Anticommunist Discourse Research Articles

Bolshevik bogies: red scares in Britain, 1919-24

ABSTRACT The establishment of an anti-socialist hegemony has been widely accepted as the pivot of the Conservative Party’s electoral dominance in the interwar period. Anti-communism as a component of anti-socialist discourse, though commonly alluded to, has not received systematic attention, and is known above all for its appearance during the 1924 election campaign by way of the Zinoviev letter. This article offers the first comprehensive account of British political anti-communism in the early 1920s and reinterprets its significance and reach by demonstrating the vast extent to which it saturated Conservative propaganda between 1919 and 1924, as well as the range of social groups it sought to appeal to by these methods. It explores the origins and development of political anti-communism from the ‘first red scare’ in 1919-21 to the infamous 1924 campaign, punctuated by a series of ‘little red scares’ by which the fear of communism was perpetuated among key demographics. The 1924 election, rather than being seen chiefly as a triumph of ‘progressive’ Baldwinite Conservatism, must be understood in this context of a developed and pervasive anti-communist discourse that could be effectively deployed to engender a red scare under certain conditions, which the first Labour government was not the first to provide.

Identity and historical memory of Russians in the context of confrontation with the "collective West"

Basing on the data of long-term sociological research, the authors study the influence of the construct “collective West” on the civic identity and historical memory of modern Russian society and investigate the dynamics of these attitudes of public society under the influence of the international political situation. “Collective West” is considered as a stereotypical construct founded on Russian public opinion and political discourse. The authors identify three main approaches to the description of the “collective West”: socio-economic and political approaches, as well as the strategy of studying the organisation of private life. This allows us to correlate the features attributed to the discursively constructed “Other” with the ideas about the “collective West” actualized in the mass consciousness of modern Russians. The authors summarize that the Russian collective identity combines both traditional-self, Russian, and Western-liberal values. But Russians are unambiguous when it comes to the interpretation of historical memory: they acutely perceive the discrepancy between Russian and Western interpretations of the past.
 The “collective West” has acted for Russia not only as a traditional socio-cultural and civilizational “Other”, but also as geopolitical competitor. Hence this is the peculiarity of interpretations of past events and historical memory in Russia and abroad. The “perestroika inertia” of attempts to reconcile different versions of the past was replaced in the 2000s by a sharp anti-communist discourse of a number of Eastern European states, their “turn” to the West and Russia’s growing external isolation. This revitalized the conflict between the national historical narratives of Russia and Western countries, and this is very painful for Russian society today. Negative interpretation of the events of Soviet history, especially of the memory of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, is absolutely unacceptable for the Russian historical memory. Russian people react to the attempts to revise the traditional interpretations of Russian history with the demand for reliable historical knowledge. People attitude to preserve the established interpretation of national history is related not to the fear of decentralization tendencies, as it was in the 1990s, but to their desire to protect the history of their families and family memory.

