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How to Address the Loss? Forced Migrations, Lost Territories and the Politics of History

A Comparative Approach in Europe and at its Margins in the XXth Century

by Anne Bazin (Volume editor) Catherine Perron (Volume editor)
©2018 Edited Collection 234 Pages

Summary

The map of Europe has been redrawn several times during the XXth century, in peaceful or violent ways, and the shifting of borders has often been associated with forced migrations. But despite the fact that this has been the fate of millions of Europeans, the memory of it has so far received little attention beyond national borders. This book examines how hosting states and societies, as well as groups that were forced to leave, deal with the memory of the loss in the long term. It explores the politics of history and the conflicting interpretations of the loss associated with forced migrations.
In a comparative and diachronic approach, the book depicts the interactions between the actors involved in the politics of history: their motivations, their resources and the public they seek to address. It looks at the different contexts in which these actors evolve and traces the changes of these politics in time and space. It shows how the memory of territorial loss associated with forced migrations interferes with the present and how it has evolved within the political constrains of good neighborhood as well as of European and international standards that have emerged since the end of the cold war.
By confronting case studies in Europe and at its margins, the book questions the emergence of more inclusive collective memories and memory cultures. It is a significant contribution to a comparative approach on forced migrations and politics of history relating to loss.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Editors’ Acknowledgements
  • Contents
  • Methodological Considerations in Addressing the Issue of Forced Migrations, Lost Territories and the Related Politics of History: A Comparative Approach (Anne Bazin / Catherine Perron)
  • The “German East”: Myth? Reality? Lost Land of Dreams? (Eva Hahn / Hans Henning Hahn)
  • Private versus Public: The Memorialization of the Exodus of the Istro-Dalmatians, 1945–2015 (Gustavo Corni)
  • The Politics of History of the Lost Land: Shifting European, National and Regional Approaches to the History of Karelia (Kimmo Katajala / Ilkka Liikanen)
  • The Kresy in Polish Memory: Between a Lost Arcadia and the Bloodlands of East-Central Europe (Beata Halicka)
  • The Ties of Greek and Turkish Refugees and “Exchangees” to their Lost Homelands: An Asymmetry of Memory (Michel Bruneau)
  • Turkey’s Guiding Light and Consolation in Addressing the Loss: Nationalism (Etienne Copeaux)
  • Broken Lives, Silenced Memories and Reappropriations of the Past: The Jews of Egypt and Islamic Countries (Michèle Baussant)
  • List of Abbreviations
  • List of Tables and List of Figures
  • Index
  • List of contributors
  • Abstracts
  • Series index

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Methodological Considerations in Addressing the Issue of Forced Migrations, Lost Territories and the Related Politics of History: A Comparative Approach

Anne BAZIN

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po Lille and research fellow at CERAPS-CNRS, University of Lille, France

Catherine PERRON

Assistant Research Professor of Political Science with tenure, Sciences Po, Center for International Studies (CERI), CNRS, Paris, France

A striking experience in the twentieth century, but only a small place in the European collective memory

The map of Europe has been redrawn many times during the twentieth century, because of several wars (two world wars and decolonization wars), the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR. This has been done in both peaceful and violent ways. Addressing and managing territorial loss or territorial changes is thus a phenomenon that Europe is accustomed to. One might even add that very few countries have been spared such a challenge at one moment or another in their recent history. Shifting borders, however, is not limited to the reconfiguration of space. It also implies rethinking and redefining the relationship with the territory, with the nation and with the state itself. This is particularly true when territorial transformations are accompanied by forced migrations such as those we focus on in this book. ← 11 | 12 →

We use the term “forced migrations”1 to refer to the “population transfers” primarily used in the Greek–Turkish case (see Bruneau and Copeaux in this book), the “exodus” of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia (see Gustavo Corni in this book), the “expulsion” of Jews from Islamic countries (see Baussant in this book), the “expulsion” of Germans from Eastern Europe (see Hahn and Hahn in this book), the Finns’ “flight” following the fate of the Karelians during the war (see Katajala and Liikanen in this book) and the “repatriation” of Poles from Kresy (see Halicka in this book). The vocabulary selected is quite important, and the choice of one term over another often has political connotations. We prefer to use the term “forced migrations”, rather than “ethnic cleansing”, because, as Antonio Ferrara argues: “security concerns, or social conflicts or enforcing repression and dispossession – have also prompted policies entailing (either as an instrument or as an outcome, sometimes unintended, but rarely unforeseen) the massive displacement and sometimes the killing of populations identified on grounds other than ethnic ones. In itself it is perhaps enough of a reason to speak about ‘forced migrations’ rather than ethnic cleansing.”2 Our use of the term is in line with the definition proposed by Krzysztof Ruchniewicz:

