kolektívna pamäť

The present study offers an examination into how residents of the mixed Slovak-Ukrainian areas of Transcarpathia recall the optation process of 1945–1947. As most respondents did not experience the event directly, any knowledge obtained was derived primarily from intergenerational narratives passed down by parents and grandparents. This paper explores how the optation is remembered today and which interpretations and versions are maintained within the collective memory of the studied communities.

The paper deals with the process of politicization of the theatre audience through historical operas, exploring the subject via a case-study of the Croatian historical opera Nikola Šubić Zrinjski (1876) by Ivan Zajc. The author argues that for an opera to be able to fulfil its intended political function, an a priori positive attitude towards the subject or the protagonist in the national collective memory had to exist.

This essay is a first exploration of nineteenth-century Dutch Protestant memory culture. Using Reformation commemorations as our case study, we show that the appropriation of Luther and Calvin for group identity purposes underwent a twofold transition in the century between 1817 and 1917. Whereas the unity of Dutch Protestantism was a dominant theme during the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Reformation became increasingly used as an instrument for justifying subgroup identities.

Following political changes in the late 80's socialist block, Czechoslovakia experienced a certain boom of nationalism, which became a legitimising element for the current political conceptions. Actually, in the year 2008, which is by political establishment named as the year of "magic eights" in history of Slovaks, lot of commemorational events were realized. Official speeches concerning to these historical jubilees contained a lot of historical examples and myths instrumentalised in current political context.

The area of Czechoslovakia was ascribed various politically relevant, among others also historical, qualities by the discourse during the period of the Czechoslovak Stalinism. Such attributes caused that interpretations of a state or national area, respectively, became tools as far as the forming of social-political reality of Czechoslovak citizens was concerned. These attributes were also involved in creation of collective identities, loyalties or historical awareness.