History After the Fall - Objectives

One of the aims of the collaborative work is to involve large groups of university students from the countries of the former Communist world, who would work together and under the guidance of scholars from different countries. The collaboration could itself set an example for future researchers and academics of how to work on sensitive, even explosive issues without turning scholarly questions into dangerous political weapons.

The participants are interested in the way different themes and aspects of the history of the twentieth century became rewritten, reinterpreted and re-presented by a variety of means in different media. The focus of our research and collection activities concentrate on historical monographs, education material, history textbooks, university courses (syllabi and readers); feature-, historical-, popular-, and documentary films; exhibitions, museums, and "house-of terror" type complex memorials; monuments, sculptures; "new facts"; parables and fictions. We are particularly interested in the new presentation of the two World Wars; the new interpretation of the traditional and radical right of the inter-war years; the anti-Communist resistance movement; the theme of collaboration; nationalism and the national questions; foreign occupation; poverty and well-fare measures; and the historical record left behind by over-centralized, authoritarian, totalitarian and anti-democratic regimes.