As one of the first and most populous epicenters of the Gulag archipelago located in the Far North, from 1929-1958 Komi saw hundreds of thousands of prisoners, in addition to hundreds of thousands more who were exiled to the region from all over the Soviet Union. While some left the region after they were released, many were not able to leave or chose not to when given the choice. Regardless of where they lived when the Soviet Union collapsed, many former prisoners sent their autobiographies to branches of the Memorial Society and local history museums in Komi. For many, this was the very first time they had shared their stories with anyone. While Komi is unique in many ways, it is emblematic of processes that unfolded throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the Twentieth Century. This project expands our understanding of how civil societies form under conditions of authoritarian rule and illuminates the ways in which survivors and societies come to terms with difficult pasts.
The narrative examined here shows the importance and value placed on the war effort, and explores how aspects of the Stalinist period were retained during the Thaw. By focusing on previously unexplored archival material, which documents debates and editorial decisions, an examination of how officials sought to control the state’s explanation of events, motivations and consequences of the war can be examined in-depth. To date, the periodization, terminology and areas of concentration that define the course of the Great Patriotic War are fixated on topics that Stalin’s war narrative favored, assigning significance to events according to Stalinist preferences rather than objective analysis. My study of the war’s historiography shows how contentious its memory became at every level, making it difficult to clearly discern who represented and opposed the party line throughout Soviet society.
The author argues that the collective memory of the war, as propagated by the state, became so all-encompassing that it was often the preferred version, infiltrating individual memories and displacing or blending with personal recollections and factual documentation. Because the war touched the entire population of the Soviet Union, its story became the foundational myth of the USSR, replacing the October Revolution, and was used as a legitimizing tool by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Most recently, it has experienced a revival in the post-Soviet period by Vladimir Putin as a way to unify Russia and build popular support for his administration. Viewing how the public interacted with representatives of the state over the creation of the official history of the war suggests that like no other event, war compels any state, even a totalitarian state, to reexamine its foundations, historical memory, foreign and domestic policies and views on censorship.
In the United States, nearly every state has a state history museum, where the natural and cultural history of the state is researched and put on display through tangible objects and intangible stories. Despite the unique nature of its history, the state of Hawaii is one of the few states that does not have a proper state history museum. The closest thing the state has to a state history museum is the Bishop Museum, which focuses mostly on Native Hawaiian culture and history from ancient times up until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. This thesis explores why there is no state museum to cover the modern history of the Hawaiian Islands, and lays out a general proposal for what a future Hawaii State History Museum could look like. In researching this project, inspiration was taken from the state history museums of Colorado and Texas, the History Colorado Center and the Bullock Texas State History Museum, respectively. The proposal covers the physical location and design of a potential museum building and how it would be laid out inside. It then provides a list of exhibit ideas while addressing questions of narrative perspective, with the overarching narrative of the museum being “Hawaii History for Hawaii locals.” Lastly, it discusses the importance of the connection between the community and the museum in order to be successful. With current Hawaii legislators showing an interest in actually establishing a state museum for modern Hawaii history, this thesis can serve as a framework from which the real museum can be built off of.