“1989 – Images of change”: European Prize Winners
Diana-Maria CERCEŞ (PDF | 9,65 MB)
Diana-Maria CERCEŞ (24, from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, currently graduate student at the Stuttgart University) attempts in her entry to “understand my generation better, a generation meant to be born at the end of the Communism regime, and with whom you might come across in the daily life. We are just in the pursuit of the changes after 1989”. In the pursuit of change is also the title of her entry. In order to achieve her goal, Diana-Maria Cerceş confronted the memories about communism and 1989 of two generations, that of her parents and that of herself. Based on family narratives, photos and documents, she first reconstructs the life of her parents in communist Romania, while in the second part she investigates the way 8 young people from her generation – originating from different countries, like Bulgaria, Germany, Spain and Romania, and having very different life-stories – remember the 1980s and reflect on the way 1989 impacted on their own lives. The International Jury appreciated both the concept of the entry and its concrete accomplishment, the skilful way Diana-Maria Cerceş combined different pieces of information and reflected insights into a convincing mosaic about differences, similarities and the nature of change.
Marius Florin DRAŞOVEAN (PDF | 1 MB)
Marius Florin DRAŞOVEAN (26, currently analyst, Bucharest, Romania) started in his entry Memory’s Invoice No.89 / 1989-2009 from the assumption that „memory is not something which is passively passed away from a generation to another. In order to work on memory in a successful way, it must be constantly enriched by our own interrogations of history and the answers to be closely connected with our own reality. And the generation which now has 20 years, must be aware of these facts”. In order to test this awareness, the author designed a short questionnaire with 8 questions about the way young people perceived the communist rule, the 1989 revolution, different historical figures and their role in Romanian history, as well as the sources of these perceptions. He received 89 answers from all historical regions of Romania. The International Jury appreciated the combination of statistics and graphs with the qualitative analysis of the results of the questionnaire, and considered that this entry contributes significantly to our knowledge about the memory of 1989.
Michał GÓRSKI (PDF | 1,47 MB)
Michał GÓRSKI (24, graduate student at the Warsaw University) focused on the changes of urban landscape due to the demise of communism. Starting from the assumption that buildings and street names are important lieux de mémoire, the author presents some of the „to destroy or to leave?” debates about the future of official buildings which have been considered symbols of the communist power, especially about the Palace of Culture and Science, which was built in 1952-1955 „as a gift from the people of Soviet Union to the people of Poland”, as well as some instances of symbolic street name changes. In his investigation, he used newspaper articles, street guides, studies on the symbolic functions of urban landscape. The International Jury appreciated both the thoroughness of the analysis, the good choice of photos, and the balanced perspective. The author concludes that it is difficult to provide an answer whether all changes were justified, or who is best suited to decide about street names and monuments, but also that “ one thing I am 100% sure – I prefer to go on the tram along John Paul II Avenue than Marchlewski one…”.
Anete JEKABSONE (PDF | 653 KB)
Anete JEKABSONE (23, Riga, Latvia, currently working at for the International Criminal Court) submitted an entry about the ‘Singing Revolution’ in the Baltic countries. Combining findings from various history narratives with family memories, she presents both ‘big history’ and the way her parents and grandparents lived and participated in the events. She reflects on the need to find a balance between finding in history a “certain set of cultural values and sense of belonging” and avoiding manipulations which would allow “exaggerated, ultra emphasized importance of certain unfounded perceptions of history to define our present”. The entry skillfully depicts the courageous, but also cautious way the members of the Jekabsone family gradually became civically and politically active, first bearing small national symbols, then participating at the Baltic Way, and finally taking part at the Barricades in Riga in January 1991, the dramatic showdown when Latvians really risked their lives for freedom. The author succeeds in recreating the passionate atmosphere of these events, as well as the intelligence of the participants who avoided violent acts and inter-ethnic clashes with their Russian co-citizen, which would have threatened their main goal, independence.
