 1970, the first Social Democratic Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany signed an agreement in Warsaw that defined the border between Germany and Poland along the Oder-Neisse as final. At the same time, Brandt explained that the federal government simply accepted this fact as “the result of history” (die Ergebnisse der Geschichte). On the same day, the Chancellor, on behalf of the German people, knelt before the memorial to the victims of National Socialism in the former Warsaw Ghetto. This kneeling episode, symbolizing a radical break with the previous course of West German foreign policy, and asking on behalf of the German people for forgiveness for crimes committed, polarized German society. However, over time, the image of the kneeling Brandt became in the minds of not only many Germans, but also Poles and representatives of other nations, a symbol of a policy of rapprochement and reconciliation based on moral principles. During Brotherhood Week in 1971, Brandt emphasized that the memory of Auschwitz would remain a trauma for future generations.

The long silence about the crimes of the Third Reich was broken in the 1970s, when exhibitions began to be held and new historical museums were created, which contributed to the revision of assessments of the Nazi dictatorship and political education in general. In 1973, Federal President Gustav Heinemann initiated the “German History” competition for students. Interest in one's own history should have contributed to the development of a sense of responsibility in children and youth. Without knowledge of history it was impossible to overcome the past.

Historical and political education, historical and political didactics gradually became elements of education, which created conditions for working through the past. Historical didactics ( Geschichtsdidaktik) how the science of studying history became an independent scientific discipline dealing with the most important category, which is “historical consciousness”. In the 1970-1980s, this category became a key one within the framework of historical didactics. Museum and memorial policies also influenced the formation of historical and political consciousness. Beginning in the 1980s, schools opened their doors to Nazi-era witnesses who spoke of the struggle for survival and persecution in the National Socialist state. Within the politics of the past, oral history ( oral history), that is, the memories of contemporaries of events, have become a recognized method for studying modern history.

Although the times of National Socialism were covered quite thoroughly in domestic documentaries and feature films, only the foreign, American television series “Holocaust” was able to shake the consciousness of the mass audience and awaken their readiness for a critical analysis of the National Socialist past. This four-part TV movie in January 1979 attracted from 10 to 20 million viewers every evening - more than any other German television program dedicated to modern history. This popular American series also had a semantic impact: since then, the word “Holocaust” has been used in Germany to refer to the Nazi “Final Solution,” that is, the complete extermination of the Jews. The German Language Society declared “Holocaust” the “word of 1979.”

Nevertheless, the displacement from consciousness and denial of the criminal nature of National Socialism, according to the philosopher and publicist Ralph Giordano, in the 1980s took the form of “repeated guilt” (“zweite Schuld”) and “self-deception” in German society ( Lebenslüge). Psychoanalysts Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, back in 1967, in their book, which caused heated discussion, “ Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern” (“Incapacity to Grieve”), based on examples of the hostility of individuals and the masses in general to admitting guilt for complicity in political crimes, pointed to the insufficient activity of the authorities in overcoming Nazi crimes in the era of Adenauer.

In the 1970s, there was a growing tendency to deny or downplay the extermination of Jews and to deny the existence of the gas chambers. Such mentalities were characteristic mainly of extreme right-wing circles, and this was called revisionism, or negationism ( Negationismus). In 1985, in response to attempts by revisionists to falsify history, the Law “On Lies about Auschwitz” was passed ( Auschwitz-Lüge) (as amended in 1992, 2002 and 2005), according to which Holocaust denial is punishable by law. Previously, the Holocaust was criminally placed on par with the violent acts of other dictatorships, which made its condemnation very difficult. Authoritative members of the public who questioned the introduction of the criminal legal concept of “Holocaust denial” as a means of “overcoming the past” and insisted instead on political education were unable - unlike other countries - to get their way due to the specificity of the German past.

A notable milestone in the historical politics of Germany was the memorable speech of Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, which he delivered in the Bundestag on May 8, 1985 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war and the elimination of National Socialist tyranny. For the first time, a person holding the highest government position in Germany called May 8 “the day of liberation” (and not the day of surrender or collapse). “He freed us all from the system of National Socialist tyranny that despises man. No one, even for the sake of this liberation, will forget the suffering that befell many people on May 8 and continued after it. But we cannot consider the end of the war to be the reason for flight, exile, and dependence. On the contrary, the reason lies in its beginning and in the beginning of the tyranny that led to the war. We cannot separate May 8, 1945 from January 30, 1933.” In this speech, von Weizsäcker for the first time named all categories of mass victims of National Socialism: Jews, Western and Eastern European gypsies (Sinti and Roma), communists, homosexuals.

The next important stage in the search for German national identity was the so-called dispute between historians, which flared up in 1986-1987 in connection with the discussion of the German past and doubts regarding the crimes committed by the Germans. Its initiators were the philosopher Jurgen Habermas and the historian Ernst Nolte. Habermas was supported by historians Hans Mommsen, Eberhard Jeckel and publicist Rudolf Augstein (publisher and editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel magazine), and Nolte was supported by historians Andreas Hillgruber, Joachim Fest, Jürgen Hildebrand and Helmut Kohl's adviser Michael Stürmer. In this dispute, which, according to Habermas, was about “apologetic tendencies in the description of modern German history,” that is, about attitudes towards crimes committed by the Germans, the new concept of “historical politics” was used for the first time.

In general terms, Nolte presented Germany's war against the USSR in 1941-1945 primarily as a preventive defensive measure by the National Socialists against the threat of the Soviet Union unleashing a war with Germany, and the creation of National Socialist concentration and death camps as simply a reaction to Stalin's Gulag. At the same time, he explained the war crimes of the Germans and the practice of genocide during National Socialism not by internal German reasons, but by reasons external to Germany. Habermas's main argument in his polemic with Nolte was that Nazi crimes, presented as a “reaction to the Bolshevik threat of annihilation,” and Auschwitz, reduced to the format of technical innovation, lose their historical “uniqueness.” Objecting to Ernst Nolte’s historicization of the crimes of Nazism, Habermas insisted that Germany’s national identity should be sought in “constitutional patriotism” ( Verfassungspatriotismus) - the only possible form of patriotism that “does not alienate us from the West.”

Since then, the concept of constitutional patriotism has become fundamental in historical politics in Germany, and the recognition of the genocide of European Jews as a historically unprecedented phenomenon has formed the basis of the political identity of Germany. “The Dispute of Historians” also raises the question of whether the National Socialist dictatorship can be compared with other dictatorships and what exactly allowed National Socialism to find support among the broad masses.