전후 여성 작가와 열전사회의 반공담론 ―김말봉의 『별들의 고향』(1953)과 임옥인의 『월남전후』(1956)를 중심으로

전후의 여성 작가들은 당대의 현실을 구체적으로 재현하면서 이를 개선하려는 적극적인 의지를 드러냈다. 하지만 전후 문학을 ‘순수문학’이라는 특정한 담론 내에서 설명하는 과정에서 이들의 작품이 지닌 의미들을 규명하려는 노력은 충분히 이루어지지 않았다. 지식인-여성 작가의 정체성을 바탕으로 하는 임옥인의 『월남전후』와 김말봉의 『별들의 고향』은 각각 탈출의 서사와 성장의 서사를 기반으로 해방 후의 상황을 재현해 나가는 동시에 위태로운 현실을 극복하기 위한 전망을 제시한다. 남한의 재건을 목표로 하는 이들의 서사에는 필연적으로 반공의 목표가 내포되어 있다. 하지만 동시에 정치적인 반공주의의 구획을 넘어서 문화적이고 정동적인 형태로 등장하는 현실의 의미를 발견할 수 있게 만든다.BR 『월남전후』는 임옥인의 북한체류 경험을 바탕으로 하여 북한 사회의 야만성을 재현하는데 집중한다. 하지만 이러한 야만적인 상태의 근본적인 원인을 제국주의적 과거로부터 찾음으로써 공산주의에 대한 부정의 태도를 발전과 계몽을 향한 목표로 전환해 낸다. 이 과정에서 주목되는 것은 근대적인 삶에 도달하지 못하고 가난과 무지의 상태에 놓인 여성들에 대한 깊은 공감과 연민의 태도이다. 소설의 주인공은 이들에게 단순히 지식을 전파하는 것이 아닌 위안과 위로를 제공할 수 있는 방안으로서 계몽 운동을 전개해 나간다.BR 김말봉의 『별들의 고향』 역시 계몽주의적 태도를 기반으로 해방기와 전쟁기의 혼란한 현실을 재현한다. 이 과정에서 공산주의자들은 남한 사회의 혼란과 갈등을 유발하는 자들로 설정된다. 남성 주인공은 선명한 반공의 담론을 전제로 하는 재건의 주체로 성장하는 데 성공한다. 이러한 성장의 과정은 연애의 서사를 기반으로 서사적 긴장감을 확보하지만, 동시에 낭만적 사랑의 열정과 정념을 형상화하는 것에는 실패하게 된다. 반공 국민으로 성장하는 남성 주인공의 이면에서 낭만적 사랑의 정념을 체현하는 것은 공산주의자가 되기로 결심한 여성 인물이다. 『별들의 고향』은 반공주의적 재건의 논리 이면에서 기생, 혹은 기생의 딸로 불리는 여성들의 절망과 분노의 정서를 삽입한다. 이를 통해 정치적 이념을 통해 재현될 수 없는 현실의 비극성들이 드러난다.BR 임옥인과 김말봉의 소설은 한국 전후 문학에 대한 기존의 규정들을 위반하면서 전후 문학을 이해하는 또 다른 해석을 요청한다. 전쟁의 순간이 아닌 전쟁을 예감하는 것에서 시작되는 이들의 소설은 한국 사회가 경험한 열전의 경험들이 어떠한 방식으로 냉전적 질서의 내부로 수용되고 있는지를 드러낸다. 그리고 동시에 냉전의 체제 내부에서 설명되지 못하는 상태로 남겨진 혼란과 절망의 순간들을 재현한다. 이를 통해 이들의 작품은 전후 문학을 이해하는 새로운 가능성을 제공해주는 것이다.

Review: Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s–1970s, by Chien-Wen Kung

