As the Baltic states continue to resist Russia's historical narratives and falsifications, self-reflection would be more productive than self-righteousness, writes Violeta Davoliūtė, a professor at the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science (TSPMI).
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the outbreak of war on a scale not seen in Europe since 1945 have triggered a new geopolitical dynamic. The accession of Finland (and eventually Sweden) to NATO is especially significant as a factor in unifying the Nordic and Baltic regions.
I recently participated in a discussion organised by the Lithuanian Embassy in Helsinki, together with Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Ulla Savolainen from Helsinki University on the topic of how the war in Europe is shaping historical remembrance and identity in our region.
For my part, I noted that while the Baltic states and Finland followed different paths during WW2 and the Cold War, we share, unfortunately, a common legacy of Soviet and Russian aggression, occupation, and imperialism – a legacy that the war in Ukraine has brought into focus.
Faced again with the prospect of Russian aggression, how should we react? How to counter and contain the threat, to ensure that it does not endanger our community, our way of life, and our values?
There are several means to respond to national security threats, using military or police forces, as well as administrative means in the fields of trade and immigration. Increasingly, our governments are also looking to contain what they call “informational” threats, including disinformation and propaganda relating to the past, to contemporary history.
Indeed, when confronted with such propaganda, with false and insidious narratives about our own history, we are naturally tempted to respond by amplifying our own narratives and silencing false narratives.
The problem with such “mnemonic militancy” (a term introduced by the IR scholar Maria Mälksoo) is that we risk falling into the trap of mirroring Russian and Soviet approaches to the past, of censorship, of punishing “different” ways of thinking. This leads, quicker than we may think, to self-censorship and the erosion of critical thinking, if not yet to actual censorship.
This is clearly a path we do not wish to follow.
A more complex question arises when we are confronted with the complacency of our fellow Europeans further West, more distant from Russia, and the arrogance of so-called “great powers” who look down on the predicament of smaller and more vulnerable states like ours.
Lithuania and its neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe have taken the following measures to address these problems. We have sought to communicate the specificity of our history to the rest of Europe. We sought to contribute to a common European understanding of the twentieth century. We are currently lobbying for the erection of a monument to the victims of communism in Brussels.
While I am not against these measures aimed at influencing what Belgians and other Europeans further West think about our region, I believe it is far more important that we, as writers, scholars and educators work more actively in our own societies, with our own people.
I believe it is essential that we develop a deeper, more critical, and broader understanding of our own history. Especially among the younger generations, we must show how our national history compares and relates to the history of our neighbours.
We must strengthen our capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood and become resilient to the tall tales and emotional manipulation of propaganda, whether it comes from abroad or is generated here at home.
If we must have a policy toward remembrance at the national or European level, it should not be aimed at the creation of a single, shared narrative. That is the path of propaganda, the path taken by Russia, and, unfortunately, a couple of our fellow European states in recent years.
Instead, our approach to historical remembrance, to the practice of public history, should be based on two pillars. The first is to encourage critical thinking and professional standards in the writing of history. We need more self-reflection, not more self-righteousness. The second pillar is to encourage greater engagement of the citizenry in the creation of historical narratives.
Our society is diverse. Our history is inescapably plural. Our success and security depend on learning from many histories, and not just one.
Violeta Davoliūtė is a specialist in matters of historical trauma, the politics of memory and national identity. PhD from the University of Toronto. Author of The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War. Visiting scholar at Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Yale University, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Uppsala University.
This commentary, published by LRT English with permission from the author, is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union under the WIDERA programme (EUROPAST project, Grant Agreement No. 101079466).
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