Forced migrations are usually mass movements of people, which are carried out by direct (the order to leave a place is enforced with violence) or situational coercion (massive threat by violence), exercised by state power organs (independent or with international approval) or local actors (separatists, paramilitary groupings, etc.). The action of (understood in a broad sense) ruling powers is the impulse that triggers the population movement, which does not mean that these migrations would be organized, controlled or take place in a less violent form. Victims are mostly ethnic, social or religious/religiously defined groups, which are to be separated from the rest of the population of the given territories. These are often minorities or other groups which have been given a special status, often as a result of changes in national boundaries. They may be citizens of the former or of a state regarded as hostile, or also, as a result of the disintegration of a multinational state, that bears the necessity of the reconstitution of states – be stateless. Forced migrations usually take place in the context of a war with an external aggressor, a civil war and its domestic effects and/or of the implementation of an ideologically motivated, socio-political project such as the creation of a nationally united state or the totalitarian reconstruction of a society … Forced migrations are ← 12 | 13 → also characterized by the fact that the affected persons have no influence on the happening and usually cannot change the “top-down” assignment or categorization (national identity, race, class).3

In Europe and at its margins, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, entire populations – hundreds of thousands and even millions of people – have been expelled or have had to flee from territories conquered or taken over by another state, or because of the displacement of international borders, or in an exchange of population as part of a peace agreement. These populations were received as refugees, as expellees, or as repatriates and had to integrate (or reintegrate) within a state which was then considered as their homeland.

The purpose of this book is to analyse how hosting states and societies, as well as the groups that were forced to leave, dealt with the memory of forced migrations in the long term and how they addressed the different types of loss associated with these migrations. Given that many countries in Europe have experienced population transfers during the last century and a half, the issue remains deeply anchored in European memories. In an essay about “the seven circles of European memory”, the German political scientist Claus Leggewie positions the memory of population transfers third in a series of seven concentric circles of supra- and transnational memory. The memory of the Holocaust is at the core of the disc, followed by Soviet communism. Third are “expulsions as a pan-European trauma”.4

However, despite the fact that forced migrations have been the fate of many European people, expulsions and population transfers per se have never been addressed at the European level, and there has been no official recognition of them across Europe. The absence of debate at the European and European Union (EU) level is rather striking. Given that this trauma is shared by many European communities and by millions of people, forced migrations could have been used as a founding element to develop a European identity, for instance, in the same way that the memory of the Holocaust has been used as a negative founding myth. At the European and EU level, the memory of forced migrations is yet ← 13 | 14 → to be perceived as capable of promoting unity and a common identity; similarly, the capacity for division of this memory among neighbours has not been addressed. One can question the inability or unwillingness to address the loss in public debate. Is it linked to its proximity to genocidal acts, as Leggewie has argued?5 Is it because the experience of forced migrations, though widely shared by Europeans, is mainly to be found in countries in South-Eastern and North-Eastern Europe which, with the exception of Germany, are not founding members of the EU? (In reality, this hypothesis is quite problematic because both Italy and France6 have been affected by forced population transfers.) Or is it because the issue has long been ignored in societies because it was perceived as a divisive issue best avoided in public debate?

The frames within which the history of population transfers is usually narrated challenge mainstream Western historiography. As the American historian Benjamin Lieberman argues:

There has been little place for the ethnically cleansed in standard histories of Europe because historians by custom tell the stories of nations. A focus on ethnic cleansing shifts perspective. The story of the rise of the nation state, often a triumph of self-determination, becomes a story of tragedy for those who were driven out. Moments of liberation and victory are also turning points for expulsion and ethnic cleansing. National heroes become champions of bigotry, aggression and exclusion. And in the case of ordinary people, the record of support for and participation in terror, violence and theft adds a profoundly pessimistic note to the story of modern European progress.7

The temporal frame is also challenged in the sense that, in Western historiography, World War I, for example, has until today mainly been thought of as a trench war and its time frame is identified as 1914–18. This frame does not apply in Europe’s East, and especially not in the South-East, where the war is mainly remembered as a war of massive population displacements and is associated with the memory of the first genocide of the century, namely, the Armenian genocide.8 The time ← 14 | 15 → frame thus extends to encompass the Balkan wars and even the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 (and, even later, the Greek–Turkish friendship treaty of 1930). A comparative approach at a European level suggests to take into account these different frames and puts into question national historical narratives and representations.