In this well-written monograph based on extensive archival research and fieldwork, Chien-Wen Kung explores how the Philippine Chinese became the “world’s most exemplary Cold Warriors” (p. 1). Borrowing from Stephen Krasner’s concept of “shared sovereignty” (p. 9), Kung convincingly argues that the Kuomintang, often with the cooperation of the Philippine government, instigated a “re-organization” of institutions and networks such that “threads of anti-communism [were] woven into the fabric of Philippine Chinese society” (p. 122). Along the way, Kung shows how the Communist left became increasingly marginalized as Philippine Chinese in different social classes “practice[ed] anti-Communism” for both “ideological and self-interested ends” (p. 78).The first two chapters trace the prewar history of the KMT, Chinese society and Chinese Communism, as well as the subsequent triumph of KMT vis-à-vis Chinese Communist influence in the Philippines. The remaining five core chapters examine select individuals, organizations, and activities.Kung’s analyses underscore two main points. The first focuses on the KMT’s dominant influence in Philippine Chinese society, with the tacit acceptance of the Philippine state, which in turn allowed the Republic of China (ROC) to assert non-territorial sovereignty over the Chinese. The clearest example lies in Kung’s examination of the Quintin and Rizal Yuyingtung case. As publisher and editor of Chinese Commercial News, they deviated from the dominant anticommunist discourse and were arrested for publishing pro-Communist material and deported to the ROC to be tried as ROC nationals.The second centers on the Philippine Chinese’s adaptation to the anticommunist climate by practicing anticommunism in myriad ways and for a variety of reasons. Kung examines individuals and groups to try and assess their motivations. Alfonso Sycip, a wealthy businessman with no hardline ideological leanings, likely assumed leadership of the Philippine-Chinese United Organization in Support of Anti-Communist Movement in 1951 to establish his “credentials” in the new geopolitical climate. Shih-I-Sheng, who did not come from an elite background, opportunistically positioned himself as a “go-to expert” on Chinese communism even though the information he provided was questionable (p. 92). Among those Philippine Chinese who participated in tours to Taiwan arranged by the ROC/KMT were those who viewed their trip in “sentimental and ideological terms” (p. 167) and others who viewed it in practical terms associated with professional development (p. 174). Taken together, the individual cases exemplify the ways in which Philippine Chinese negotiated their own paths in the anticommunist climate of the Cold War.Kung’s monograph makes important contributions to the scholarship of the Cold War in Asia. By delving into Philippine Chinese society and culture, the study provides us with a nuanced view of how the Cold War was experienced by individuals on the ground. In analyzing the influence of the KMT and the ROC in shaping the seemingly uniform anticommunist orientation of Philippine Chinese in collaboration with successive Philippine governments, Kung also shows how the influence of the KMT/ROC in the Philippines was exceptional when compared to its neighbors such as Malaya and Indonesia. More importantly, Kung’s work rightly focuses our attention on intra-Asian connections that are often overlooked in studies that center on the role of the United States in the Cold War.

The Visual Politics of Fear: Anti-Communist Imagery in Postwar Greece

From the mid-1940s to the fall of the Colonels’ Dictatorship in 1974, Greek society was defined by an official anti-communist discourse that divided it into ‘nationally-minded’ Ethnikofron citizens and left-wing ‘enemies of the nation’. The article shows how this power discourse deployed visual media to construct an emotional regime of fear around communism during and after the Greek Civil War. It uncovers a large volume of propaganda imagery, including posters, illustrations, book covers, photographs, newsreels and feature films, which was used alongside texts and corporeal practices to vilify the Greek left. The article argues that the visual language of Ethnikofrosyni patterned itself on older scripts of negative othering embedded in Greek popular culture, such as lycanthropy, teratology, witchcraft, Islamophobia and Orientalism to discredit communism without engaging with its twentieth-century ideas and policies. Communists were therefore portrayed as monsters, beasts, barbarians, Muslims, Turks, Jews and unfeminine women to arouse primordial fears that threatened the deepest symbols of Greek national identity. The article stresses the centrality and relative autonomy of images in the discourse of Ethnikofrosyni and uses comparisons to unveil the processes of circulation and domestication operating across different national strands of anti-communism in the Cold War.

“They all are the red plague”: anti-communism and the Romanian radical right populists

ABSTRACT This paper examines how a radical right populist party uses anti-communism to produce an anti-establishment discourse and consolidate ultra-conservative political values. At the end of 2020 The Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) entered the Romanian Parliament, taking many by surprise. We indicate how they have capitalised not only on the “normalisation” of radical right themes, but also on pre-existing anti-communist discourses. After demonstrating how anti-communism has structured the post-socialist Romanian politics, we reveal how it was used as an identifier of the political establishment and how AUR operated a gradual replacement of “communism” with “neo-Marxism” in their discourse.

