Synopses & Reviews
In the final days of World War II, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population, nearly 200,000 people.
Beyond Memory offers the first ethnographic exploration of this event, as well as the 50 year movement for repatriation. Many of the Crimean Tatars have returned in a process that involves squatting on vacant land and self-immolation. Uehling asks how they became willing to die for their national collectivity. She provides a fine-grained analysis of how "memories," sentiments, and dreams of a homeland never seen came to be shared. Uehling suggests the second-generation has a surprisingly instrumental role to play. The way children correct and intervene in parental narratives, dissidents challenge interrogators, and speakers borrow and trade lines index this social aspect of memory.
Synopsis
In the final days of World War II, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population, nearly 200,000 people. "Beyond Memory offers the first ethnographic exploration of this event, as well as the 50 year movement for repatriation. Many of the Crimean Tatars have returned in a process that involves squatting on vacant land and self-immolation. Uehling asks how they became willing to die for their national collectivity. She provides a fine-grained analysis of how "memories," sentiments, and dreams of a homeland never seen came to be shared. Uehling suggests the second-generation has a surprisingly instrumental role to play. The way children correct and intervene in parental narratives, dissidents challenge interrogators, and speakers borrow and trade lines index this social aspect of memory.
Synopsis
This book offers the first in-depth, ethnographic exploration of the Crimean Tatars' experience of deportation from Ukraine at the end of World War II, examining how "memories" and sentiments were created and came to shape the dramatic repatriation to historic lands, which involved squatting and self-immolation.
About the Author
Greta Uehling is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, University of Pennsylvania.
Table of Contents
Dedication * Acknowledgments * List of Illustrations* Introduction * The Lay of the Historic Land * The Faces of Public Memory * Exile: Recalling the 1944 Deportation * Family Practices: The Social Circulation of Memory and Sentiments * The Crimean Tartar National Movement: Memories of Power and the Power of Memory * How Death Came To Be Beautiful * Houses and Homelands: The Reterritorialization of Crimean Tatars * Sequel * Bibliography * Index