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Teesid: Sõjakäsitlus tavateadvuses on paljukihiline: selles on nii isikliku/perekondliku kogemuse elemente kui ka kollektiivsete ajalookujutluste ühtlustavaid mõjusid. Esimene maailmasõda on meist ajas sellisel kaugusel, kus see on muundunud sündmuse esialgsest kommunikatiivse mälu vormis meenutamisest institutsionaliseeritud kultuurimälu osaks. 2014. aastal viidi kahekümnes Euroopa riigis läbi üliõpilaste küsitlus, selgitamaks tänapäeva noorte kollektiivseid kujutlusi Esimesest maailmasõjast. Artiklis kirjeldame Eesti noorte Esimese maailmasõjaga seotud arusaamu ja võrdleme neid teistes Euroopa riikides elavate noorte arusaamadega. Eraldi analüüsime vastuseid küsimusele „Mida saame õppida Esimese maailmasõja kogemusest?“. Lay understanding of war is multi-layered containing elements of personal or family experience as well as the unifying effects of collective memory (representations). The First World War is at such a distance from us that a change in the form of collective historical representation has taken place, from the initial commemoration of the event in the form of communicative memory to part of institutionalised cultural memory (Assmann 2008). According to today’s view, the First World War is second most important global historical event (Liu et al. 2005). In 2014, one hundred years after the beginning of the First World War, a survey of students was conducted in twenty European countries (within the framework of COST Action IS1205 Social Psychological Dynamics of Historical Representations in the Enlarged European Union) to investigate the commonalities and differences in social representations of the War among young Europeans. Young people were asked about their factual knowledge of the War, their family war experiences, feelings related to the War, and more general interpretations of the war such as what they considered the main causes of the War to be, who was attributed the responsibility for the outbreak of the War, how they evaluate the violence of the different parties, how they perceive the distribution of the roles of aggressor and victim, etc. Background characteristics included cultural and national identity, anti-war attitudes, etc. In Estonia, the survey was conducted in both Estonian and Russian. In the article, we describe the main results of these studies. Previous analysis found that Europeans share a common representation of the causes of the First World War, although young people in Western and Eastern European countries have different interpretative frameworks when thinking about this war (Bouchat et al. 2019a; Pawliczek 2014). While in Western Europe it is the tragic Great War, with a definite beginning and end, in Eastern Europe there is not such a clear collective perception. The First World War led to various other wars in these countries, as a result of which empires fell apart and many small countries, including Estonia, gained independence, paradoxically a positive consequence of the War for these nations. Awareness of family or national war victimhood is linked to anti-war attitudes today; for more pacifist young people the First World War is associated with real and emotional human suffering, while less pacifist young people think more abstractly about the geopolitical results of the War (Bouchat et al. 2019b). Young people growing up in peacetime Europe after the Second World War have generally been free from militaristic propaganda. There has been a purposeful attempt to shape young people’s approach to history in schools, the trend of which in most European countries has been to reconcile former enemies (Rosoux et al. 2019). The survey discussed in the article showed considerable commonality and consensus in the representation of the First World War. The descendants of the former hostile parties evaluate this war in the same way, can reproduce the same facts, events, and characters, and interpret the causes and consequences of the war similarly. Looking back, young people primarily see the futility of War and the unnecessary human suffering. Thus, pacifism as one of the cultural consequences of the War is a viable common sense way of thinking today. Analysing Estonian war literature, Jaan Undusk (2016) has come to the conclusion that ‘passive pacifism’ and indifference to war are characteristic of Estonians. Unlike the communicative memory of the Second World War, where former intergroup enmity is still alive at times, in the collective cultural memory of the First World War, emotionality has faded and transformed; for example former war excitement or rage has become sadness and grief. Instead of enmity between countries and peoples, one sees rather a social conflict between greedy and reckless elites and ordinary people sacrificed for their interests (Bouchat et al. 2019a). One hundred years later, the First World War appears to the youth of Europe as a warning, a negative symbol that is contrasted with united Europe as a peace project (Bouchat et al. 2023). In this way, history has been transformed into a shared symbolic resource, war in collective memory acting as a supporter of international peace. Young people have developed a homogeneous anti-war-oriented collective image of the First World War. Estonian youth’s factual knowledge of the First World War was surprisingly good, considering the marginality of this war from the point of view of Estonian identity or current inter-group relations: Estonians do not feel like victims or war criminals, they do not feel the desire for revenge, there is no need to forgive anyone or demand an apology from anyone. We separately analysed Estonian young people’s answers to the question "What can we learn from the experience of the First World War?" Generalising the answers, we can conclude that most young people took a progressive, linear view of history, according to which war is an anomaly, a disease of society that can and should be prevented. The lessons of the First World War were primarily perceived as ways of preventing future conflict and avoiding the mistakes made in the past, both at the level of individuals, social groups (the elite), and society as a whole. A stable and peaceful world was perceived as the norm.

