Читать книгу Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands - Группа авторов - Страница 11

Cultural diversity may be roughly defined as a field of representations organized along the axes of ethnic/non-ethnic difference of populations and material/immaterial diversity of their lived milieus. This conceptual grid embraces a huge variety of forms, events, performances, and discourses. As a mode of “being, doing and knowing” that helps to sustain group identities in times of rapid change and crisis (Fishman 1996: 65–66), ethnicity nevertheless still remains and will seemingly remain the most applicable lens for analysis of divisions emerging throughout history. To this one should add the present-day constellations of languages, religions, and, increasingly, races in the wake of economic migration, transnationalization of higher education, expanding tourist industries, and military conflicts. However, in the course of history, ethnic rifts typical of borderlands have been incessantly amalgamated, blurred, articulated, or neutralized by non-ethnic diversity and by a strategy of “national indifference” (Zahra 2010). Consequently, activities of local professionals, politicians, rank-and-file urbanites, and diaspora communities, as well as the artistic imagery and activities of local NGOs suspending lines of ethnic and national divisions should be given closer consideration as loci of transformative impact.

Being quite an abstract and all-encompassing term, “cultural diversity,” similarly to “borderlands,” requires a constant re-interpretation and contextual adaptation. In particular, a distinction should be made between multiculturalism that connotes a certain ideological prescription, and cultural diversity, multiculture, and historical diversity as descriptive notions. The concept of multiculturalism domesticated by means of translation into local languages (Polish wielokulturowość, Ukrainian bahatokul’turnist’, Romanian multiculturalism) is one of the neologisms that emerged in the wake of post-socialist transformations of public discourses. Nevertheless, frequent references to the term are not always and not necessarily an indication of growing multiculturalist alignment. What is denoted is rather a situational pluralism linked to the liberalization of memory politics in East-Central Europe after 1989 (Narvselius 2012). This approach mostly dispenses with reflective critical interpretations and regards the multiple local pasts rather as a patchwork of internally homogenous presentations. In this context, the main corollary concept of multiculturalism becomes “multicultural heritage” (Polish dziedzictwo wielokulturowe, Ukrainian bahatokul’turna spadshchyna, Romanian patrimoniului multicultural), a term that in the post-socialist conditions mostly refers to tangible forms and material representations conveying the historical presence of various peoples and cultural groups. Multicultural heritage is often comfortably presented as an argument for attracting foreign investors, as a ticket to the European community and a tourist attraction (Murzyn 2008). Simultaneously, it poses a challenge to presentations of the cities as organic parts of uninterrupted narratives of the ethno-national Polish, Ukrainian, and Moldovan distinction and, when politicized by subversive actors, it may have serious consequences for state sovereignty.

In the absence of a shared understanding of what constitutes cultural diversity, it is possible to argue that all cities are multicultural to some extent (Kłopot 2012: 133–34) or, on the contrary, that no city ticks all the boxes for different aspects of cultural diversity. In a way, the impression that some cities are more culturally diverse than others is conveyed by the material built environment. Naturally, in borderland cities like Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Wrocław where stylistically different sections of the historical architecture were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, one may get an impression of a greater degree of cultural diversity. Nevertheless, on the basis of examination of immaterial (intangible, symbolic) aspects of daily life in the selected cities, it is not difficult to draw a conclusion that the pre-war diversity left quite shallow traces in the public discourses and memories of the present-day populations. Also, its transformative potential as a tool for fostering toleration of cultural differences and emancipation from xenophobic frameworks is quite limited. Although marking the symbolic presence of the perished urban groups with monuments, toponyms, and even theme restaurants has become common practice, a tendency towards the selective exclusion of popular and academic knowledge about historical diversity persists. In some cases, one wants to eschew association with “uncomfortable” and traumatic historical episodes (the Holocaust, collaborationism, expulsions, political repressions) that might imply the complicity of those who repopulated the cities, or, alternatively, skip mentioning the prominent role and achievements of other ethnic groups (in particular, Poles, Jews, Germans, Romanians, Austrians) in some contexts. Tackling urban cultural diversity in the four cities suffers from many limitations caused by concrete policies and political discourses, and in many cases is also underpinned by inflexible daily patterns of sociability. To an extent, one may agree that “[m]ost European cities ‘were plurally encoded by socially pluralist societies and are now also decoded pluralistically’... Much of the iconography is not decoded at all, less because it is unintelligible than because of its irrelevance to contemporary plural societies” (Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge 2007: 48).

