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Angelos Giannakopoulos: Politics of Memory and War. From Russia to the Middle East

In this volume memory politics are considered and discussed exclusively in the form of historical revisionism; that is, as a specific state policy stemming from a particular view and interpretation of national history and, ultimately, as a more or less crystallized state ideology. The negative consequences of memory politics on interstate relations are analyzed on the basis of three conflicts: Russia-Ukraine in Eastern Europe, Greece-Turkey in Southern Europe, and Israel-Palestine in the Middle East. While the ideological construct of "russkyi mir" represents the center of war analysis in Eastern Europe, the book shows the similarities between the conflict in Eastern Europe, i.e. Russia vs. Ukraine, with that in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey, by highlighting common aggressive revisionist policies of Russia and Turkey. As for the Middle East, the book is inspired by the joint environmental cooperation endeavor in the region represented by EcoPeace. This joint venture among Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians, which at first glance has nothing in common with the focus of the book, underlines the urgent existential problems we face today as a planet and looks beyond false dilemmas of national memory and identity and the aggressive policies they usually cause by finally replacing the centuries-old concept of “resistance” with the urgent one of “resilience”.

The experts that have contributed to this book include: Marco Siddi, Montalcini Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cagliari (Italy); Liudmyla Pidkuimukha, postdoctoral researcher at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Germany); Angelos Giannakopoulos, DAAD-Professor of German and European Studies at the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy; Cengiz Aktar, Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of Athens EKPA–Turkmas; Leonidas Karakatsanis, Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki (Greece); Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East (formerly Friends of the Earth Middle East);  Nada Majdalani, Director at EcoPeace, Palestine/Friends of the Earth Middle East; Yana Abu Taleb, Jordanian Director, EcoPeace Middle East; Markus J. Prutsch, senior researcher and administrator at the European Parliament, responsible for culture and education policies.