The history of divided Germany also became the history of a divided past and a divided memory of National Socialism and resistance to the National Socialist regime. Each of the two German states perceived itself as a political alternative to the National Socialist dictatorship: the Federal Republic of Germany as a Western-style parliamentary democracy, and the GDR as an “anti-fascist” state. Even before the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (1949), denazification in the western and eastern parts of Germany took place differently - according to the ideological guidelines of the corresponding occupation authorities. In the GDR, a radical replacement of the National Socialist functional elite was carried out; nothing comparable in scale happened in Germany. In the “anti-fascist” GDR, the period of National Socialism was viewed as someone else’s history and it was understood that the German Democratic Republic was the winner of the dictatorship of National Socialism. Based on the founding myth of anti-fascism, the GDR also laid claim to the legacy of the anti-Hitler Resistance. At the same time, attention in East Germany for a long time was focused on the glorified communist Resistance, which in the West was initially ignored in favor of the equally idealized military and civilian Resistance. Jews, as a separate category of victims, were not mentioned in any way in the GDR, and there were no discussions about the Holocaust here. Germany, as the successor state of the Third Reich, took full responsibility for the injustice committed and compensated Israel for the damage (not least in order to integrate into the community of Western states). East Germany did not participate in this reparations process. According to the official position of the GDR, as an anti-fascist state, it had nothing in common with the Third Reich and therefore could not be held accountable for the crimes of National Socialism. It was only in the spring of 1990 that the first freely elected People's Chamber and the last government of the GDR recognized the responsibility of all Germany for the Holocaust. Since East Germany did not have the necessary financial means to pay compensation to Israel, it opened its borders to all Jews who wanted to emigrate from the Soviet Union.

Since 1950, the anti-fascist identity of the GDR was reinforced by the celebration of May 8th as the “Day of the Liberation of the German People from Hitler's Fascism.” Until 1966, May 8, as in the USSR, was a legal holiday. In 1985, on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the war, May 8 was again celebrated as a holiday. It was only in the 1980s that the myth of the anti-fascist Resistance began to crumble.

The often very intense discussions of the concepts of “politics of the past”, “historical politics” and “culture of memory” that took place in Germany passed by the GDR without leaving any trace there. On the contrary, the concept of “historical consciousness” was included in the lexicon of the “second German state”. Historical consciousness (through the system of teaching and propaganda of history) became synonymous with socialist consciousness and was supposed to contribute to victory in the “class confrontation between socialism and imperialism.” Despite the fact that history in the GDR was the prerogative of politics and its main task was to substantiate the legitimacy of the SED state, sometimes it was necessary to seriously change historical interpretations, resorting to intellectual balancing act. In the GDR, research was also carried out on modern history, however, unlike the Federal Republic of Germany, only on post-war history.

New Germany, or united Germany

The significant events of 1989 and the reunification of the German states in 1990 did not change the approach of the new Germany to the National Socialist past. On the contrary, public interest in the Third Reich and the Holocaust even increased. But now, after the unification of the two parts of Germany, the past of the GDR has also become the object of past politics and historical politics. The delay of the old Federal Republic in the development of the “first German dictatorship” in the 1950s should not have been repeated in the case of the dictatorship of the GDR. The GDR past seemed to overlap with the past of National Socialism and made it possible to bring one closer to the other.

To study the past of the GDR, almost the same criteria were used as after the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945: criminal prosecution of criminals, their civil disqualification, and compensation for victims. However, first of all, we were talking about the legal and criminal-legal study of the past of the GDR as a non-legal state. The expression “victors' justice” came into circulation again, but this time the winners were brothers by blood, representatives of the same people. For older people, this was already the second “zero point”: for them the hour “H” struck for the second time, and in 1990, as in 1945, they were disoriented. Because even now the collapsed society of the GDR could not immediately free itself from the painful legacy of the SED dictatorship.

The development of the history of the GDR on the basis of the mass of archival materials, access to which was opened immediately after the liquidation of the East German state, occurred with unprecedented speed. The length of the shelves containing documents from the Ministry of State Security alone was 170 linear km. Their ongoing evaluation has been based on experience gained since 1945. Thus, a parliamentary commission was immediately created to deal with “the study of the history and consequences of the SED dictatorship in Germany” (which was not done at the time when settling accounts with National Socialism), which had already collected nine volumes of expert materials and interviews with witnesses.

Indeed, no area of ​​modern European history since 1945 has been studied as intensively as the East German state and society that disappeared in 1990. In addition, numerous special institutes helped study the GDR. In addition to the already mentioned parliamentary commission created in 1992, the Center for the Study of Contemporary History in Potsdam, the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden, the Department of Education and Research under the Federal Commissioner for the Study of Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR (named after its first director) deserve mention. Gauck's department" - now "Birtler's department"). The opening of new historical museums, the reconstruction of memorials in memory of the victims of National Socialism and the creation of memorials to the victims of political persecution in the GDR made it possible in a very short time to form a new culture of memory and memories of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and the GDR. Take, for example, the well-known practice of the NKVD/MVD using former National Socialist camps (in particular, Buchenwald), where in 1945-1949 communist capos (prisoner guards) collaborated with the former fascist camp leadership.

Since in the 1990s the East German state security service was at the center of the study of the past, more and more new discoveries strengthened the impression of the GDR as a “Stasi state.” This often hurt the self-esteem of former East German citizens, who saw the GDR as more than just an illegal state and dictatorship. The Federal Republic of Germany, within the framework of historical policy, has not yet managed to integrate everything experienced by the former residents of the GDR into the new federal national identity. Thus, on May 8, 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel, a native of East Germany, called the GDR a “lawless state” and a “state of informers.”

Berlin, as the new capital of a reunified Germany, is now conceptualizing a culture of memory that could guide German historical policy. The creation of the German Historical Museum is intended, as it were, to pay the double post-war bill for Germany. In the center of the city in 2005, a central German memorial was erected in memory of Jews killed in Europe. It is Germany's flagship Holocaust museum, a place of remembrance and remembrance for the six million Jewish victims. However, the public debate around the Berlin Holocaust Memorial was by no means peaceful: after all, for the first time, the people erected a monument to their own shame in the center of their capital. The Jewish Museum in the center of Berlin - the largest museum of its type in Europe - was opened even earlier (2001). A separate memorial should be created to commemorate other categories of victims, such as the Sinti and Roma gypsies who protested against the division of genocide victims into first and second class victims.

The construction of the Holocaust monument is a kind of apogee of historical and memory politics in Germany, but, on the other hand, in a reunified Germany, a view of the Second World War that represents the Germans as its victims is strengthened. In this regard, the historical and political demarches of the “exiled” associations, which intend to create a “Center against Expulsions” in Berlin, are characteristic. Other groups oppose the Benes decrees. The resettlement of East European ethnic Germans is interpreted as a “crime against humanity”, while the historical context, that is, the question of the reasons for the resettlement, is completely ignored. In neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic, the plan to create a Center for Exiles had a strong political resonance: there were fears that a museum of this kind would veil the question of who was responsible for the Second World War and thus for the expulsions that followed.

