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Through a comparative analysis of Germany and Russia, this paper explores how participation in the memorialization process affects and reflects national identity formation in post‐totalitarian societies. These post‐totalitarian societies face the common problem of re‐presenting their national character as civic and democratic, in great part because their national identities were closely bound to oppressive regimes. Through a comparison of three memorial sites—Sachsenhausen concentration camp...

Helga Schultz reconsidera la RDA y su forma nacional desde un punto de vista germano-oriental. Entiende la RDA como un intento de construir una peculiar nación socialista alemana, pero laimposibilidad de alcanzar esta aspiración es examinada junto con la sorprendente división entre ambas partes de la nueva Alemania «unida» y la nueva eínicizaci¿n de los alemanes del Este. El articulo revisa también la «sociedad obrera» socialista, como producto del socialismo real.

El Partido del Socialismo Democrático (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus), surgido de la descomposición interna del SED (Sozialistiscbe Einbeitspartei Deutschlands), es un caso relevante de adaptación de los partidos únicos en los regímenes comunistas a la democracia plurípar-tidista. Dadas las peculiaridades de la transición en la República Democrática de Alemania, acelerada por su rápida integración en la República Federal, el SED no tuvo la oportunidad de transformarse en una...

In Japan's case, there was hardly any awareness of the Nanjing atrocities in wartime, such sensibilities being deprived of fuel by censorship and overwhelmed by popular war fever and the desire to see Japan as the champion of international justice. The civil war with the Nationalists and the ensuing Cold War meant that PRC propaganda regarding Nanjing focused on Nationalist incompetence and US dastardliness, as in purported ulterior motives behind the establishment of the Nanjing safety zone for civilian Chinese.

Recent studies have increasingly argued that the Chinese leadership uses Japan’s imperialistic past as a tool for domestic and political bargaining. However, this argument fails to appreciate the embedded nature of negative memories within China. This article forwards an alternative argument by situating Japanese militaristic history within Chinese national identity. By examining a wide range of Chinese primary sources often underutilized by International Relations (IR) analysts, it moves...

A body of critical academic literature has characterized the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a nation-building enterprise with reconciliation as its core. Although this literature is especially influential within South African scholarship, the association of the TRC with reconciliation has become a far wider orthodoxy. An engagement with the full range of the TRC's hearings, its institutional practice and its seven-volume report demonstrates a more contested...

This article serves as the general introduction by the guest editors to the first of two thematic issues of Archival Science that will explore the theme, "archives, records, and power." Archives as institutions and records as documents are generally seen by academic and other users, and by society generally, as passive resources to be .exploited for various historical and cultural purposes. Historians since the mid-nineteenth century, in pursuing the new scientific history, needed an archive...

Vorspann Die Zentrale Stelle in Ludwigsburg ist das Herzstück der justiziellen Ahndung von NSVerbrechen. 1958 gegründet, spielte die einzigartige Institution bei der Einleitung fast aller großen Prozesse eine wichtige Rolle. Der jetzige Leiter und sein Stellvertreter ziehen hier Bilanz und blicken dabei vor allem auf die letzten 25 Jahre zurück, in denen die Zentrale Stelle dazu überging, umfassende eigenständige Ermittlungen im In- und Ausland durchzuführen – und dabei immer wieder beachtliche Erfolge verbuchen konnte.

Cet article explique l’émergence, les caractères et la valeur d’un ensemble documentaire propre au XXe siècle, tel qu’il se constitue en Amérique latine lorsque des organismes de défense des droits de l’Homme surgissent de la société civile pour défendre les victimes et dénoncer, au plan du droit, les graves infractions qui sont commises, dans les pays en proie à la violence politique. Son propos est centré sur trois pays où ce mouvement s’est particulièrement illustré. Il rappelle d’abord...

This paper considers the relationship between memory and archives by exploring the concepts of individual and collective memory and by examining the processes involved with creating, capturing, storing, and retrieving memories. The author considers the metaphor of archives as memory and relates our perception of memory to our understanding of the creation, preservation, and use of records and archives. She demonstrates that individual and collective memory represent only a fragment of life...

This article examines the diary's transformation from print culture practice to online phenomenon, considering the implications of this change for the diary as a literary genre and as life writing. This discussion explores the challenges the online diary represents to traditional concepts of the genre as private and monologic, investigating the ways in which online diarists attract readers, build communities, and create identities in cyberspace.

Archivists and historians usually consider archives as repositories of historical sources and the archivist as a neutral custodian. Sociologists and anthropologists see "the archive" also as a system of collecting, categorizing, and exploiting memories. Archivists are hesitantly acknowledging their role in shaping memories. I advocate that archival fonds, archival documents, archival institutions, and archival systems contain tacit narratives which must be deconstructed in order to understand the meanings of archives.

Archivists today are caught between an expanding volume of records and a growing public expectation that every page in every document is online and indexed. With so many records and so few resources to provide on-demand access to them, the problem seems intractable. More money alone is not the answer; larger appropriations or donations cannot solve this problem. Instead, archivists must fundamentally shift the way they think about their roles and develop alternative means and methods for doing archival work.

Most of political parties represented at the Spanish Parliament agreed, after Franco’s death, not to face the recent past. From the beginning of the Spanish political transition has existed neither a policy of memory nor a real archival policy regarding that subject. The management of the records produced by D.N.S.D. (National Delegation of Documentary Services, the information agency of Franco regime in Salamanca), was only focused on improving historical researches. The archives of...