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  • Author or Editor: Alvydas Nikžentaitis x
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This article presents an analysis of the role memory culture plays in information wars. Based on the examples of Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Belarus, it finds that the phenomenon of using the past in information wars can be explained as a fighting measure to entrench the authority of a given country in the eyes of the global community. This requirement emerged among countries in this region following the collapse of the old global systems and with the creation of new political blocs. Associations have been noticed between information wars that exploit the past and the growth of a country’s economic potential. For this reason, this foreign policy tool has not been used to the same degree in different countries in the region, nor did it start being used at the same time. Almost all the countries in the region started to massively exploit the past as a means of soft power only in the 21st century. This tool is especially significant in Poland and Russia, being used less often in Lithuania and Ukraine, and hardly at all in Belarus. The storylines of the past being used in information wars can be divided into two categories: Global identities, whose symbols have become Holocaust and Gulag figures; and symbols associated with the memory cultures and identities of separate societies, such as the idea of Slavic unity (in Russian-Ukrainian relations) or the past of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (in Lithuanian-Belarusian relations). The author predicts that the use of the past in information wars is set to intensify in the future, and as such, the teaching of expert skills is necessary to address this; at present, these skills are lacking in countries in the region.

Open Access
In: Lithuanian Historical Studies
In: Wende, Wandel, Weitermachen?
The Lithuanian Jews, Litvaks, played an important and unique role not only within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but in a wider context of Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe, too. The changing world around them at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth had a profound impact not only on the Jewish communities, but also on a parallel world of the “others,” that is, those who lived with them side by side. Exploring and demonstrating this development from various angles is one of the themes and objectives of this book. Another is the analysis of the Shoah, which ended the centuries of Jewish culture in Lithuania: a world of its own had vanished within months. This book, therefore, “recalls” that vanished world. In doing so, it sheds new light on what has been lost.
The papers presented in this collection were delivered at the international conferences in Nida (1997) and Telšiai (2001), Lithuania. Participants came from Israel, the USA, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Germany, and Lithuania.
Nachfragen zur Geschichtswissenschaft der 1990er Jahre in Deutschland, Polen und Europa
Series:  FOKUS, Volume: 4
20 Historiker:innen der Polen- und Osteuropaforschung blicken in Interviews auf ihre Wahrnehmung der 1990er Jahre zurück.

Seit den tiefgreifenden Veränderungen der Jahre 1989/1990 sind mittlerweile über 30 Jahre vergangen. Im Einklang mit deutschen geschichtswissenschaftlichen Traditionen scheint nun der Zeitpunkt gekommen zu sein, mit historiographischen Einordnungen der 1990er Jahre zu beginnen. Dies gilt auch und gerade für die deutsch-polnischen Kontakte unter Historiker:innen. Der Band unternimmt durch Interviews mit deutschen, polnischen, britischen, tschechischen, französischen und litauischen Geschichtswissenschaftler:innen einen ersten umfassenderen Versuch einer Retrospektive. Dabei wurden unterschiedliche Alterskohorten und Akteur:innen in diversen geographischen und thematischen Kontexten befragt.