Responsibility in the present

From August 7 to 22, 2018, an exhibition “ Different Wars ” was held in the Moscow Sakharov Center. The chapters dedicated to the Second World War were represented, from the textbooks of six countries - the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Italy. The exhibition is part of the large project of the working group “Historical Memory and Education” of the EU Civil Forum - Russia. In December 2015, she started in Prague, then visited Berlin, in March-April of 2016 she took place in the Moscow Memorial and, having made a considerable way, returned to Moscow again.

We publish the response of the translator of love amounts .

I am not sure that we understand how important school textbooks and anthology are important.
K. S. Lewis. A person is canceled

The only hall is obvious the route - from the caretaker’s table to the table in the opposite corner, where the textbooks are packed. You go along the stands with illustrations and quotes, along key events: 1938, the annexation of the Sudet, then the complete occupation of Czechoslovakia; 1939, Molotov Pact-Ribbentrop, the Poland section, the beginning of the Second World War ... the basics of the history of the 20th century, the usual black and white photographs. And therefore, the realization that the angle is shifted - you seemed to have turned your neck and look at the “school pictures” from the point of view that you never looked - it does not come right away.

For us, the Munich Conspiracy is a semi -justification of our own pact of 1939. So it was formulated at the next stand with the words of the Russian textbook: “Stalin found that the Munich agreement excluded it from the global process” [“the global process” - therefore, the process of redistribution of the world. Then there was no word "geopolitics"] . But before you take this step to the next stand, you will take it to Czechoslovakia in 1938. Not a benefit or a problem for the Soviet Union looks at you from the wall, but the history of Czechoslovakia, comprehended by Czech schoolchildren. Photos of politicians and ordinary people there, in 1938, in the occupied, given to the country.

Where is the border between effort to preserve yourself and collaboration, just life - and shameful indifference? Is it possible to consider minimal cooperation, “working as a manner and listen to English radio” - civil resistance, or such a fence from the fate of the “first Dragon student” is small in price?

Poland in 1939 will show us more familiar and understandable resistance - 400 thousand people in the rebel army, the largest in Europe. Underground schools and universities; Samizdat - newspapers, scientific magazines, children's, with ladies' mods. After such a reminder that resistance is not only bullets, but also women's magazines, maintaining the norm and beauty of life, contrary to the swastika, from the Polish stand you again take a step back to Czechoslovak and finally understand that “they listened to the English radio and tried to work as slowly as possible”-not nonsense, not a light path and a firm awareness and unwillingness to merge with a new order.

The circular movement will be intermittent: with return, retreats and turns. Several times the concept of the exhibition changes in the eyes of the viewer. At first - mutual contradictions: who attacked whom, who is to blame, from whose side to look at the conflict. It is already an important experience, since we are accustomed to isolationist textbooks of history in which other interests or points of view are not provided. However, from a large -scale clash of countries, we are soon forced to direct our eyes to the human situation. The situation of choice.

Approaching the corner between the first and second wall, you finally understand: a personal choice is the main topic here. Resistance is realized not only as partisan and mass, but as a personal and sometimes quiet rejection of evil or as a “useless” sacrifice - useless in the sense that it did not cause significant damage to Hitlerism and did not bring the end of the war. Such a self -sacrifice is addressed to the future, to the current student: there is always a choice. Could I not be with executioners? - Yes, he could. Could he cover the Jews? - The Lithuanian pater and a simple woman, she looks at us with photos: we decided. To remain yourself when the whole people are crazy? - Puppy beautiful boys and girls from the underground German organization "White Rose".

The third wall is the results of the war. May days of 1945. Nearby, a nuclear explosion is already looming, paintings of the groaned to smithereens Dresden, a table with data about the victims of the war. (Russia is the only country whose textbooks give a scatter several times by the number of their dead. This is terribly echoing with the commentary of the authors of the exhibition: both the Soviet and Russian forms of commemoration are not inherent in focus on man.) Basically, the third wall is devoted to the memory of the war, how the history textbooks suggest not talking about their evaluation and methods of their assessment and about the methods perpetuating.

The key problem for the memory of the war is the Holocaust and the question of guilt and responsibility. In the Russian textbook, the Holocaust is a crime of enemies. The Soviet Union acts as a liberator and the Savior. There is no guilt or responsibility from this, as does not arise even the need for a truly memory of victims or thoughts about what choice faced people in the occupied territories and how personal, internal resistance was carried out.

Voices of Lithuanian and Polish textbooks are very tense: “ This is not us. The Lithuanian people cannot be blamed for this. The Holocaust is terrible, but not exceptional - you can put it in a row with other genocides; The fate of the Polish Jews is sad, however, against the backdrop of the general Polish misfortune and heroic resistance ... ”There is a physically the need to push guilty. So much that it tides you, unfolds - and on the contrary, you again see the stand with the faces of the Lithuanian pater and it.

In such a comparison, you understand the difference between the story that is being built on faces and personalities, and the history based on the construct of the “people”, “nation”, as well as between the intentions of guilt and responsibility.

A modern schoolboy cannot be to blame for what was 75 years ago. Can he be responsible? Of course: the responsibility for his position in relation to history, for the fact that he "does" with this. The only textbook talking about this is German. Here, a large section is dedicated to the practices of community, and commemorative boards installed in schools by decision and forces themselves are given as an example. What can you do for memory? - This textbook asks the student. This is another rotary point in the perception of the concept of “different wars” itself. A modern school textbook may (should) talk not about the fault-in-pusher, but about responsibility-in-and-right.

A great adventure is to compare your textbook with others. Lithuanian and Polish are approximately the same in size as Russian, and, judging by the table of contents, are also mainly factographic, with many events and dates. But German and Italian are much thicker, but “material”, as we are used to understanding it, are less in them. In German - articles representing points of view of different historians; The large section of the “Forum” in each chapter, where they teach to defend their point of view and work with sources (election posters, caricatures, political statements). A small story, a private event - the same commemorative board at the school - is subjected to no less detailed analysis than battles.

The Italian textbook deviates from the usual format even further - the story here is a derivative of philosophy, culture. The XIX and XX centuries are considered together as a modern history, and after a brief description of the economy and everyday life of the mid -20th century, it follows a section with articles (Freud, Foucault, other unmounters) called “Discipline of desires”. The story of how a person realizes himself, building history.

And this is the last U -turn in the exhibition “Different Wars” - to yourself, to the question of who you are, now looking at these stands. Who are you, living. And do you need to peer into the history of human in yourself before peering into a great history.

Love of sums
Photo from the exhibition - A. Kamensk