Ativismo e extrema-direita no meio militar: tensões e discursos que antecedem o bolsonarismo (1984-1998

Although Brazil’s democratization in the 1980’s resulted in a new status quo for the Armed Forces, submitting them to civilian authority, some essential aspects of the authoritarian and anti-communist discourse that had prevailed during the military regime continued to be observed in the 1980s and 1990s. This rhetoric was marked by resentment against civilians, authoritarian proposals and anti-communism, and found its expression in a far-right military activism undertaken by retired officers in that period. Actions by these activist pressure groups were part of the civilian-military relationship dynamics. Towards its conclusion, this article presents the existing convergences between this post-democratic transition discourse and the contemporary pro-Bolsonaro phenomenon.

ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ ПОЛИТИКИ ВРЕМЁН ПЕРЕСТРОЙКИ В СССР (1985–1988 ГГ.)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the texts of memoirs and monographic works of figures during the period of reforms in the USSR in 1985-1991. The article discusses the use of the Soviet historical past by politicians during the reforms in order to confirm the need for their implementation. As a justification for the actual reassessment of this past, the authors of the reforms rely on the need proclaimed by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev to expand publicity and democratize public life in the USSR. As a result of the research, the author draws the conclusion that the transformation of public consciousness and the complete denial of the Soviet past was a historical mistake, which ultimately led to a change of ideology and the formation of anti-communist discourse during the reforms.

Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America's Long Cold War

This volume makes a compelling case for centering circuits of experts and expertise in understanding Latin America's Cold War. Born out of a conference at Yale University in 2016, it follows the transnational trajectories of scientific, technological, and environmental experts during Latin America's “long Cold War,” shedding light on this crucial period beyond traditional Cold War narratives as well as contributing to histories of Latin American science, technology, and the environment.A lucid editors' introduction, an essay by Gilbert Joseph on the sea change in literature on Latin America's Cold War, and a conclusion by Eden Medina and Mark Carey on environment, technology, and science provide a comprehensive vision of the volume's stakes and contributions. The 11 historical chapters are organized into four, roughly chronological sections and cover diverse scientific and technological fields and projects, intersecting to varying degrees with histories of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico from approximately the 1920s to the present.By tracing out the paths of experts in the production and circulation of expertise, these authors critique seemingly intransigent assumptions about the place of science, technology, and the environment in Latin America. While Latin American countries often have been seen as recipients of expertise from the United States and Western Europe, the authors of this volume challenge the directionality and place of expert circulation and knowledge production, as Thomas Rath does in his essay on the impact of Mexican responses to foot-and-mouth disease eradication programs on laboratory science and epizootic policies in Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Attentiveness to the local production of knowledge also reveals the place of Latin American experts in development projects like the Green Revolution, illustrated by Timothy Lorek's agronomists in Colombia's Cauca Valley. Scholars in this volume better locate this production in diverse inter-American exchanges, such as the “transnational contact zone” of the Inter-American Housing and Planning Center featured in Mark Healey's chapter (p. 200). Further demonstrating the multidirectional flows of Cold War expertise and expert politicking, Mary Roldán's chapter on education expertise illustrates the power of one expert's varied anticommunist discourse to marshal resources from across the hemisphere for his radiophonic schools.If the term Cold War suggests a bipolar world, this volume shows how experts, often because of their expertise, could forge unexpected connections across such geopolitical rigidity, as illustrated in Reinaldo Funes-Monzote and Steven Palmer's essay on the history of Cuban-Canadian cooperation on cattle breeding and in Andra Chastain's chapter on Chilean and French expertise in the construction of the Santiago metro and the role that it played in shaping political debates in Santiago and advancing French diplomatic aspirations. Opening up Cold War bipolarity also decouples scientific expertise from state dominance, seen in Emily Wakild's chapter on natural field scientists' resistance to developmentalism in the “middle landscapes” of the Peruvian Amazon and in Javiera Barandiarán's history of the privatization of Chilean environmental scientific expertise during the late twentieth century's neoliberal reforms (p. 262).Attentive to the porousness of the divide between cultural and political spheres and between scientific and technological ones, authors in this volume highlight entanglements of nonexpert culture and politics with scientific and technological projects, as demonstrated by Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola in their excavation of how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's insignia design projected the scientific meaning of its satellite networks in Chile and by Fernando Purcell in his examination of the “concrete revolution” across South America and the necessity of crafting a popular imaginary for something as immaterial as electricity in order to support the construction of massive concrete hydroelectric dams (p. 222). Contributors also illustrate the political mutability of scientific knowledge and technological projects, made clear in Tore Olsson's unpacking of the Tennessee Valley Authority's power as an “idea” for both Left and Right in postrevolutionary Mexico (p. 75).Contributors to this volume do an excellent job of showing how a hemispheric program materialized out of transnational exchanges of expertise situated in local and national contexts; by doing so they advance scholarly agendas to construct a Latin American Cold War and to integrate histories of science, technology, and the environment. For this reviewer, the volume's successes gesture toward a need to reevaluate further how much the Cold War as a dominant historiographical concept explains and how much it obscures, particularly with regard to development as a response to structural phenomena and the continuities in transnational, inter-American scientific and technological networks from the nineteenth century onward. Ultimately, Latin Americanists working on different time periods will find this volume generative; scholars of science, technology, and the environment working on different geographical fields will recognize its contributions; and advanced undergraduates will find its essays stimulating.