The landscape of German memory sometimes cracks in the most unexpected places. Thus, the hitherto politically impeccable writer Martin Walser, in his acceptance speech on October 11, 1998, in connection with his award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, criticized the “debt of memory.” Auschwitz, he said, has become a universal “moral cudgel,” and “our shame is being used for purposes that have nothing to do with the past.” Walser opposed the “ritualization” of public memory and for transferring the conflict with National Socialism to the level of individual conscience.

Another kind of provocative attitude towards German historical politics was demonstrated by the American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen. In his 1996 US dissertation, “The Executors of Hitler's Will,” which appeared in German translation in 1998, he argues that Germans, since the 19th century at the latest, have come to be guided by a cognitive model of “anti-Semitism that excludes Jews from the race.” human" ( eliminatorischen Antisemitism), resulting in Jews being portrayed as people worthy of hatred. The question “So, after all, all Germans are guilty?” provoked a new controversy among historians, which, like no other debate before, simultaneously awakened public interest in historical science and satisfied the media's need for scandals.

Many other examples can be cited to prove that Germany has not freed itself from its past and that the politics of the past and the politics of history are still closely linked. This is confirmed by a real boom in museums, exhibitions and memorial events dedicated to the victims of National Socialism, and in general by the wide presence of historical topics in audiovisual media, in connection with which they often talk about the “market value of memories” ( Marktwert der Erinnerung) and “theatricalization of memory” ( Gedächtnistheater), disputes around the law on compensation for persons deported for forced labor in the Third Reich, an exhibition (1995) dedicated to the crimes of the Wehrmacht in World War II, the process of banning the NDP, disputes about displaced valuables and more and more trials of war criminals.

Apparently, National Socialism will remain an important factor in German historical policy in the future, because the past is not only a kind of memory that can be worked out or overcome. New generations pose new questions, perceiving the past without strain, but also with less certainty. Is it possible to imagine a dictator like Hitler as humane, as in the film Downfall, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, or make him a laughing stock, as in the film My Fuhrer, directed by Dani Levy? What was taboo for the older generation appears in a completely different light with changes in historical politics.

FRANCE

Growing out of the semantic context and philosophy of the German language, the concepts of overcoming and working through the past are completely unknown in France. The concept of historical politics has not yet penetrated here either. On the contrary, the attitude towards the past is closely connected with the problems of memory and the “work of memory” ( travail de mémoire). The defining event here was the appearance in 1978 of an article by historian Pierre Nora on “collective memory.” As with the general definition of memory, what is important for Nora is that historians can benefit from it by noting and describing all those forms of the presence of the past and the politicized approach to history that have not yet been critically analyzed in historiography. Great success of the publication edited by Nora “Places of Memory” (“ Lieux de Memoir”) (1984-1992), in which memorial places were interpreted as symbols of national identity, gave new impetus to the study of memory issues. In public discourse, at first only the concept of “memory politics” was used ( politique de la mémoire = Erinnerungspolitik), and also - much less frequently - “management of the past” ( gestion du passé= Verwaltung der Vergangenheit). In the 1990s, the concept of “memory debt” appeared ( devoir de mémoire = Erinnerungspflicht), which was first used in relation to the deportation and genocide of French (and other European) Jews and insisted on by unions of former victims of deportation. Meanwhile, the moral and normative duty of memory also applies to other categories of victims.

A vast sea of ​​literature is devoted to the issue of memory, the size of which can only be compared with the volume of theoretical, methodological and conceptual articles on the politics of the past, historical politics and the culture of memory in Germany. However, even taking into account the fact that “politics dealing with memory” ( Politik mit der Erinnerung) is often very difficult to distinguish from “politics dealing with history” ( Politik mit der Geschichte) and from “politics dealing with the past” ( Politik der Vergangenheit), the French “politics of memory” has completely different roots than the German politics of the past and historical politics, not to mention the fact that they are very different in their goals. Below I will describe some of the most important stages in the formation of French memory policy and the debt of memory. By the way, I note that modern French history and historiography prefers the expression “political use of the past” to the moral and normative formula “debt of memory” ( usage policy du passé, Sometimes usages politiques du passé) .

The capitulation of 1940 and the subsequent German occupation of the country, which lasted until the summer of 1944, destroyed the unity of the French nation. After the end of the occupation, it was necessary to create a new basis for national unity, and various political forces began to develop, in essence, models for overcoming the situation that had arisen. It was necessary to eliminate the fault lines that had appeared in society, relying on the idea of ​​​​some kind of identity holding the nation together. A key role in this was played by the Resistance, the ideological use of which was especially beneficial to the Gaullists and Communists, who had great influence in post-war France. Although ideologically these movements had little in common, history and memory meant a lot to both. In both parties, the Resistance was interpreted as an armed national liberation struggle. Each of them believed that it not only represented certain political interests, but also formed a certain community, which was built and legitimized on the basis of the interpretation of history that united its members. De Gaulle and his supporters appealed to the majority of the French population who did not participate in the Resistance, but also did not collaborate with the Germans. In the Gaullist model, external, outside France, but also internal, that is, within the country, resistance was, first of all, a continuation of the war, albeit by unconventional means. At the same time, the dominant interpretation of the Resistance by the Gaullists placed at the center not the image of the fighter, but the nation as a whole, so that the picture of the Resistance did without the figure of the Resistance fighter, which ensured its positive perception by the broad masses of the population, regardless of political orientation. This Gaullist interpretation of the Resistance, not least under the influence of state direction, became dominant in the 1950s and 1960s. The emphasis on the military-patriotic aspects of the Resistance, among other things, carried a certain rehabilitating point: responsibility for the Vichy regime fell on only relatively few people, and the majority of the French population was freed from suspicion of passive loyalty to the Vichy regime or even its support.

From De Gaulle to Mitterrand, history performed therapeutic and pedagogical functions. Only those aspects of the past that seemed beneficial to the nation were discussed. De Gaulle was especially persistent in exalting the nation at a time when France had lost its huge colonial empire in just a few years. De Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou, in the face of the fears that seized people in the face of the war in Indochina and Algeria, on the contrary, called for “forgetting about these wounds that divide the French, out of respect for France.” Mitterrand was seen as the “faithful and valiant heir” of the French Revolution, whose bicentenary he celebrated in grand style, sidestepping the controversial issues of revolutionary dictatorship and violence on which the French still disagree. The revolution, according to Mitterrand, personified only human rights.

