The Eastern Front in European Memory - by Xosé M Núñez Seixas (Hardcover)

About the Book

A comparative analysis of the cultural and collective memories of the Eastern Front in Europe between 1945 and 2022.

Book Synopsis

This is the first comprehensive study to examine the place of the Eastern Front or Soviet-German War in European memory from a truly comparative perspective across Europe; it encompasses the Soviet and post-Soviet space, Germany (both GDR and FRG, and the Berlin Republic after 1990), Western Europe and Finland.

Covering the whole post-war period to the present, with a particular emphasis on recent events, this book offers a cultural perspective on the different ways in which the politics of memory dictated by states interact with and are sometimes counteracted by grass-roots memory initiatives. The Eastern Front in European Memory focuses on a diversity of sources and agents of memory, from monuments and public ceremonies to literary narratives, films and other aspects of popular culture that contribute to shaping the historical culture of the societies concerned.

Review Quotes

"Second World War's Eastern Front featured a battlefield that was dominated by the Red Army and Wehrmacht but also included participants from Romania and Finland, as well as Spain and Italy. Each has developed myths about their respective experiences, suffering, and heroism and, for the first time, Xosé M. Núñez Seixas has put them into conversation with each other in a single volume that offers a modern synthesis and "panoramic investigation" of the state of the field of collective memory studies when it comes to the Eastern Front and its modern-day implications" --Yan Mann, Associate Clinical Professor of History, Arizona State University, USA

About the Author

Xosé M. Núñez Seixas is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He has published widely on the comparative history of nationalist movements and national and regional identities. He is the co-editor of Regionalism and Modern Europe (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) and Metaphors of Spain: Representations of Spanish National Identity in the Twentieth Century (2017).