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Conference: “The Perils of Historical Forgetting and Whitewashing: The Former Soviet Bloc in Comparative Perspective”

On 24 June 2010, the IICCMER organised the Conference entitled The Perils of Historical Forgetting and Whitewashing: the Former Soviet Bloc in Comparative Perspective. Professor Mark Kramer, Harvard University, was invited to speak on the foregoing topic. Professor Vladimir Tismăneanu, University of Maryland, president of the Scientific Council of the IICCMER, had the opening remarks; Mr. Stephen Ruken (Second Secretary, USA Embassy) had the final speech within the works of the Conference.

Abstract:
The task of confronting unpleasant historical episodes is difficult for any country, even the long-established democracies. In the former Communist countries, the process of historical reckoning is even more onerous and in almost all countries has been highly imperfect. The former Communist countries that have done the most to encourage a thorough reckoning with the Communist period have enjoyed much greater stability than the countries that have avoided any reappraisal of the past or that have embarked on the process selectively or halfheartedly. Deep and lasting democratization in the former East-bloc states has made the most headway when the iniquities of the Communist period have been exposed to public light and when leaders of these states have unequivocally denounced the individuals who were complicit in systematic cruelty and terror.

Biography:
Mark Kramer is the director of the Cold War Studies Program and Senior Fellow, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Harvard University). Mark Kramer is the author of numerous publications, among which The Crisis in Czechoslovakia, 1968: The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion, and the August Invasion; Soldier and State in Poland: Civil-Military Relations and Institutional Change After Communism; The Collapse of the Soviet Union; and, Crisis in the Communist World, 1956: The Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and Upheavals in Poland and Hungary.

Mark Kramer also translated and coordinated the English edition of the Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1999). He published over 200 articles on various topics, such as the fall of the Soviet Union, the Sino-Soviet relations, the Soviet Union and Russia’s foreign affairs policy, economic reform in post-communist Eastern Europe.