This study looks at illustrated popular literature as a tool for shaping its readers–viewers’ perceptions of national histories. The author explores this issue through the example of Rudolf Herzog’s book for German school students «History of Prussia» ("Preußens Geschichte'', 1913) illustrated by Arthur Kampf and Georg Belwe. Despite the book’s popularity in the 1910s, this paper offers its first academic examination. The study combines terminology and methods coming from the fields of history of representations, political mythologies’ and visual cultures studies as well as art history. The author also adheres to methodological recommendations formulated by researchers in illustrated literature. The paper demonstrates that «Preussens Geschichte» exemplifies personality- and event-centred «official-nationalist» approach to history writing. The book’s contents reflect the current political situation and seek to promote the imperial government’s agendas as well as certain moral values. The author argues that the specific purpose of Kampf and Belwe’s illustrations consisted in stressing and simplifying the book’s key subject matter and facilitating its memorisation. The ballads performed the same function. The author maintains that the stylistic unity and repetition of similar subject-matter in Belwe and Kampf’s work contribute to the book’s overall representation of Prussia’s history as a coherent narrative. Belwe’s pictures encapsulate the book’s main ideas through the use of generalised images rather than directly translating Herzog’s prose and poetry into pictures. Kampf’s illustrations further stress the role of monarchy and army as the key actors of Prussian history through the artist’s selection of subject-matter and employment of artistic devices. Together with Herzog’s text, his pictures promote determination, courage, and self-sacrifice for the sake of the country. Two other themes that dominate Kampf’s illustrations are the bond between the monarchy, the nation, and the church (an element of The Second Reich’s official nationalism) as well as Prussia’s technological advancement as an epitome of its political power.

When a social group’s history includes significant victimization by an outgroup, how might that group choose to represent its collective history, and for what reasons? Employing a social identity approach, we show how preferences for different representations of colonial history were guided by group interest in a sample of urban Indigenous participants. Three themes were identified after thematic analysis of interview and focus group transcripts from thirty-five participants who identified as Indigenous. First, participants expressed concern that painful, victimization-focused representations of colonial history would harm vulnerable ingroup members, and urged caution when representing colonial history in this way. Second, while colonial history was clearly painful and unpleasant for all participants, many nevertheless felt it was important that representations of colonial history tell the whole truth about how badly Indigenous people have been mistreated by outgroups. Participants suggested these brutal representations of colonial history could also serve the interests of their group by bolstering ingroup pride when representations also emphasized the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Finally, participants described how brutal representations of colonial history could help transform intergroup relations with non-Indigenous outgroups in positive ways by explaining present challenges in Indigenous communities as the result of intergenerational trauma. We discuss findings in terms of their relevance for ingroup agency and their implications for public representations of colonial history.

This special thematic section aims to bring together current research on the connections between collective memories – or representations of history – and present-day intergroup relations. Drawing from a multitude of geographical and historical contexts as well as different methodologies, we bring forth ten articles focusing on distinct aspects of the relations between representations of the past and present day intergroup dynamics. The topics covered in these articles focus on one or more of the four research lines identified within this field: 1) the antecedents of collective memories; 2) the contents and structure of collective memories; 3) the official or institutional transmission of collective memories; and 4) distinct socio-psychological correlates of collective memories in present-day societies. Together, the contributions in this special thematic section showcase current directions of research within the field and highlight the need to consider the role of representations of the past for understanding present day instances of intergroup conflict or harmony. We discuss the need for more interdisciplinary work in this field, as well as more applied research in the future.