Huelgas democratizadoras: La rebelión estudiantil en el Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (1980–1982)

Huelgas democratizadoras: La rebelión estudiantil en el Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (1980–1982)

A crisis of legitimacy or a source of political consolidation? The deportation of Bulgarian Turks in 1950-1951 and the Democratic Party

ABSTRACT The Bulgarian decision to deport 250,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey in August 1950 came as a shock to the Democratic Party (DP). As a party that had taken power only three months ago, the DP was not prepared to accept the influx of thousands of immigrants. The deportation initially challenged the DP’s legitimacy at home and abroad because the DP tried to exercise its political hegemony over the opposition and to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To counter criticism in Turkey and to protect its image in the international arena, the DP formulated a set of policies, ranging from diplomatic channels to anti-communist discourses and victimization of immigrant children and women. Based on primary and secondary accounts, the article argues that the deportation of Bulgarian Turks was a challenge – and simultaneously a source of legitimacy – to the DP at the beginning of its rule.

Popolo della Libertà: auge y caída de un partido conservador

The following article analyses the ideological dimension of Silvio Berlusconi’s political party Popolo della Libertà (2008-‍2013). The focus on the ideological nature of the PdL is justified because its failure as a conservative party is a crucial factor, along with the transformation of the political party system in Italy, in understanding the metamorphosis of the Italian right between 2008 and 2018. The analysis concludes that the demise of the two-party system that characterized the Second Republic has contributed to reduce Berlusconi’s traditional ability to mobilise the anti-left wing electorate through an anticommunist discourse.

Reimagining the Fluid Categorization of the Communist, Chinese, and Jews in Umar Kayam’s Stories

This article examines how Umar Kayam’s fiction reveals the logic underlying the New Order political legacy through the reproduction of the myth of ethnic purity and anti-communist discourse. It argues that Kayam’s fiction, especially “Musim Gugur Kembali di Connecticut” (“Fall in Connecticut,” 1967), “Sri Sumarah” (1970), “Bawuk” (1973), Para Priyayi (The Nobles, 1992) and his last novel, Jalan Menikung (The Winding Road, 1999), reflect how that essentialist discourse believing in the primacy of certain ethnic and class categories has been deployed effectively in the Indonesian political arena to create false consciousness among the masses. Kayam challenged this by offering a fictional figuration of fluid identity—identity whose quality is not determined by boundaries of race and class categories of the communist, Chinese and Jewish characters. The texts also signify the narrowing of Homi K. Bhabha’s (2002) third space, leaving fewer courses of action for priyayi (Javanese nobles), resulting prominently in corruption. The third space in the Javanese priyayi context does not become a site of empowerment but of corruption and manipulation. It emerges in Kayam’s essentialist priyayi characters who believe in the primacy of Javanese priyayi class not as a progressive reconstruction of the site of postcolonial politics, but as a failure to find a moral center for the emergent nation.

