The short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic remains a key example of the spread of communism after the Russian Revolution. Its leading figure was Béla Kun, a man whose complex identity would influence his politics throughout his life.

A review of Dovbush. A film directed by Oles Sanin. Distributed by Film.Ua Distribution Kinomania, Ukraine (2023).

European civilisation has developed by means of a few large leaps: Rome, Renaissance, Enlightenment and the European Union. Of course, the EU’s role is still underway and thus we do not know what its end will look like. But what all these leaps have in common is their connection to the land. In this way, the story of the Elbe river and its surroundings is the story of European history as a whole.

I was commissioned to write a book about the Elbe river by the Labirynt Publishing House in Czechia. I have known the publisher – Joachim Dvořák – since 1990. Labirynt is known for publishing good books with very nice covers. That is why I was happy to receive its offer and more than anything else that the topic of my new book would be about the river. In my youth, I was racing in fast-flowing upper rivers.

Decolonisation in Eastern Europe is different from other, especially western, decolonisation experiences. There is no one algorithm that would determine in which way a society or country would pursue the process of decolonisation. In Ukraine’s case, but also that of the whole region of Eastern Europe, the initial stage of decolonisation showed a return to the alternative centre – the West.

“We will regain Odesa and everything will be back in place! Monuments will get removed and street names changed,” reads a comment on the website of Russia’s state-owned information agency Ria Novosti. It was placed under an article describing the removal of the Catharine the Great monument in Odesa. In a nutshell, these two sentences present the discourse that has developed in Eastern Europe around the topic of decolonisation.

The story of local Belarusians who collaborated with Nazi Germany is often a forgotten page of history. Yet, their brutal tactics and participation in the extermination of Jews and other populations are a sad reminder of life under occupation, as was the case of the Barysau police officers.

I remember when I was a small boy, I used to ride my bike with my grandfather. In one village near Babruisk, my grandfather would start a conversation with a local resident. The villager would ask, “Are you interested in the history of the war?” “Do you see the house on the left? A policeman lived there. So there was a lot of blood on the hands of this policeman. He shot Jews and Soviet POWs. He didn’t run away with the Germans; he was hiding here. Caught, and tried. Got a quarter, 25 years. No one else had seen him here.”

For years, Hungary’s Fidesz government under Viktor Orbán has employed historical revisionism and irredentist symbols in domestic politics. The notion of “Greater Hungary” and grievances over the loss of territories due to the Treaty of Trianon, as well as referring to it as a national trauma, are central to this. While the strategy may help Orbán domestically, it negatively affects Hungary’s relationships with some neighbours.

“Greater Hungary”, also known as “Historic Hungary”, refers to the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the First World War. Today, the notion of Greater Hungary involves an irredentist political idea and refers to territories Hungary lost through the Paris Peace Treaty, in Hungary more commonly known as the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which ended the First World War between the Allies and Hungary.

Albania’s relationship with its communist past remains a difficult subject today. Often forgotten in the transition to democracy, these decades are remembered in different ways in the country’s museums. This article looks at how three institutions engage with this past, reflecting on their effectiveness and how they may ultimately preserve this historical memory for the future.

Historical narratives often treat a place as a witness to traumatic events. Three Tirana-based museums recounting difficult periods under Albania’s communist regime vividly illustrate this process. These include the National Historical Museum (1981), located in a building designed and designated as a cultural institution, Bunk'Art 1 and 2 (2014), located in authentic bomb shelters built as part of the “bunkerisation” of the 1970s, and the House of Leaves (2017), housed in a building that served as the headquarters of the Sigurimi state security service. Although they all depict the same story, each does so in a different way. The narrative is determined not only by the time the exhibit opened, but also by where it is displayed.

Soon after the news of the assassination plot against Archduke Franz Ferdinand reached Vienna, shock gave way to reflection. The would-be-king and next emperor was now dead, a gruesome fact that created a political vacuum and opened the gates for new opportunities.

The murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not a person without flaws. His social talents were less than average, and he could not compare himself with an actual emperor like Franz Joseph I. The ruling monarch had come to power amidst the stormy circumstances of a people’s revolution and the previous Ferdinand’s forced abdication.

There seems to be a widespread inability in Germany to look at oneself from the position of others and to accept the intricacies of history and memory and their influence on the present. But it is not only the perception of place in the past that is the problem. For some in Germany everything east of the Oder river today is still lumped together as “Eastern Europe”.

February 24th 1940, the concentration camp of Hohenbruch in East Prussia: on the eve of his 50th birthday, the Polish publisher, writer and activist Seweryn Pieniężny Jr. is beaten up, forced to dig his own grave and then, in his underwear, shot by Nazi guards. According to the writer Eugeniusz Tryniszewski, who published a short biography of Seweryn in 1987, his last words, shouted in German so his executors would understand, were “Noch ist Polen nicht verloren!”, Poland has not yet perished – the first line of the Polish national anthem.

The current approach to decolonisation as a topic represents a significant problem. In many cases, this issue stems from politicisation and ideological calls to decolonise the history of East Central Europe, which have nothing to do with a methodological, or academic discussion. Usually, the term East Central Europe has been replaced by Russia, Eastern Europe, or the ideological term Eurasia. In general, the rhetoric of decolonisation has been based on the assertion that Russia and the Soviet Union were colonial empires.

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas recently stated that the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is a moral crusade that can help the European continent redeem itself. However, this redemption has not yet been acknowledged by the European elite. On the contrary, the constant intellectual arrogance expressed toward Ukraine by Europeans has expanded, particularly in the field of history. In this respect, British historian Adam Tooze has suggested that today’s Russo-Ukrainian War dramatically reconceptualises Europe.

Much is known about the infamous alliance system that led to the First World War. Ultimately dragging in all of Europe’s military powers, these agreements would lead to great battles typically associated with the Western Front. Despite this, the Eastern Front would prove to be equally bloody and conspiratorial, with the lands of modern Poland playing a central role.

Our imagination of past times is often influenced by cinema. This is probably the case as all topics we read about are preceded by cinematic imagination, which rules our thoughts and provides us with key visions of past events. This is especially true regarding the iconic topics of our European history, one of which is the formative event of the 20th century: The Great War of 1914-18.

Ukraine’s contemporary struggle for independence has a long history going back many centuries. The period towards the end of the First World War proved to be a particularly decisive time in this regard, with its historical memory influencing Ukrainian conceptions of history to this very day.

The short 20th century was highly tumultuous and unpredictable. It began in 1914 with the outbreak of the Great War on the European continent, which spread throughout the world. The Ukrainian lands, divided between the rival Habsburg and Romanov empires, became the scene of hostilities on the Eastern Front of the First World War. But the year that was a turning point in the history of Eastern Europe was clearly 1917.