Kalina KIRILOVA (PDF | 1,02 MB)
Kalina KIRILOVA (25, Sofia, Bulgaria, at the time of submitting the entry graduate student at Maastricht University) started in her entry, entitled Re-writing national holidays, from the assumption that in a community celebrations are one of the main factors in shaping memory and identities, in forming and strengthening solidarities. She also noticed that the transition from communism to a democratic system included also a “re-writing” of the Bulgarian national holiday’s calendar. She focused on Christmas and the 1st of May, considering that “the discourse around each of these days of national importance has been dramatically changing in both political and social connotation. These two meanings – the social and the political ones – have been also not always in line with each other as it will be shown throughout the paper”. In her endeavor, she used both photos and personal memories; these testimonies allow Kalina Kirilova to show how the return to Christmas from the era of ‘Grandfather Frost’ was well received “in the hearts and minds of people”, while the 1st of May, although still part of the official calendar, has decreased in significance and is more a moment when older people “remember how different it was, when all of them went together with their families and colleagues on the 1st of May manifestations and celebrations, being nicely dressed and meeting many friends, feeling the collective belonging and pride”.
Konstantin MIKHAILOV (PDF | 539 KB)
Konstantin MIKHAILOV (22, student, Moscow, Russian Federation) submitted the entry Russia today: hot family discussions. Based on documents from the family archive, on the recollections of his parents and on glimpses of personal memory, he outlines the recent history of Russia through the lens of the discussions between his parents, showing their dilemmas and their often different visions about the direction of Russia’s historical evolution. He summarizes these controversies as follows: “The main question was: was the disintegration of the Soviet Union good for the country? Was it good for the people? Was it good for us? There were disputes like that all over the country. Hardly anybody missed arguing himself hoarse on that subject. Those discussions go on even today, though the intensity of their emotions went down a bit”. Konstantin Michailov argues the importance of finding answers to these questions as follows: “I am convinced that not only my generation, but Russia itself would come to a dead end if we cannot answer them. Answers to those questions will create a national (better still, countrywide for the multinational Russia) identity that could serve as the ground basis for the country that would not be a worse copy of USSR or a bad parody of Western countries. With that we could build a country that would play a new role on the political arena and would not repeat old mistakes, which led to Cold War”.
Ewelina PEKALA (PDF | 1,82 MB)
Ewelina PEKALA (27, Poznan, Poland) entitled her entry Repainting the names. This title can be understood in two ways: either as the material repainting of the names of streets, places, and even parts of the city of Poznań, or as a metaphor of the ideological change implied by the reshaping of the urban landscape in post communist Poland. Using archive materials and newspaper articles, the author outlines the evolution of names of residential areas during communism and the changes which occurred in the 1990s. Some of these changes were decided after civic committees organized local plebiscites, while in other cases the decisions were made only by the authorities on behalf of the citizen. The author compares these changes with the protests against the destruction in Poznań in June 2009 of the statue of Karol Swierczewski, a controversial communist general: “While right after the 1989 people were eager to remove all remaining of the enforced system and cut off this period, in 2009 people are much more keen to recognize it as a part of our history. Although they have bad as well as good memories from that time it was still their life. In my opinion people started to think about that period in, so to speak, museum way. It is for example quite popular to collect souvenirs form that period. However, 20 years is a short period of time. Memories are still vivid, emotions haven’t died out. I believe that there are much more issues from that period to be cleared up, discussed and explained. They are still waiting for their moment of history”.