Understanding Viral Communism: A Thematic Analysis of Twitter During Brazil’s 2018 Elections

This research performs a thematic analysis on tweets published during Brazil’s 2018 elections that mentioned communism. The idea was to identify the linkages to other underlying themes that emerged during what we saw as the Twitter ‘virality of communism’ and interpret them considering the backdrop of anti-communist discourses in the country. The results show that political polarisation, distrust of democracy, criticism of the left and praise of militarism and religion are the most recurrent themes. We conclude by situating the virality of the term ‘communism’ as a process that follows a context of disinformation and hopelessness, but which also relates to the legitimate concerns of Brazilian voters.

Anticorrupção No Brasil: Uma Luta Seletiva (Anti-Corruption in Brazil: A Selective Struggle)

The anti-corruption discourse was one of the main pillars, together with the anti-communist discourse, for the 1964 civil-military coup to take place and to try to justify its permanence. Despite the anti-communist discourse having resided over the 21 years of the Brazilian dictatorship, its strength was relativized over time, and its importance in the immediate post-coup was diminished in favor of the anti-corruption speech when it became clear that the communist threat had been overestimated (MOTTA , 2016, p. 22) and, for strategic reasons such as the political persecution of personalities who could hardly be classified as communists. This article aims to bring to light and discuss one of the most mystified periods, for strategic reasons, and the least studied of the 1964 civil-military regime: the Branco government and, especially, the discourse that during his government there was no corruption. The reason for this mystification is simple, there is a dispute over the memory of this period by the sectors that supported the coup, an Operation Salva Castelo (BIROLI, 2009, p.281) that aims to endure the idea that support for the coup would have been legitimate and that there was a loss of direction along the way in which radical sectors had taken power and only then torture, corruption and all the evils arose from this regime - a false narrative, obviously. Whoever supports this thesis seeks not only to modify and mystify the past, but to legitimize themselves as decisive actors in guiding the present and future of the country in the public arena. Speeches like these allow, for example, that newspapers such as O Estado de S. Paulo or O Globo (two of the biggest enthusiasts and supporters of the coup) can try to portray themselves as supporters of the coup, but with restrictions, as, for example, asking to the reader to understand that they aimed to protect the democracy and morality that would be at risk in the Jango government by the supposed communist threat and by corruption.

Romania’s Great Union and the Anti-Communist Discourse

Abstract This text re-constructs the evolution of anticommunist ideas and practices during the period of Romania’s ‘great union’, while it also sketches the international context that enabled this evolution. It is a genealogical discourse analysis that serves for a better understanding of Romania’s present political and social climate. The political, diplomatic and military process of crafting ‘Greater Romania’ between 1918 and 1919 rested fundamentally on the anticommunist discourse. This discourse functioned as a pretext for the armed interventions in the desired territories. It also helped to securitize and pacify these three territories. The Romanian army entered Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania with the goal of protecting the local population against Bolshevik disorders and ‘anarchy’. The anticommunist discourse evolved from the panic generated by retreating Russian soldiers and the ‘anarchy’ they created towards the fear of contagion with the revolutionary ‘psychosis’. The answer to the communist threat was invariably violent and militaristic in nature. The ideas and issues raised by the communists were never legitimized as a political project but as a crime and a pathology that could destroy society. In this context, what we now refer to as ‘the Great Union’ was largely the substitution of social and economic projects with the hegemonic narrative of anti-communism.

