Staré legendy a nové návštěvy "Východu". O obrazech dějin Normana M. Naimarka

This article is a Czech translation of an article originally published in 'Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft', vol. 54 (2006), nos 7-8, pp. 687-700. Its two authors take issue with the historical concepts of the well-known American historian, Norman M. Naimark, as presented in his 'Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe' (published in English, 2001, German, 2004, and Czech, 2006) and in the article 'Die Killing Fields des Ostens und Europas geteilte Erinnerung,' published in the Austrian journal 'Transit' (no. 30, winter 2005/06, pp. 57-69). Naimark, according to the two authors, achieved considerable popularity with some historians and readers of history by attempting a revision of the existing conceptions of tragic aspects of twentieth-century European history. In fact, however, he offers nothing new, merely dragging out some old cliches and returning to the tradition of the German populist (völkisch) historiography. That is as true of his interpretation of the post-war expulsion of the German inhabitants of Poland and Czechoslovakia as an act of revenge for wrongs suffered as it is of his implying that the East European nations manifested a particular propensity to ethnic violence in the twentieth century. When he depicts the history of 'Eastern' Europe as a series of murders and ethnic cleansings, Naimark tends to display a preacher's zeal rather than an ability to distinguish things historically. Nor do the authors accept Naimark's challenge to bridge the different collective memories of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, and other nations with the shared recollection of conflicts in order to create a common historical memory. One needs to deal with those differences rationally, argue the authors, not to wipe them away by making relative the categories of perpetrator and victim.