Julie Fedor & Andrey Makarychev 
Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 
2019/1

Special Sections:

Remembering Diversity in East-Central European Cityscapes

and

Russia’s Annexation of Crimea I



Based on up-to-date field material, this issue focuses on the palimpsest-like environments of East-Central European borderland cities. The present shapes and contents of these urban environments derive from combinations of cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive material forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors; they evolve from perpetual tensions between the choices of the present and the weight of the past.

The contributors address a set of key questions: What is specific about the transnationalization of memory in these urban public spaces? What are the political rationales and ramifications of the different approaches taken to the legacies of perished population groups in different cities? How do these approaches relate to European dimensions of memory and the “European vector” of identity-making of the contemporary urban populations?

Over de auteur

Eleonora Narvselius, Ph D,  is an anthropologist affiliated with the Centre for Language and Literature and Center for European Studies at Lund University. She is the author of Ukrainian Intelligentsia in Post-Soviet L’viv: Narratives, Identity and Power (Lexington Books, 2012), and co-editor (with Gelinada Grinchenko) of Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).  She recently participated in the international project Memory of Vanished Population Groups and Societies in Today’s East- and Central European Urban Environments. Memory Treatment and Urban Planning in Lviv, Chernivci, Chisinau and Wrocław (funded by the Swedish research foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 2011-2014).



Gergana Dimova holds a Ph D in politics from Harvard University. She is currently an associate lecturer in global politics at the University of Winchester in the UK and has previously taught at the University of Cambridge. Her forthcoming book, titled Democracy beyond Elections: Government Accountability in the Media Age, examines the crisis of democracy through the prism of media allegations and government accountability. Gergana’s academic articles and media expertise have been featured in Demokratizatsiya, Observatorio, New Atlanticist, and Huffington Post, among others. Dr Dimova is the book reviews editor for the Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society. 



Andreas Umland (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation at Kyiv, and General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” (ibidem Press 2004-). His papers have appeared in, among other journals,  Political Studies Review, European Political Science, Journal of Democracy, Europe-Asia Studies, East European Jewish Affairs, and Russian Politics and Law.