Michael SEKYRKA (PDF | 916 KB)
Michael SEKYRKA (27, currently teacher of German language and history in Pisek, Czech Republic), participated in the competition with an entry entitled Leben in der Zeit der Hoffnungslosigkeit. The entry combines personal memories from his early childhood in the years 1988-1990 with narratives and documents from the family archive, focusing on the fate and experience of the author’s parents, and especially on his father, Otto Sekyrka, who had been a political prisoner during the 1950s and early 1960s. The son describes some of the means and ways his father, already severely ill, harassed by the communist authorities and struggling with material hardships, used to relate to the realities of late socialism: fishing as a refuge from oppression, calling party and security bosses with English diminutives and rejoicing over the victories of ‘capitalist’ hockey teams. Although Otto Sekyrka did not take an active part in the ‘velvet revolution’, the entry describes his perception of the events, his joy and the way this major event changed his life. Otto Sekyrka died of heart failure in October 1990. Michael Sekyrka ends his entry with following remarks: “Was würde ich zum Schluss sagen? Obwohl es seltsam sein wird, muss ich feststellen, dass ich froh bin, wann mein Vater gestorben ist. Er hat fast 41 Jahre auf die Freiheit gewartet. Sein Traum hat sich verwirklicht, was nicht vielen seiner Freunde aus dem Gefängnis gelungen ist. Sein Leben war hundertprozentig erfüllt. Er würde nicht begreifen, dass während zwanzig Jahre nach Revolution fast Niemand von den ehemaligen Verbrechern verurteilt wurde. Nicht mit Gefängnis bestraft, aber mindestens moralisch verurteilt. Die Kommunisten regieren schon in vielen Bezirken unserer Republik erneut mit. Letztes Jahr haben die Vertreter der Kommunisten verlangt, dass man die Kapitel der Schulbücher ändern sollte, die angeblich nur einseitig vom kommunistischen Regimme erzählen. Ich hoffe, dass sich die Geschichte nicht wiederholen wird....Auch meinem Vater und meiner Mutter wegen...”
Ljubica SPASKOVSKA (PDF | 1 MB)
Ljubica SPASKOVSKA (28, from Skopje, Macedonia, currently graduate student at the Central European University, Budapest) entitled her entry Annus mirabilis, annus miserabilis - The Yugoslav 1989 - A Micro-history. She presents the everyday life in ex-Yugoslavia in 1988-1990, as it was perceived by a child for whom almost everything seemed simple and idyllic: “My parents and I lived in a 6-storey building, where almost each apartment was inhabited by a different nationality. Croats, Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Montenegrins - I remember the adults conversed and laughed together, and we the children played and grew up together. At that time, I did not know who is what or in which language we spoke - we somehow understood each other. I was even taught some Albanian by my friends Semra and Nardi and their mother auntie Sadia. The ‘contested’ country provided spaces and platforms for interaction. For encounters. For exchange. All of which vanished after 1991”. The author combines her personal memories with photos, newspaper excerpts and academic studies in presenting the demise of former Yugoslavia, the short-lived hopes that this process can be stopped by the economic reforms of prime minister Ante Markovic, and the impact the creation of new states had upon the daily life in her community. She remembers her perception of the events: “I could not comprehend. I was ten years old and did not know anything about communism, socialism, federalism, self-determination. All I knew was that we all lost something, that grim images are on the horizon and that while cheerful crowds somewhere on the news were celebrating something, for people in my “contested” country it was becoming impossible to cross borders where none had existed before”.
Aleksandra SZCZEPANSKI (PDF | 402 KB)
Aleksandra SZCZEPANSKI (28, currently employee of the Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein, living in Klein Wesenberg, Germany), submitted an entry entitled 4.Dezember 1989 - Lebewohl Vaterland - Aufbruch in die Fremde. As the title indicates, the entry focuses on the migration of the Szczepanski family – father Marek, mother Iwona, daughters Anna and Aleksandra – from Poland to Germany, exactly at the same time as communism collapsed in the former GDR as in various other East-Central European countries. For this, the author uses both her personal recollections – at the time of the events she was 8 years old – and various papers from the family archive. She narrates both the hopes of the Szczepanskis to arrive in England, and the difficulties of settling in Germany, although the mother was recognized as being of German “Volkszugehörigkeit”. She reflects on her double identity „made in Poland, designed in Germany“: „Ich musste mich nie direkt entscheiden. Ich habe zwei Staatsangehörigkeiten, fühle mich beiden Ländern verbunden, verpflichtet, mit ihnen verwachsen. Sie haben mich beide geprägt, beide haben das aus mir gemacht, was ich heute bin”.