French presidents readily confirm their close proximity to history with spectacular public appearances. Thus, on the day he took office as President of France (May 21, 1981), François Mitterrand visited the Pantheon to demonstrate his close connection with the “great men of the nation.” The connection with history should have been demonstrated by the meeting of the French President with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, which took place in 1984 on the battlefields of Verdun, who extended their hands to each other over the graves of 800 thousand French and German soldiers who fell here as a sign of reconciliation of the former “sworn enemies” (this very reminiscent of the situation with Willy Brandt kneeling in front of the Jewish ghetto memorial in Warsaw “for the sake of peace”). This scene in Verdun was included in a new German-French history textbook, which appeared as part of a joint historical and political initiative of both countries.

The only president of the Fifth Republic for whom the past was a burden from which it was necessary to free oneself was Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In particular, he canceled the solemn celebration of May 8 in 1975 (in turn, Mitterrand canceled this decision of Giscard d’Estaing immediately after his election in 1981). In his televised New Year's address in 1977, Giscard d'Estaing urged the French not to succumb to the “rheumatic pains of history.”

If De Gaulle and Mitterrand believed that the republic did not bear any responsibility for the crimes committed by the Vichy regime, then Jacques Chirac, compared to his predecessors, looked like an iconoclast: during a discussion at the memorial to the victims of “Vel d’Hiv” on July 16, 1995, he acknowledged the responsibility of the French state for the deportation of Jews and called on the French to repent.

Despite the fact that the French lexicon does not have the term “historical policy,” the presidents of the Fifth Republic (since 1958) use history as a strategic instrument of their policies on an incomparably larger scale than the presidents and chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. The full power of the first person inherent in the French presidential constitutional system, which is legitimized by the procedure of direct election of the president by the people, provides him, in particular, with the privilege of guarding history on behalf of the nation and acting as the supreme arbiter regarding various interpretations of history. The President also has the right, for example, to make the final decision on which of the great Frenchmen should be placed in the national hall of fame Pantheon (pantheonization) and which - for strategic reasons - should be “depantheonized”. However, bypassing this important function of the centralist state, serious decisions regarding the politics of memory in recent decades have been taken in close connection with the interests of various groups of civil society, as well as engaged intellectuals, and not least determined by the dynamics of historical research, which supplies ever new materials. Thus, the French myth of the Resistance, according to representatives of civil society, has been undergoing constant deconstruction since the 1970s. Jewish survivors increasingly spoke about their experiences in the camps. Marcel Ophüls' film “Sorrow and Pity” (1969) destroyed the idea of ​​a homogeneous France united by the Resistance, showing the behavior of the average Frenchman who, if he did not collaborate with the Germans, knew how to negotiate with them. Although President Pompidou banned the showing of “Sorrow and Pity” on state television, the film marked the beginning of a phase of memory that historian Henri Rousseau called “the broken mirror.” Back in 1971, Pompidou, who himself did not participate in the Resistance, pardoned Paul Touvier, one of the former police leaders of the Vichy regime, who helped Gestapo chief Klaus Barbier in the persecution of Jews. Pompidou wanted to draw a line under the period when “the French did not love each other.” In 1973, a French translation of the book “France in the Vichy Period” by the American historian Robert Paxton finally appeared, which back in 1964 traced the history of collaboration through documentary sources.

A law adopted in 1979 (under Giscard d’Estaing) allowed the opening of archives after 30 years, and this sharply intensified the historical research of the Vichy regime. More and more evidence of collaboration and French responsibility for the deportation of Jews became public knowledge. In 1980, the Institute of Contemporary History was founded in Paris, the first scientific institution in France for the study of modern history.

Based on archival materials, the works of Henri Rousseau “The Vichy Syndrome: From 1944 to the Present Day” (1987) and Eric Conan’s “Vichy: The Past That Never Passes Away” (1994), as well as open historical and political discussions with the participation of professional historians, contributed to a broad public approval of trials against war criminals. In legal and civil terms, these trials against prominent figures from the period of National Socialist rule in France were of great importance for political education and the culture of memory in the country.

The first was a large trial against Klaus Barbier, one of the most active promoters of the policy of National Socialism in occupied France. In 1994, Paul Touvier, pardoned by President Pompidou, was sentenced by a French court to life imprisonment for participating in the executions of Jews. Next, in 1998, was the trial against Maurice Papon, the secretary general of the prefecture of Bordeaux, who signed orders for the arrest and deportation of more than 1,600 Jews from the region. After the war, Papon hid his past and quickly advanced in government service. In 1958, De Gaulle appointed him prefect of police in Paris, and in 1961 he awarded him the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In the same year, using the powers of the prefect of police, Papon dispersed a demonstration on the streets of Paris of supporters of the Algerian liberation movement, which began to be openly discussed only in the 1980s. In 1978, Papon became budget minister in the liberal-conservative government of Giscard d'Estaing. Papon's political career ended only in 1981 with the coming to power of the leftist government. That same year, the first trial began in Bordeaux in connection with his participation in the deportation of Jews in 1942-1944. In 1998, he was eventually found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to ten years in prison with loss of civil rights.

This last process had a particularly wide public response, even reaching schools. In 2006, the Supreme Court ordered the History TV channel (“ Histoire”) show the most significant episodes of the Papon trial. By that time, this channel had already broadcast two series of programs about the trials of Barbier and Touvier.

Since the 1970s, public attitudes toward the Holocaust began to change. Jewish organizations became increasingly active, and formerly deported Jews began to speak openly about their experiences in the camps. But at the same time, denial of the Holocaust, that is, the existence of gas chambers, also grew. On July 13, 1990, the “Gaiso Law” was adopted ( Loi Gayssot), named after the communist MP who proposed it, against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, which punished denial of crimes against humanity, in particular genocide against Jews, during the Second World War.

Gaiso's law became the first in a series of so-called “memory laws” ( lois mémorielles = Erinnerungsgesetze), which formed the core of a system called in France “memory politics” together with the “debt of memory” and “memory work” ( travail de mémoire = Erinnerungsarbeit). On January 29, 2001, the influential Armenian minority achieved the adoption of a law according to which “France publicly recognized the Armenian genocide in 1915.” In October 2006, parliament decided that denial of the Armenian genocide should entail the same punishment as the Gaiso law provides for denial of the Jewish genocide. However, this law has not yet passed the Senate (the matter is being slowed down due to political concerns about Turkey). Another “memory law”, the so-called Tobir’s law ( Loi Taubira- named after the Socialist MP from French Guiana), adopted on May 21, 2001, recognizes slavery and the slave trade as a “crime against humanity.”