This article uses theories of theatrical ghosting to analyse Hirata Oriza’s Seoul Shimin (1989–2011), a series of four plays set during Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula (1910–45). The series does not elaborate on the details of Japan’s imperial history. Instead, it follows the domestic activities of a family of Japanese merchants living in Seoul. Attending to the series’s oblique references to historical events, this article asserts that Seoul Shimin frames domestic activities as imperial behaviours and marks gaps in contemporary representations of the colony. In so doing, the series portrays the history of Japanese imperialism as elusive even as it stresses the need for younger generations to engage with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the importance of a nation's history for its current national issues is well established, whether and how that history may be leveraged to promote inclusive and amicable intergroup relationships is less clear. We offer answers to these questions by showing that the referencing of a multiethnic past of a nation is a form of indirect intergroup contact that increases the perceived inclusiveness of the current nation. Firstly, in a nationally representative sample of Poles, we demonstrate that after referring to Poland's multiethnic history before and during World War II, respondents expressed a greater preference for civic rather than ethnic nationalism. In other words, they expressed more inclusive understanding of their national identity. Secondly, in the follow-up experiment, we further explore this effect by replicating it in one of the targeted samples. Overall, our findings demonstrate how nations may benefit from utilising some parts of their history to promote inclusiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on visual collective memory, a topic that has long been neglected in the social sciences and particularly in social psychological research on social representations of history. It explores the contents and meanings of images in the construction of Finnish national history. Through examination of official history writing, a better understanding is sought of how collective memory is constructed as part of history politics. The data for the present study consist of images ( N = 541) included in recent textbooks on Finnish history. Barthes' three-meaning approach is used in combination with qualitative content analysis to examine a large corpus of images. The visualized collective memory is approached from five perspectives: (i) the years of memory; (ii) the places of memory; (iii) the themes of memory; (iv) the main actors and (v) the silence of memory. The investigation shows that, in official discourse, politics, culture and war are the main contents of Finnish visual collective memory. The key actors in the narrative are politicians, especially the eighth president of Finland, Urho Kekkonen. The most important moments in time are situated in the war years 1918 and 1939, while the geographical focus is the central square in the capital, Helsinki. The result is a national history that is positive, homogeneous and exclusive. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research examines how representations of a traumatic history influence contemporary intergroup attitudes. Specifically, we examine antisemitism in Hungary as a case example of how the need to defend the group's moral image motivates the assumption of a defensive representation of history − a modification of the group's narrative with regards to its culpability in past atrocities committed against another group. Two studies examined the link between defensive representations of the Holocaust, nationalism, and antisemitism. In the first, correlational study ( N = 348), we found that Hungarian nationalism and antisemitism were associated, and that this association was significantly mediated by defensive representations of the Holocaust – high nationalism was associated with higher endorsement of defensive representations which in turn were associated with more antisemitism. Low nationalism was associated with greater acknowledgement of in-group responsibility for historical crimes which was associated with less antisemitism. These findings were corroborated in an experimental study ( N = 165) which indicated that priming defensive representations of the Holocaust increased antisemitism, even when controlling for nationalism. Study 2 further showed, in a 2-step mediation model, that defensive representation primes increased secondary antisemitism, conspiratorial antisemitism, and negative attitudes towards Israel. We discuss the implications of defensive representations of history on contemporary intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the idea of 'approximation': the layered understanding of historical moments and events via works whose aim is to approximate reality and all its ramifications, rather than more straightforwardly to represent it. It sets out to discuss the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 11 September 2001, through juxtaposition with representations and re-enactments of their most notable and traumatic antecedent, namely the assassination of President John Kennedy, 22 November 1963. After briefly examining how the two events are brought together in the television series Mad Men, issues of history, representation and art are analyzed in more detail in relation to Abraham Zapruder's home movie of the assassination, Bruce Conner's Report (1963-1967) and Ant Farm and T. R. Uthco's The Eternal Frame (1976). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is concerned with the shifting modalities of spatial representations in (Soviet) Estonian cinema in the transitional period between the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as with the changing procedures of narrating the nation, negotiating its identities and histories. By taking a closer look at two films - Peeter Urbla's I'm Not a Tourist, I Live Here (Ma pole turist, ma elan siin, 1988) and Ilkka Järvilaturi's Darkness in Tallinn (Tallinn pimeduses, 1993) - this paper attempts to offer some insights into the dynamic process of reshaping the cinematic imaginary of urban environments, as well as the psyches, histories and experiences of their inhabitants, both individual and collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]