Realms of Memory

Rehabilitating the Memory of Stalin in Putin’s Russia

The militarism we see in Russia today has much to do with the rehabilitation of the memory of Stalin.  The Stalin of the Great Terror, mass famine, and deportations has been recast as an unfortunate but necessary prelude to the victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriot War.  In Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin’s Russia, Todd Nelson argues that this reimagining of Stalin is the deliberate work of Putin after his rise to power over twenty years ago.  Putin used everything from schools and the media to memorials and museums to craft a new Stalin narrative to instill Russians with a sense of national pride and to bolster the legitimacy of his authoritarian regime.

The Great Exodus from China: Memory and Identity in Taiwan

With the Communist victory in China in 1949 nearly one million civil war refugees flooded into Taiwan—the largest out migration from China in the modern era.  Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, author of The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan, helps us understand the relationship between trauma and memory in new ways.  He reveals how the memories of mainlander refugees changed over time and the therapeutic role they served.  He sheds light on how mainlander refugees and their descendants used their memory work to lay claim to a new home in Taiwan.  Perhaps most importantly, Dominic reveals how his own personal journey might offer the promise of reconciliation for Taiwan’s long divided communities.  

Remembering the Slave Trade in Liverpool

How has the slave trade been remembered in Liverpool—the world’s leading slave-trading port city in the eighteenth century?  Jessica Moody, author of The Persistence of Memory: Remembering Slavery in Liverpool, ‘slaving capital of the world,’ explains how the slave trade has never been forgotten in Liverpool. It has lived on through public debates about the city’s identity, through the city’s anniversaries, through the city’s black population, through the celebrations of civic heroes, through museums and through the streets and neighborhoods long connected to Liverpool’s dark past. 

Yasukuni Shrine and Japan’s Memory of the Asia-Pacific War

Why has Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine become such a lightning rod for the memory wars in Japan about the Asia-Pacific War?  Akiko Takenaka, author of Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar, helps us understand how the meaning of Yasukuni has changed over time and why it has become the nation’s most controversial memory site.  

Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil

How did Germany go from being an international pariah at the end of World War II to a leader of the European Union and one of the most trusted nations on the planet? In Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, Susan Neiman argues that having the courage to confront the past did much to transform Germany’s image at home and abroad. 

Realms of Memory

Realms of Memory is a podcast that looks at how countries confront their darkest chapters, what they gain by doing so, and what happens when they fail to take up this challenge.  We feature the insights of leading experts on a wide range of difficult national memories.