Folklore: An Electronic Journal of Folklore special issue on (post-)Soviet military bases in Central and Eastern Europe

Volume 70 of Folklore: An Electronic Journal of Folklore "Small Places, Large Issues" (http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol70/), guest edited by Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, Dominka Czarnecka, Dagnosław Demski, provides insights into the complicated cultural and social landscapes of post-Cold War military bases in Central and Eastern Europe. Eight case studies from the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Russia by scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds explore how military objects erected during the Cold War years continue their existence in the narratives and practices of the local population, national memory politics, and top-down development scenarios.

By foregrounding the perspective of the everyday, this volume seeks to contribute to a more nuanced and diversified understanding of the nature and effects of the Soviet/Russian military presence in CEE, and how this period and remnants thereof have been and could be recycled and mobilized for new purposes; how the Cold War as it was lived east of the Iron Curtain is remembered and narrated under the present circumstances, which are both radically different and unsettlingly similar.

Contents: 

“Small Places, Large Issues”: Between Military Space and Post-Military Place by Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, Dominka Czarnecka, Dagnosław Demski

After the End of “Little Moscow”: Memories, (Re)Construction, and Appropriation of Space in Wünsdorf by Christoph Lorke

German Democratic Republic of the 1970s–1980s through the Eyes of Soviet Officers (Oral Stories) by Evgeny V. Volkov

“Invisible Places, Hidden History”: The Role of the Former “Russian Airport” in Telling Stories about the Front in the South Vértes Region by István Sántha

Life with Soviet Troops in Czechoslovakia and after Their Withdrawal by Prokop Tomek

The “Degraded” Landscape of a Post-Soviet Military Base in Poland: Outside vs. Inside View by Dominika Czarnecka

Mārciena – between Legacy and Nostalgia by Ilze Boldāne-Zeļenkova

Values, Substantiality, and Passage of Time: Representations and Reinterpretations of Military Heritage by Dagnosław Demski

From the Borderland of the Iron Curtain to European and World Cultural Heritage by Melinda Harlov-Csortán

Open issue contribution:

Contemporary Transformations of Ethnology/Anthropology in Russia: An Invitation to Further Discussion by Dmitriy Funk, Irina Nam