The “irrelevance” of material tokens of the perished populations in contemporary East-Central Europe is nevertheless relative. It has been a commonplace to envision the post-socialist transformations as “rapid and simultaneous” (Gelazis, Czaplicka, and Ruble 2009: 1) and to present them in terms of a gap, hiatus, or cleavage. Nevertheless, this image of a sudden, drastic, and unanticipated break is actually a big simplification. A certain continuity of background culture (popular imagery, limited but viable contacts abroad, daily practices of sociability, tastes, city folklore, family stories) combined with sporadic official references to “otherness” in the Soviet/socialist urban landscapes paved the way to the post-1989 “return to diversity” (Rothschild and Wingfield 2000). However, the flipside of this relative continuity is not that unproblematic. Although the rhetoric of the “return” was necessarily adjusted to new socio-political demands, concrete ways of dealing with legacies of the previous populations mostly were not underpinned by alternative approaches. Indeed, in some cases restoration works and commemorative practices even relapsed into the previous negligence, as in the case of the old Jewish cemetery in Wrocław (see the chapter by Golden and Cervinkova in this volume). Adapting Michel de Certeau’s arguments, such non-linear development may be interpreted as indicating the endurance of previous (Soviet, “real socialist”) tactics over novel strategies. In historical cities, the strategies of actors carving “readable spaces” in line with some disciplined visions have been constantly undermined by the tactics of those who elude the discipline of urban planning (de Certeau 1984: 35–36). Present-day inconsistencies between the centralized legislation, top-down politics of memory, expert restoration plans, and local policies, commercial interests, and personal ambitions is a well-known phenomenon observable in post-communist Europe (Murzyn 2008). Aside from exposing problems of the post-1989 governance, it might also indicate the persistence of multiple local ways of being and exercising power in the East-Central European borderlands.

Alongside diversity, another interesting concept that lends itself to the conditions of East-Central European multi-layered urban milieus is hybridity (Rosaldo 1995; Werbner 1997; Young 2000). The existing academic literature usually reserves this term for addressing intersections of the local and the global (anthropology, international relations), for describing mutual transformation of the dominant and dominated populations (post-colonial studies, migration studies), or for labeling prescribed spaces of dialogue and negotiation (political science, studies of multiculturalism). Several chapters in this book (by Golden and Cervinkova, Felcher, Otrishchenko, and Voronovici) explore the emergence of spontaneous rather than cultivated spaces of negotiations and site-specific engagements with otherness, which in hindsight may be labeled as hybrid. Such spaces are often unstable and limited, and their practical outcomes are difficult to estimate. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that “the concept of hybridity does not denote any specifics of identity that can be represented” (Mizutani 2013: 38). It may be underpinned by equality, but also by inequality of status of the involved parts (e.g., the present-day majority versus memory activists, experts versus users of the built environment, residents versus representatives of diaspora, the EU institutions versus local authorities etc.) It may refer to emerging civic identities (Czaplicka, Ruble, and Crabtree 2003) and oil-and-vinegar ethno-cultural mixtures. It may be envisioned as a new emerging space charged with “dialogical re-inscription of various codes and discourses in a spatio-temporal zone of signification” (Kraidy 1999: 472), or as a liminal “culture’s in between” (Bhabha 1996) spreading on both sides of a symbolic fault line without allegiance to any. In any case, “[h]ybridity as a subversion of political and cultural domination is but just one of many possible configurations” (Rewakowich 2018: 6).

Contributions to the edited volume address these themes of diversity, voids, hybrid spaces, and transformations of urban memory in various ways. The study by architect Bo Larsson provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the four cities with a focus on material transformations and urban planning projects that came in the wake of major political and demographic disruptions. The author points out differences in local approaches to the material legacy of the vanished populations, and finds evidence of an uneven, but by and large positive appropriation of the material sites connoting the presence of pre-war “others.”

While Larsson’s chapter largely focuses on Lefebvrian “representations of space” embraced by urban professionals and other local elites, urban sociologist Natalia Otrishchenko’s chapter highlights “representational spaces” where “otherness” is encountered and domesticated on a daily basis. Drawing upon interviews with urbanites inhabiting pre-war buildings in Lviv, she demonstrates how memories about the perished urbanites reverberate in family stories. Attitudes to the previous dwellers and the ethnic groups they represent range in these stories from disinterest and denial to efforts to make sense of personal contacts with the “old Lvivians.” The latter approach helps to reduce urban voids and make the domestic space more comprehensible and emotionally engaging.

A contrasting case is presented in the study by anthropologists Juliet Golden and Hana Cervinkova on the neoliberal marginalization of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław. The present state of this urban landmark exemplifies one of the possible, but questionable ways of appropriation of the multiethnic heritage. As the historical legacy of the once prominent Jewish community has been managed primarily by pragmatic actors with no personal memories or postmemories of the pre-socialist period, the cemetery was gradually museumified and turn into a “cold” heritage site.