Along with the Second World War, the most important topic in French historical and memory politics is the Algerian War (1954-1962). Engaged film directors have long informed French society about the criminal pages of the history of this military campaign, but in the official lexicon the phrase “war in Algeria” remained banned for a long time, since it affected the “honor of France.” Instead they talked about “operations of the French army in Algeria.” Until recently, French officialdom did not talk about war crimes and torture committed by the army. The former French colony of Algeria remained an open wound not only for France, but also for the Algerian side, which expected a gesture of repentance from the former metropolis.

On February 23, 2005, a law was passed regarding the role of France as a former colonial power, and not only in relation to Algeria. The law was introduced through the efforts of a lobby of nostalgic repatriates and Frenchmen of Algerian origin, that is, mainly immigrants from Algeria. Article 4 of this law requires that history teachers in school lessons emphasize “the positive role of the French presence in the overseas territories and in particular in North Africa.”

These “laws of memory” aroused opposition from the French public from the very beginning. On the one hand, it was feared that numerous groups of victims and minorities, demanding the realization of their “rights” or the fulfillment of the “duty of memory,” would pursue exclusively their own narrow interests. On the other hand, there was a danger that legislators would go beyond issues related to French national history and historical identity (as was the case with the recognition of the Armenian genocide). Based on this, historians have come out in principle against legislative intervention in an area where judgments can be made only on the basis of the results of historical research. The Law on the Positive Role of France as a Colonial Mother Country sparked unprecedented protests against the “teaching of official history.” In addition to history teachers and historians, many famous people also took part in them, who opposed all “laws of memory unworthy of a democratic state.” In major daily newspapers such as Le Monde And Liberation, petitions and calls were published against legal restrictions on historical research and against oaths of allegiance to “historical duty.” Created in 2005, the association “For Freedom of History” ( Liberté pour l'histoire) adopted an appeal that said: “History is not an object of jurisprudence. In a free state, neither parliament nor the judiciary should determine historical truth. State policy, even if it comes from the best intentions, is not historical policy.” This law could also have unpleasant foreign policy consequences, since it was sharply condemned by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in a speech dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the massacres in Setif, Guelma and Bougie, when about 45 thousand Algerian civilians died due to the fault of the colonial authorities.

The internal French debate “about the positive role of colonization” was very fierce, because just a few weeks earlier, in the suburbs of large cities, young “French” from immigrant families were burning cars and public buildings. Finally, President Chirac was forced to intervene in the “battle of memory” ( bataille des mémoires= Schlacht der Erinnerungen) between citizens yearning for colonization and associations of descendants of slaves from the Antilles and Guadeloupe: “There is no official history in the Republic. History is not written based on law. Writing history is the job of historians.” At the end of 2005, a parliamentary commission was created to “evaluate the actions of parliament in the field of memory and history,” and a year later the draft law on the “Positive influence of the French presence in the overseas territories” was withdrawn. Not least of all, recent research into the history of slavery and colonization contributed to Chirac declaring May 10 as Abolition Day. He declared with pathos: “The greatness of a country lies in accepting its entire history. With its glorious pages, but also with its shadow sides. Our history is the history of a great nation. We look at her with pride. And we see her as she is.”

Against this background of debates around the laws of memory and the culture of memory, Nicolas Sarkozy did not ignore the politics of memory in his election campaign, using French history as an inexhaustible source of material for asserting national identity, and this became one of his main slogans. As a rival of Jacques Chirac, he wanted to overcome “self-denial” ( Selbstverleugnung) and “a tendency towards systematic repentance”, restoring the value of the Resistance: France cannot be accused of complicity in the crimes of the Second World War, including complicity in the Holocaust.

Shortly after taking office in May 2007, the newly elected president decreed that every year on October 22, all high schools in the country read a letter from 17-year-old Resistance member Guy Moquet, who was shot by German soldiers in 1941. He was supposed to serve as an example of courage and selfless patriotism for today's youth. In February 2008, Sarkozy ordered that every French elementary school student take a kind of patronage of the memory of one of the 11,000 Jewish children deported during World War II: every student should know the name and biography of at least one child who died in the Holocaust.

This presidential intervention in school curricula, unprecedented in the Fifth Republic, met with stiff resistance from both teachers and historians. They defended themselves against attempts to impose a prescribed historiography on them from above and turn it into a “political instrument.” However, other voices were also heard, such as French Académie historian Max Gollot, who spoke in support of Sarkozy: “After the period that began with Jacques Chirac’s speech on July 16, 1995, about the complicity of the French state in the persecution of the Jews, it is necessary to restore the balance... We cannot maintain from this time only Vichy and exclude the Resistance. France was also a nation of Resistance.” Sarkozy also created the Ministry of National Identity and Immigration for the first time.

The fight against French memory laws reached a pan-European level when in 2007, at a meeting of European ministers, a proposal was discussed that every EU country should “publicly deny, disparage or grossly downplay genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” ” was punishable, as in France, by “imprisonment for a term of one to three years.” Since there was a real threat that throughout the European Union the last word on historical facts would be formulated in the form of judicial verdicts, in October 2008 Pierre Nora, on behalf of the association “For Freedom of History”, published a document called “Appeal from Blois”, which was signed by many prominent European historians and which was published in all major Western newspapers. It said that in a free state, political authorities do not have the right to determine what is historical truth, and that, of course, the freedom of historians cannot be limited by threatening them with criminal prosecution. Politicians must care about collective memory, but in no case should they institutionalize it on behalf of the state through legal acts.

Of course, the “Appeal from Blois” immediately found opponents who reproached historians for allegedly arrogating to themselves the exclusive right to historical memory. However, recently the debate about the “laws of memory” in France has subsided. In November 2008, the President of the French National Assembly, Bernard Acquayer, by his decree prohibited the future adoption of laws similar to the already adopted memory laws, and instead allowed the adoption of resolutions that do not have legal consequences. If the laws of memory in the Fifth Republic indicate an exceptionally strong political intervention in cultural and historical heritage, then the “Appeal from Blois” proves that history in a pluralist society can be contested and become an event of political significance. It confirms the important role of historians in developing the historical consciousness of society, their responsibility for teaching in schools and for school textbooks, as well as for the directives of the Ministry of Education. The appeal also shows that European historians and intellectuals are able to slow down historical and political initiatives also at the European level. It remains to be seen in what direction the debate between politicians, members of various organizations and historians at the pan-European level will develop in the future.

The differences in historical politics in Germany and France briefly outlined here can be largely explained by the peculiarities of the history of the twentieth century and the difference in the political cultures of the two countries. And yet the question arises: in the light of a comparison of the deep predisposition of both societies to one or another policy, is not Marc Bloch’s long-standing judgment that the Germans “experience their collective memories more intensely than the French, who have long been inclined to be guided by common sense,” fair?