The loss is rather easy to identify at the individual level. People have sometimes lost members of their family, often they have lost belongings, their social environment, connections to their ancestry, sometimes a language or a dialect, part of their traditions and customs, know-how … and ultimately a homeland (Heimat). At the group level, however, it is far more complex to define what has been lost. As Eva Hahn and Hans Henning Hahn note in their contribution to this book, what has been lost is often complex, ambiguous and historically challenged. The repeated shifting of borders and of sovereignty in some territories over a few decades has made it difficult to respond to the question of what belongs to whom and who belongs to what. The complexity of the issue also depends on what is referred to: land and landscapes, buildings, cemeteries or goods. It is quite easy to measure the loss of goods or even land. But what about the identity attached to a territory? This identity has to do with language (idioms), traditions and social relations within one’s own group and/or among groups and communities. Is it possible to understand how the loss of interactions with other groups which once lived on the same territory impacts on one’s identity? As the Czech historian and politician František Palacký wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century, “The Czech course of history is the interaction and the permanent conflict with the Germans”.9 How can the loss resulting from the destruction of the relationship with the other be measured? Eva Hahn and Hans-Henning Hahn have studied these issues concerning what has long been referred to as the “German East” in Germany. Their questions correspond perfectly with most cases of forced migrations, as several contributions in this book show. For these reasons, we suggest rethinking the patterns of national and group memories by placing them within a wider frame. Indeed, for far too long, these memories have been assessed only as part of national and/or local/group narratives. ← 15 | 16 →

Forced migrations: a political tool recently reshaped to fit within the current pattern of human rights norms

“Population transfers” have been used for centuries as part of domestic and international policies. In the first half of the twentieth century, these transfers were still considered a legitimate means for solving minority or security problems (see e.g. the end of the Balkans wars, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 or the transfer of the German populations from the East after World War II mentioned in the Potsdam Agreement, art. 13).10

Today, forced migrations are denounced as a violation of human rights: they are perceived as a violation of fundamental as well as economic, political and social rights. Population displacement is no longer accepted as a long-term solution to a conflict, at least not by the so-called international community. It might be tolerated as a transitory state before the return of the population and is often presented as such, even though the period of transition may sometimes be rather long. The UN’s recognition of a “right to return” of the Palestinian people in 1974 helped change how forced migrations were perceived both at the international level and in international law.11 Ever since, groups of expellees such as the German Vertriebene(n) have repeatedly referred to the UN resolution concerning the Palestinians to reinforce their claims to a right of return (Heimatrecht).12 In addition, Western societies began to pay new attention to victims (of forced migrations) in the 1980s. The public recognition of their suffering led to the idea that they could play a central role in addressing post-conflict situations. Listening to victims and hearing them tell their own narratives became a moral duty.13 The Austrian historian Philipp Ther highlights a “decisive difference” between the international attitude to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and the attitude to the aftermath of World War II. He writes about a “shock effect and the unanimous international rejection”. Ther points out that ← 16 | 17 → during the Yugoslav wars “the lack of consent of the great powers and neighbouring states contained the ethnic cleansing and led to the Dayton Peace Agreement and even to the return of refugees”.14 However, the question remains complex, since this unanimous rejection of population transfers, at least by Western democracies, is accompanied by the refusal to reconsider the European post-war order, which is characterized by the recognition of the intangibility of borders and the absence of legal, material or territorial claims linked to it. One can add a will to peaceful cooperation as a fundamental dimension of the European integration.

Details

Pages
234
Publication Year
2018
ISBN (PDF)
9782807605817
ISBN (ePUB)
9782807605824
ISBN (MOBI)
9782807605831
ISBN (Softcover)
9782807605800
DOI
10.3726/b14693
Language
English
Publication date
2018 (October)
Published
Bruxelles, Bern, Berlin, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2018, 232 p., 16 ill. n/b, 2 tabl. b/w

Biographical notes

Anne Bazin (Volume editor) Catherine Perron (Volume editor)

Anne Bazin is associate professor of political sciences at Sciences Po Lille, where she is director of the Master's program in Advanced European and International Studies. She works on post-conflict reconciliation as well as transitional justice. Catherine Perron is assistant research professor with tenure at Sciences Po, Centre for international Studies (CERI) in Paris. Her current research focuses on politics of history and memory in Germany and in Central Europe in relation with forced migrations.

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Title: How to Address the Loss? Forced Migrations, Lost Territories and the Politics of History