In the chapter that follows, historian Gaëlle Fisher delves into the post-1989 transnational re-imaginings of Bukovina. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Austro-Hungarian province and its main city, Czernowitz/Chernivtsi, became a meeting point of many mnemonic actors united by their vision of the region as exemplary and exceptional on the map of Europe. The crux is that the trendy conceptualizations of Bukovina as “Europe’s forgotten region” and “European cemetery” have mainly been invented by external German and Jewish memory actors focusing on multiethnicity of their historical homeland, while the present-day Ukrainians and Romanians populating Bukovina have rather been on the receiving end. As such, post-1989 discursive constructions of Bukovina reveal asymmetries and dissonances of reappropriation and misappropriation of Eastern European diversity.

An expert in heritage management, Anastasia Felcher takes up the issue of heritage making and efforts to re-interpret parts of Moldovan historical diversity by cultural professionals and politicians. In Chişinău, as in many other post-Soviet cities, certain cultural components—most obviously, Russian and Jewish ones—cannot be unproblematically inscribed into the framework of a celebrated multicultural past. As a result, as the author observes, discourses and practices of multiethnic heritage preservation are often in discord, and the situation is further aggravated by “mutual non-engagement” of the ethnic communities and the local developers.

In a similar vein, sociologist Paweł Czajkowski analyzes continuities and ruptures of meaning associated with famous urban landmarks during the socialist and post-socialist periods. His study demonstrates that in the specific historical circumstances of Wrocław, the fate of monuments reflects changes in social consciousness of the urbanites and, on a more fundamental level, correlates with dynamics of urban mythology entangling the local and the national, the universal and the specific, the distant and the proximate. Consequently, efforts to elevate the myth of ethnic pluralism result in paradoxes, tensions, and conflicts.

A similar state of affairs was also observable in Lviv, a native city of many postwar Wrocławians. For several postwar decades, public references to the historical presence and martyrdom of Poles used to pose a problem. Ethnologist Eleonora Narvselius tells the story of commemoration of a group of eminent Polish academics murdered during the Nazi occupation of the city. Disagreements over the memory of and the memorial to the murdered professors show that interethnic antipathies have had their aftermath in the form of enduring political-cultural divisions and conflicts about the past. At the same time, however, it is evident that despite the contradictions, different parties can come to an agreement, especially when the rapprochement is based on existing good personal relationships, friendships and loyalties.

Historian Alexandr Voronovici focuses on a comparable dynamic that generates multivocal meanings and practices in relation to one especially significant urban memorial. His study brings to the fore the vicissitudes of multiple physical transformations and commemorative re-framings of the Soviet-built Eternitate complex in Chişinău. As the author observes, “the Soviet internationalist narrative of the Great Patriotic War was also a convenient shortcut to the message of multiethnicity.” This discursive opportunity became instrumentalized after Moldova’s independence by those political forces and memory actors who were keen on articulating their specific messages in reference to the World War II mythology of victims, martyrs, and heroes.

The volume concludes with two studies that look at the problematics of handling diversity through a clear-cut sociological lens. The study by Barbara Pabjan suggests a theoretical generalization of cognitive strategies of collective memory. On the basis of a survey that measured attitudes to historical diversity among several groups of Wrocław’s residents, she concludes that the postwar antagonism in respect to the German architectural legacy has been reproduced by means of specific cognitive patterns transferring Polish–German disputes from the sphere of action to the domain of cultural discourse. Pabjan also provides an account of correlations between the levels of knowledge, education, and status of the respondents and their preferred strategies for tackling the city’s multifaceted past. As her study demonstrates, the memory conflicts revolving around Wrocław’s past nowadays are mostly underpinned by opinions and beliefs about history rather than by authorized historical knowledge.

Nadiia Bureiko and Teodor Lucian Moga proceed from a different perspective and compare the identities of two territorial minorities and residents of the cross-border region of Bukovina: Ukrainians in Romania and Romanians in Ukraine. Their article argues that these two communities display multifaceted identities which correlate with the ethno-cultural diversity of the region and are pre-conditioned by its complex historical evolution. Although the study does not focus specifically on urban conditions, it makes clear that the most significant cities of the region, Chernivtsi and Suceava, exemplify the distinctive Bukovinian landscape of diversity formed by several political regimes and demographic shifts. The authors call for a closer scrutiny of the relationship between the minority populations and the state, since different policies and institutional configurations of the previous political regimes (e.g., the Habsburg empire) might have their afterlife in a relatively non-confrontational contemporary approach to diversity in the Bukovinian borderland.