This book promotes a historically and culturally sensitive understanding of trauma during and after World War II. Focusing especially on Eastern and Central Europe, its contributors take a fresh look at the experiences of violence and loss in 1939–45 and their long-term effects in different cultures and societies. The chapters analyze traumatic experiences among soldiers and civilians alike and expand the study of traumatic violence beyond psychiatric discourses and treatments. While acknowledging the problems of applying a present-day medical concept to the past, this book makes a case for a cultural, social and historical study of trauma. Moving the focus of historical trauma studies from World War I to World War II and from Western Europe to the east, it breaks new ground and helps to explain the troublesome politics of memory and trauma in post-1945 Europe all the way to the present day. This book is an outcome of a workshop project ‘Historical Trauma Studies,’ funded by the Joint Committee for the Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) in 2018–20.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Author(s): Ville Kivimäki, Peter Leese
Series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 352
City: Cham
Preface: Expanding the Field of Historical Trauma Studies
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Part I: Comparative Approaches
Chapter 1: The Limits of Trauma: Experience and Narrative in Europe c. 1945
Introduction
The Long 1945
Histories of Traumatic Stress
Narratives, Emotions, Experiences
Cultural and Social Variation
The Limits of Trauma
Chapter 2: Beyond the Western Front
Shell Shock as a Historiographical Success Story
A New Present Requires a New Past
The Varieties of Trauma Experience
Trauma in the Age of Totalitarianism
Part II: Case Studies
Chapter 3: Testing the Silence: Trauma and Military Psychiatry in Soviet Russia and Ukraine During and After World War II
Introduction
Historiographical Context
Scientific Discourses About War Trauma
Soldiers’ Own Expressions of Trauma
Treating Trauma After Demobilization
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Experiencing Trauma Before Trauma: Posttraumatic Memories, Nightmares and Flashbacks Among Finnish Soldiers
Introduction
Context, Questions, and Sources for Traumatic Memory
Traumatic Memory in Military Psychiatry
Haunted Dreams
Posttraumatic Flashbacks and Cultural Products
Concluding Remarks: Culture in Traumatic Experience
Chapter 5: Entangled Bystanders: Multidimensional Trauma of Ethnic Cleansing and Mass Violence in Eastern Galicia
Introduction
Circles of Hell: Proximity of Violence
At the Heart of Darkness: Towards Psychological Trauma
Loss and Decay: Towards Collective (Communal) Trauma
Living with the Dead: Long-Lasting Post-Traumatic Follow-Up
Conclusions
Chapter 6: Traumatized Children in Hungary After World War II
Introduction
Children as Victims
The Psychology of Childhood Trauma
Children as Sufferers
A Child’s-Eye View
Conclusion
Chapter 7: “We will cry a little, but then we will forget”: Narratives of Loss and Victory in Postwar Yugoslavia
Introduction
Broken Soldiers on Film
Suffering and Revolution
Perpetrators
Personal and National Traumas
Chapter 8: Guilt, Responsibility and Trauma: Restoring the Moral Self-Image in Postwar Slovakia
Introduction
The Complicity of Slovakia
The Long Shadows of World War II
Restoring the Moral Self-Image
The Heroic and Traumatic Past of a Communal Genocide
Conclusion
Chapter 9: “Perpetrator Trauma” in Memoirs of Veterans of the Polish Home Army
Introduction
The Polish Resistance Movement and Its Underground Judiciary
The Postwar Public Discourse on the Resistance Movement
The War Experience of “Liquidators”
Confession Without Absolution
A Tellable Veteran’s Life
Conclusion
Chapter 10: Environmental Trauma in the Narratives of Postwar Reconstruction: The Loss of Place and Identity in Northern Finland After World War II
Introduction
Environmental Trauma Connects to the Environmental Past
The Connection Between People and Places
Materials and Methods
The Return to Destroyed Homelands
Re-destruction of Lapland
Impacts on Health and Wellbeing
Transgenerational Aspects of Environmental Trauma
Conclusions
Chapter 11: Suicide Rates as a “Social Thermometer”: Reading the Traumatized History of Lithuania
Introduction
Sociological View of Suicide and Suicide Rate as Social Thermometer
The Interwar Period and the Historical Traumas Due to World War II
The Soviet Occupation and Liberation
The Period of Radical Reforms
Conclusion
Part III: Coda
Chapter 12: Towards a History of Trauma in Central and Eastern Europe After World War II: A Coda
Introduction
Methodological Pitfalls
Trauma Before “Trauma”
Toxic Therapy
Where to from Here?
Index