Notes:

Adorno Th. W. Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit? // Adorno Th. W. Gesammelte Schriften. Bd 10/II. Frankfurt a. Main, 1977. S. 555-572. There is a Russian translation: Adorno T. What does “working through the past” mean? " // Emergency ration. 2005. No. 2-3 (40-41). P. 42.

Countless scientific works have been devoted to various definitions of these concepts and concepts. Among the most important works on historical politics and the politics of the past, as well as on the culture of memory, which I have used are: Frei N. Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit. Munich, 1996; Wolfrum E. Geschichtspolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Der Weg zur bundesrepublikanischen Erinnerung: 1948-1990. Darmstadt, 1999; Reichel P. Politik mit der Erinnerung: Gedächtnisorte im Streit um die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit. Frankfurt a. M., 1999.

The Nuremberg trials are, firstly, an international military tribunal of the main war criminals (11/20/1945 - 10/01/1946) and, secondly, 12 subsequent trials of Nazi war criminals, conducted in the American occupation zone by an American military tribunal and ending on 14 April 1949.

Frei N. Op. cit. S. 13-14.

See: Nolte E. Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen // FAZ. 06/06/1986; Idem. Der europäische Bürgerkrieg von 1917-1945: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus. Frankfurt a. M., 1987.

Habermas J. Eine Art Schadensabwicklung // Die Zeit. 07/11/1986.

For an overview of GDR research, see: Mählert U., Wilke M. Die DDR-Forschung - ein Auslaufmodell? Die Auseinandersetzung mit der SED-Diktatur seit 1989 // Deutschland Archiv. 37 (2004). S. 465-474.

Here, from the many literary sources, it should be mentioned first of all: Gieseke J. Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi: 1945-1990. Munich, 2001; Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft: Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR / J. Gieseke (Hg). Göttingen, 2007.

At present, this refers primarily to a series of decrees depriving the German and Hungarian population of Czechoslovakia of citizenship and property, which led, in particular, to the expulsion of the Germans from this country.

Nora P. Memoire collective // ​​La nouvelle histoire / J. Le Goff, J. Revel (Hg). P., 1978. S. 398-401; Les lieux de mémoire / P. Nora (Hg). 7 Bd. P., 1984-1992.

Hartog R., Revel J. Les usages politiques du passé. P., 2001; Andrieu C., Lavabre M.-C., Tartakowsky D. Politiques du passé: Usages politiques du passé dans la France contemporaine. Aix-en-Provence, 2006.

Vel d’Hiv (“Winter Velodrome”) - the creation of Walter Spitzer, which miraculously survived the anti-Semitic raid]

For a complete description of the Algerian War, see: La guerre d’Algérie: 1954-2004, fin de l’amnésie // B. Stora, M. Habit (Hg). P., 2004.

Régent F. Esclavage, métissage, liberté, la Révolution française en Guadaloupe. P., 2004; Idem. La France et ses esclaves: De la colonization aux abolitions: 1620-1848. P., 2007.

Awareness and dissolution of painful experiences from the past repressed into the subconscious.
Processing and dissolving energy blocks formed in the past.

Since childhood, we have all experienced stressful situations. When these situations arose, we, due to the underdevelopment of our awareness, unconsciously used various types of psychological defense, thus trying to ease the tension and anxiety that were caused by stressful situations.
All types of psychological defenses, such as, for example, repression (suppression) (active, motivated elimination of something from consciousness through forgetting or ignoring), rationalization and many others - displacing unpleasant states from consciousness, immersing emerging negative emotions and associated with them thoughts into the unconscious area of ​​the psyche, which is usually called the subconscious or unconscious. These repressed negative emotions and thoughts thus become an unconscious part of the mind, and they manifest themselves in the lives of adults both in the form of various inappropriate reactions in various situations, and in the form of many physical discomforts and diseases.

Then, at an early age, we could not do differently.
In adulthood, when we have the opportunity to understand a lot, to realize a lot, the previous models of behavior in the form of the use of psychological defenses are no longer adequate. Because they are an expression of escape from problems, lead to freezing them, prevent the solution of these problems, interfere with the ability to understand a given situation and act in it adequately and wisely, increase the amount of suppressed negative emotional energy in us and worsen the state of our physical health.

Also, as an adult, we may have the thought that it would be good to cleanse our subconscious of the negative emotions and thoughts that have accumulated there, from the negative energy that has accumulated there, which has a destructive effect on our life today, and if we leave everything as it is, then it will continue to have a destructive influence on our future.

And, indeed, as adults we have the opportunity to do this. However, there is one problem here. The fact is that many common ways in which people usually try to come to the awareness of repressed emotions and thoughts that have been repressed into our subconscious - although they allow us to become aware of some repressed emotions and thoughts, but still they do not make it possible to realize very many negative emotions and thoughts that have been repressed into the subconscious quite deeply.
The reason these thoughts and emotions were so strongly repressed is because they were especially painful to experience. And attempts in adulthood, through research and analysis, to realize these thoughts and emotions lead nowhere for the reason that the unconscious controlling part of the mind blocks access to the awareness of these thoughts and emotions, resists the awareness of these thoughts and emotions.

In order for the energy of any suppressed mental-emotional experience to dissolve, two factors are necessary.

The first factor is that we need to live the painful mental-emotional experience that was repressed in the past - and now raised from the subconscious and conscious - to the fullest - to live emotionally, mentally, energetically, to live in exactly the same way as we lived this state when this the situation happened to us. The process of psychological therapy cannot take place under anesthesia. We must become aware of the phenomenon, see it and experience it fully.

And the second factor is that when experiencing an uncomfortable mental-emotional state, we need not to get involved in this state, not to identify with the experiences that will occur.

Non-identification is when one thing and something else are recognized as different, as something different.
Non-identification, which we are talking about here, means that we are aware of ourselves as consciousness as one thing, and we are aware of the phenomena that we perceive as another.
At first, when you are learning non-identification, when any experience arises, you may first think like this: Am I aware of this experience or am I not aware? I understand. And since I am aware of it, it means that I, who am aware of it, is one thing, and the fact that I am aware of it is another. This means that I differ in my nature, in my properties from what I am aware of.
If a person is identified with something, this means that he perceives it, but not completely. If a person gives his full attention to something, then he becomes aware of non-identification with it. You need to achieve giving full attention to one or another phenomenon. And then with this phenomenon, to which full attention is given, non-identification will begin to be felt.

