"YOU SHARE – Youth Sharing Memories of Stalinism and its Victims"

International You Share Forum
Faenza, September 27-29, 2010

Report of the final International Forum

From September 27th to 29th, 2010, the city of Faenza hosted an International Forum that concluded the project "Youshare – Youth sharing memories of Stalinism and its victims". Organized by the IECOB (Istituto per l'Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica) in collaboration with the universities of Bologna, Kaunas, Ljubljana, Rijeka and Zagreb, funded by the European Commission and sponsored by the province of Ravenna, the city council of Faenza and the Honorary Consulate of the Slovak Republic in Forlì, the Forum represented the third and most important event of the "Youshare" project. The project's main aim was to share academic research and young peoples' perceptions and comments on the subject of Stalinism and its victims.

Prior to the forum the project's scientific board had selected 7 PhD candidates based on their papers submitted on the topic of Stalinism. This was followed by two preliminary meetings of the selected junior and senior scholars. The project concluded with the International Forum: three days of reflection, testimony, scientific contributions and discussion of one theme, Stalinism, which in the end was still far from being analyzed in its full complexity.

Along with the presenters, the audience was also confronted with the complexity of this topic. Fortunately this task was facilitated by the Forum's organizers, under the constant coordination of project manager Endri Xhaferaj. The organizers' idea of bringing together famous scholars and students, witnesses of Stalinism and PhD candidates, NGO representatives and writers, created a powerful and moving atmosphere among all participants.

The Forum was opened by two inspiring speeches, the first by Elena Lamberti (University of Bologna) regarding the role of the mediators of memory, and then Egidijus Aleksandravicius (Vytautas Magnus University of Kaunas) spoke on the complex relationship between memory and history in such a difficult context as that of the countries that outlived Stalinism. After their introduction, the Forum went on to present the contributions of junior scholars, followed by the remarks of the discussants, mostly renowned senior scholars. Other crucial moments were the testimonies, which provided an in-depth and emotional perspective on the topics under discussion: particularly touching were speeches by Fatos Lubonja, Dragoslav Mihajlovic, Giacomo Scotti and Vladimir Huska, direct witnesses of repression in Albania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. In addition, NGO representatives gave an inside look on the topic of memory: particularly impressive was the contribution by Irina Flige, director of the Saint Petersburg office of Memorial.

The Forum also provided an occasion to see documentary films on Stalinism. Thus by covering almost all the European areas involved in Stalinism, the audience was provided with theoretical approaches, testimonies, words and images: not surprisingly, every session concluded with long discussions involving everyone in the audience, students included – thus realizing the project's ambitious goal, the sharing of knowledge and memories by the older and younger generations.

The project will produce a DVD and a publication of the papers presented at the Forum: two instruments that will provide the wider public with the possibility of exploring many aspects of Stalinism, such as those of repression, censorship, power system and so on. At the end of the Forum, Professor Stefano Bianchini (University of Bologna), scientific coordinator of the project, announced further steps to continue the project's positive experience: it was the best way to close these wonderful three days, with the hope that such an extraordinary intergenerational common reflection will not remain a single episode.

Andrea Gullotta
PhD candidate in Slavistics
University of Padua

A picture gallery of the three-day event is available for vieweing (registration to the website is required and free of charge).

Project documents

The papers submitted by the 7 PhD candidates within the YOU SHARE project are the following

• Mr. Deniver Vukelić Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia
  Research title "Censorship in Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1952 - Halfway between Stalin and West"
• Ms. Giedrė Milerytė  Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania
  Research title "Between hatred and cooperation: Stalinist foreign policy in the Lithuanian and Polish debate on emigration"
• Mr. Andrea Gullotta, University of Padua, Italy
  Research Title: "Culture as Resistance: the Case of the Solovki Prison Camp and of its inmates"
• Ms. Kaori Kimura, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
  Research Title: "The influence of the L.Rajk's trial on the Hungarian foreign policy in late 1940s to early 1950s. – The role of Mátyás Rákosi and the Soviet counsellors in the process of preparation for the L.Rajk's trial in 1949"
• Mr. Žiga Koncilija,  Institute for Contemporary History in Ljubljana, Slovenija
  Research Title: "Main characteristics of the judicial system as main tool for repression in slovenia between 1945 and 1951"
• Mr. Srđan Grbić,  Faculty of Philosophy , University of Zagreb, Croatia
  Research Title: "Denouncing Stalin, but practicing Stalinism: two aspects of the Yugoslav Case"
• Ms.Amanda Swain, University of Washington, USA
  Research Title: "Freedom for Lithuania" or "Freedom for Hippies"? Nationalism, Youth Counterculture and De-Stalinization in Soviet Lithuania