Reclaiming heritage from anti-communist discourse

This article explores how challenging socio-political contexts have influenced the revival of antifascist heritage sites in post-Yugoslavian states. Despite the official politics of promoting national hegemony through adhering to neoliberal norms, these sites promote the values of shared humanity and antifascism. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article argues that socialism and antifascism have returned via the rediscovery of utopian spatial possibilities that survive in these spaces. Nostalgia thrives through this process, yet not as a nostalgia for the past; rather, it is a nostalgia for a future that haunts through being unfulfilled due to nationalism and turbo-capitalism. Rediscovery of shared humanity and antifascism through tourism activity provides solace from socioeconomic injustices and empowers those hoping for better futures.

Communism as a General Crime: Applying Hegemony Analysis to Anti-Communist Discourse in Contemporary Poland

Załamanie się systemu socjalistycznego w Europie Wschodniej wiązało się z rozkwitem antykomunizmu, który w Polsce stał się jednym z dominujących dyskursów politycznych. Jest on ugruntowany w ustawodawstwie, oddziałuje na nauki społeczne i edukację, przenika kulturę popularną i pamięć zbiorową oraz wpływa na bieżące działania polityczne. Mimo to wciąż brakuje systematycznych analiz jego hegemonii. W niniejszym artykule podejmuję próbę zastosowania metodologii wypracowanej przez Martina Nonhoffa w oparciu o teorię dyskursu Ernesta Laclaua i Chantal Mouffe do dyskursu antykomunistycznego we współczesnej Polsce. Argumentuję, że w efekcie antagonistycznego podziału przestrzeni dyskursywnej komunizm staje się „powszechnym przestępstwem”, przeszkodą, która uniemożliwia polskiemu społeczeństwu pojednanie się z samym sobą i osiągnięcie (mitycznej) pełni.

전후 이승만정부의 북한 인권문제 제기와 반공주의, 1953~1959

본 연구는 정치적 도구로서의 북한 인권문제 제기가 반공주의와 어떻게 결합되어 나타났는지 한국전쟁 이후 1950년대 이승만 정부의 사례를 바탕으로 다룬다. 휴전협정 후 군사해방이 더 이상 통일방안으로 실효적이지 않은 조건에서 이승만 정부는 장기적인 관점에서 북한의 정통성을 훼손시킬 수 있는 전략을 모색할 수 밖에 없었다. 이 전략으로부터 부각된 체제 대결의 새로운 쟁점은 바로 북한 공산주의 독재의 한 측면으로서 인권 문제였다. 인권은 공산주의의 정치적, 종교적 자유의 결여 및 물질적 빈곤의 문제를 모두 포괄하여 비판할 수 있는 주제로서 당시 북한이 정치, 경제, 군사적으로 이루어온 체제공고화의 표면적인 성과를 비판하기에 유용한 개념이었다.

Instead of negationism. The symbolic topography of the former Warsaw ghetto vis-à-vis Holocaust narratives

A comparative analysis of the two monuments erected on one of the streets in the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto, the Umschlagplatz monument (1988) and the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East (Pomnik Poległym i Pomordowanym na Wschodzie) (1995), shows how the equation of Nazism with Stalinism, if not with communism, has become inscribed in the symbolic topography of that place. The stake in this operation is the ‘Holocaustisation’ of the “Polish fate,” epitomised by deportations into the interior of the USSR and the massacre in Katyń. The anticommunist discourse with a still un-defused anti-Semitic potential (the myth of Judaeo-communism, the double genocide theory) constitutes the overall narrative framework. The result is the rationalisation (presentation as a well deserved punishment or self-defence) of the stances of the majority of Polish society and its behaviour toward Jews during the Holocaust. Instead of upsetting the heroic-martyrological narratives about the dominant group’s past, the increasing knowledge about the facts leads only to their mutation and strengthening. The context of this phenomenon is the politics of memory adopted by Poland and the Baltic states on the European forum. Its dynamic consists in shifting the limits of the European memory compromise, that is, in rationalisation of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in an attempt to preserve one’s image as the hero and victim.