During practice, over time, what was once repressed, suppressed, and not lived out begins to rise. This material is usually negative. Because what I didn’t like to live before was repressed. And there is no escape from this material. He needs to be reviewed and allowed to do what he wants without controlling him. So that it doesn’t lie at the bottom, when we, at first glance, don’t see it, when it seems that everything seems to be normal. And so that, in fact, he would no longer exist.
And before he leaves, he passes before our perception. In order for this material to really go away, we need to be aware of our 5th dimension. When we perceive this material with awareness of our 5th dimension, we realize that in this dimension we do not judge or try to control what pops up and what passes before our perception. In this dimension we do not try to strengthen or weaken in any way what comes up. Then this material rises and goes away, dissolves, and we are freed from it. Then all this material becomes like water, which evaporates, then steam arises, and then this steam dissolves in the air, becoming part of the air.
If, on the contrary, you begin to control, suppress, and become involved in this material emerging from the subconscious, then it will not go anywhere, you will spin it for a while, experiencing torment during this time, and then it will settle in you again, settle in your subconscious .

By being aware of our 5th dimension of ourselves, we can perceive what comes up without judging or controlling.
Among other things, the attention that goes into the state of awareness of the 5th dimension passes through the feeling of presence, the feeling of I am. This feeling of “I am” is loving, so with this perception, your compassion for yourself will become more active. This is also very healing. And in this there is also no element of control and condemnation. In the observer there is a sense of impartiality, acceptance, and in the sense of presence there is a sense of freedom and love. And attention, passing through this energy, that is, with awareness of this energy, attention touches the block and heals it.
Using this method, you will little by little heal yourself.

If you notice that the process of raising negative thoughts and emotions from the subconscious begins, then there is no need to force or intensify this process, and at the same time there is no need to restrain it. The strength, the intensity with which all this is lived is determined by life itself. But we do not interfere in this; we are in a state of inaction.
Our task is simply to see it. Do not turn a blind eye to this, to what is happening to us, and, on the other hand, do not interfere, do not help. And then we will discover that without our participation a lot of things begin to happen. And here we get the experience of a non-doer: we do nothing, but a lot of things happen.
Some people have a desire to force everything as quickly as possible, to develop it, so that it starts, happens and ends as quickly as possible. And other people, on the contrary, are identified with fear, and they begin to hold it back, to restrain it.
These two relationships will interfere with the process.
You need to treat this process as if it were happening to another person. And you just watch it. You are attentive to it, but you also allow this process to take its course.
You need to live what arises. This process has a beginning, a culmination, and an end, and then this charge, this emotional material will no longer be there.

When we fully emotionally experience an uncomfortable mental-emotional state, and when we do not get involved in it, do not identify with it, this state is transformed and dissolved through self-regulation.

If any one of these two factors is absent, then the energy of the emerging mental-emotional experience will scroll for some time in our consciousness, torment us, and then descend again into our subconscious.

Let us describe the common mistakes that many people make when they try to clear the subconscious of negative mental-emotional energy suppressed in the past.

The first mistake is that people, when they are immersed in the past, worry, cry, think that they are honestly working through the past, and at the same time get involved in these experiences. And then each time the past continues to be experienced just as intensely, just as painfully. And these people still continue to replay and replay their painful past situations. And they are perplexed - when will it become easier for them? While they are living the past, getting involved in it, it will not become easier for them, and their subconscious is not cleared of negative emotional energy from such “working through”.
This is because they become involved in the experience that arises and become identified with the mind while perceiving that experience.

The second mistake is that when working through childhood experiences or other experiences of the past, a person splashes out his emotions, bringing them down on another person or other people. With such “working through”, the person who is throwing out his negative emotions seems to feel better for a while. But first of all, there is no heart in such behavior. And the relief this person feels is largely due to the satisfaction of a “meaningful self-image.” For example, he shouts at someone on the street, and feels satisfied that he “can do it”, that he now feels “more significant”. And this makes him temporarily feel better. In reality, this is simply a rolling rut of a psychopathic pattern of behavior. Therefore, such “elaborations” only reduce the degree of awareness. And secondly, this “relief” is very short-term, and after some time this person will discover that his negative emotion, which he “worked through,” is still with him.

The third mistake is that a person, through reasoning and analysis, theoretically remembers a situation, and through reasoning tries to make his attitude to a particular situation in the past more adequate. And thus, a person tries to transform the mental-emotional reaction that he has in relation to this situation. On some level this is a good approach. And, of course, if a person applies this approach, it is better than nothing. But this approach has a big limitation - a person can use it only within the boundaries of what he is aware of, and even then, not in relation to everything. Because part of what he is aware of is drawn into the sphere of which he is not aware. Therefore, this approach only works in fairly simple situations, and on a fairly superficial level. And also this approach does not reach the deep areas of the subconscious, and cannot be applied in these areas. Therefore, such an approach cannot truly transform and dissolve what has been repressed into the subconscious deeply enough.
This third mistake is to exaggerate the significance and capabilities of this approach, when a person uses only it, thinking that in this way he will be able to deeply transform what he has repressed into his subconscious.

The fourth mistake is that a person, using the method of reasoning, trying to understand something, switches to using psychological defenses, and, in fact, begins to engage in self-deception. People who make this mistake very often say that they have “let go” of this or that painful situation.

The fact is that these people are in a state of identification with the mind, and in this state it is impossible to truly let go of the situation. Attempts to let go of the situation in such a state, in fact, will simply lead to the displacement of the uncomfortable experience into the subconscious, that is, to the suppression of this experience, to the suppression of one’s attitude towards the situation. These will be attempts to learn not to feel something.

In a state of identification with the mind, a person can try to activate the mind, and with the help of the mind try to understand the situation without going into repression. And then the situation will partially (only partially, because part of it is connected with what is in the subconscious and not realized) will go away on its own.

But when they say: “you need to let go of the situation,” very often they do not mean the process of understanding, but the process of throwing away thoughts about the situation, the process of distracting from thoughts about the situation, that is, the real suppression of thoughts and emotions about the situation. After all, what is suppression? Suppression means stopping the perception of something by will. Suppression is carried out by trying to ignore the situation, “not paying attention to the situation” in order to forget it. And then such repressed thoughts and emotions become the content of the subconscious.

You need to completely let the situation pass through yourself, fully re-experience it emotionally, without getting involved in the thoughts and emotions associated with it. Only then will she truly let go.

So, in order for the energy of suppressed mental-emotional experiences to dissolve, it is necessary that it be fully emotionally and energetically experienced, and that we should not be involved in these states, so that we should not have identification with them.

And here several questions may arise.

The first question is: how can we fully experience a once suppressed negative emotional state if the unconscious controlling part of the mind blocks our access to the awareness of these thoughts and emotions because they are very painful for our perception?
In other words, how do we access them in order to fully experience them? How to remove the blockage that the thin controlling layer of our mind has placed on them?

In order for the controlling layer of our mind to give us the opportunity to be aware of repressed mental-emotional experiences, we need to show the controlling part of our mind that our consciousness is ready to see the repressed experiences. We show our mind this readiness by gaining the ability not to get involved in the negative experiences that arise.
The more we develop the ability to not get involved in them, the more repressed experiences the controlling part of the mind will raise from the subconscious and show us, as a result of which these repressed experiences will dissolve.

After all, why did the controlling part of the mind hide these experiences from us?

Our psyche has an instinct of self-preservation that seeks to protect us from the perception of what we are not yet ready to see or perceive, as a result of which these experiences only torment us. And their perception, due to our unwillingness to adequately perceive these experiences, does not bring us any benefit that is understandable to the mind.
This information about our unwillingness to perceive these negative experiences was assessed by the controlling part of the mind, as a result of which the psyche did not allow these experiences into the area of ​​​​our consciousness.

Negative emotional energy repressed into the subconscious - from the point of view of its energetic nature - is compressed tension energy.
And this energy, like a compressed spring, simply by its nature strives to be released, which means that it strives to be released from our subconscious and become manifest to our consciousness.

Our subconscious wants to cleanse itself, free itself from this energy.
The mechanism of self-healing, self-purification, self-restoration is embedded in any living system. Any living system tries to heal itself. When this system has time and excess energy, excess strength, it begins to free itself from pathological conditions. At the same time, we can not intensify the cleaning with additional methods, not force it, but help the system output what the system outputs itself at the speed at which it is more convenient for it. This is how, for example, emotional cleansing occurs. When you just sit or lie and watch, some past grievances or some other emotions, desires, thoughts may suddenly begin to emerge. And catharsis occurs. This happens on its own because the body wants to get rid of all this. If at the same time thoughts begin to arise in the mind: this should not be in me, etc., as well as thoughts that there should not be such thoughts, there should not be such an attitude towards what is being observed, then it is important not to identify with these thoughts, not give your strength, your energy to these thoughts. Not to be inside anything that happens, not to be embodied in it. Because identification with these thoughts will not allow purification and self-regulation to occur.
As a result of this practice, various conditions may arise in the body that accompany the cleansing of the body’s energy bodies, energy channels: heat, cold, trembling, sensations that bring some parts of the body together, a feeling of intense movement of energy, pain of a different nature.
Therefore, you need to prepare in advance for the fact that this may happen, and you need to treat it calmly, as a necessary, natural and positive part of this process. Positive - because after this process we will feel better than we felt before this process.

Therefore, as soon as we develop a stable ability not to get involved in what we perceive, our psyche will immediately understand this, and, as we are ready, it will begin to raise material for us to live from the subconscious.

We don't need to do anything for this. To do this, we do not need to effortlessly remember our past. Everything that is needed will rise on its own, we don’t need to hack into the past.

There are hacking techniques, the past can be hacked, but those who hack often go crazy because these people are not yet ready to perceive this past. Life specifically does not allow these people into the repressed past, because life knows better the degree of our readiness to perceive it.

The right way is when we create a willingness to perceive without getting involved, and without trying to hack anything.
When the repressed past begins to rise, it will not be easy for you. You need to be prepared for this. You shouldn't be afraid to go through this.

Pay special attention to the possible emergence of reluctance to move further in this direction, the emergence of reluctance to see what emerges from the subconscious. This resistance is part of the disease. Don't identify with this reluctance, act from the mind. In this process, you need not to be afraid (in the sense of interrupting fear, if it arises, by acting from the mind, not to be guided by fear, not to be identified with fear) to go through inconvenience, through pain, through the unusual.

The process by which we experience rising negative emotions is a necessary process. If we follow the path of awareness, we cannot escape it. This is the process of cleansing our subconscious. We need to live through everything that is in our subconscious, realizing it and not identifying with it.

In order to further prevent the storage of such energy blocks in the subconscious at the time of the event, at the moment of experiencing pain, you need to pay attention to it, go down to the bottom of the pain, try to be aware of what is being experienced. In practice, we work with our past, with what has already accumulated. The next point is not to accumulate new things. Because if we erase the old, but accumulate the new, then we will need to endlessly go through the process of working on the past.
Therefore, the next thing we need to learn is not to become unconscious in life situations. Live them consciously. Even if we don’t like them, we shouldn’t pretend that they don’t exist. And this is the next stage. We need to understand that if we don’t pay attention to an unpleasant experience now, then later we will have to work through it in practice. Therefore, it is better to do this in direct mode. And if we do this, if we consciously perceive everything that happens to us in life, then we no longer directly accumulate new emotional charges, new energy blocks.

The main thing is not to get involved in these states. Then we will not wind them up, and we will not extinguish them.
And the situation will then be expressed as it really is, and then it will end in itself.
This can first be learned through the practice of meditation at a specially designated time and in an environment convenient for this. And then we can transfer this ability of ours to relate to emerging phenomena in this way to external events: because it makes no difference whether an event occurs inside us or outside us. Because now we treat it the same way.

The more strongly something is experienced, the more it should be experienced. If something hurts, it hurts. The main thing is not to inject yourself with a dose of anesthesia: explanations, theories. Then it gives us the experience of what is and not identification with it. It is important not to live under anesthesia. In practice, we learn not to live under anesthesia, we learn to refuse anesthesia, we learn not to take psychological painkillers.
Then the purification of our subconscious occurs, and the dimensions of the mind and heart will be much more fully manifested in our lives.

Hon-sha-ze-sho-nen (draw and say 3 times) – name + task.
Hon-sha-ze-sho-nen (you draw and say 3 times) - a place, for example, where he is, or wherever he is.
Hon-sha-ze-sho-nen (you draw and say 3 times) - time, right here and now, in two days, during the period when it happened.

Cho-ku-rei (draw and say 3 times) – name + task.
Cho-ku-rei (draw and say 3 times) – place.
Cho-ku-rei (draw and say 3 times) - time.

Sei-he-ki (draw and say 3 times) – name + task.
Sei-he-ki (draw and say 3 times) – place.
Sei-he-ki (draw and say 3 times) – time.

To deeply explore your past:

1. Make this diagram for all years of the past in this life, separately for childbirth and conception. Work through one year of the past in one day. The next day - the next year from the past, etc.

Name (or nickname, any clue) + task – For example: “ Antardhan+ work through and harmonize all events, relationships, emotions, thoughts, sensations associated with him (with himself) at all levels and in all bodies.”
Place - wherever he was at that time.
Time - in the period from 00 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds on January 1 ... of the year to 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds on December 31 ... of the year; childbirth - during the entire period of childbirth; conception – during the entire period of conception.

2. Make this diagram for all traumatic events of the past.

3. Sort your photos by period/year and make a diagram for the time “at the time when I was/was in these photos.”