Cities tell their own versions of history

Memory politics is not the sole preserve of national governments. Cities engage in it too – by erecting monuments and forging links with local authorities abroad. Their actions may reinforce, reshape or run counter to the national narrative. Natalia Matiaszczyk, a PhD student at the University of Lodz, will use her OPUS 30-funded project to study the memory politics of 440 cities with populations of more than 250,000 across over thirty countries occupied by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the twentieth century. She is interested in the tools available to local authorities and in how their actions depend on political systems and administrative structures. She also asks when cities can act as agents of reconciliation. Previously, in a project funded under PRELUDIUM, she studied South Korean cities and their memory politics concerning Japan. She has also surveyed around eighty Polish cities.

Natalia Matiaszczyk, photo from Natalia Matiaszczyk’s private collection Natalia Matiaszczyk published her first academic paper while studying for her bachelor's degree. She is one of just over forty people in the history of NCN funding calls to have received an OPUS grant before completing a PhD. Her project ranked second on the HS5 ranking list. – It is the culmination of several years of research – says the grant recipient. – The reviewers noted that I have experience in running projects and that the project itself is ambitious and important to the social sciences. They concluded that my track record gives me a good chance of delivering it successfully.

We talk to the researcher about how cities tell their own versions of history in our #rozmowaNCN series.

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz: The most obvious associations with urban memory politics are monuments and street names. How else do cities commemorate their past?

Natalia Matiaszczyk: Monuments and memorial sites are indeed among the most widely used tools. Commemorative events are also important: national and local holidays, as well as anniversaries central to a community's identity. But the range is broader than that. Cities can establish major local museums independently, without support from national authorities or external funding. They can conduct their own historical research and organise conferences and workshops. They can run educational programmes for residents and, where national law permits, develop their own programmes for children in primary and secondary schools.

That is the local dimension. The other is international: city diplomacy directed at local authorities abroad. This may involve dialogue and initiatives aimed at reconciliation with a country with which they share a difficult past. It may take the form of history-focused events for children and young people or student exchanges. It may also involve negative or confrontational action, such as promoting nationalist positions or making a show of suspending relations over differing interpretations of the past.

Can local collective memory differ from the official national version?

Local identities often differ from those promoted by national authorities. Memory politics at national level inevitably simplifies matters to some extent. Local action is closest to the community and is not as standardised as action at national level. 

It is not only different countries that remember the same events differently – people within a single country do so as well. For example, the memory of the Second World War differs between Łódź, Warsaw, Podlasie, Kashubia and Silesia. I feel that Polish society is often unaware of this. There is no single memory of the Second World War; it varies from one region of the country to another.

Which Polish cities actively engage in memory politics?

Wrocław is one of the most active centres, both locally and internationally. Wrocław established links with Breda because the Dutch city retains a vivid memory of its liberation by Polish troops in 1944. It also commemorates General Stanisław Maczek, specifically in an international context.

In my survey, a relatively large number of Polish cities said that their initiatives were intended to foster reconciliation with German twin towns and promote mutual understanding and respect.

You mentioned that cities' memory politics can also run counter to the national narrative.

One of several monuments in Gwangju commemorating the ‘comfort women’, photo from Natalia Matiaszczyk’s private collection Perhaps the clearest example I know is the South Korean city of Hwaseong, where I conducted fieldwork on local memory politics concerning Japan.

Hwaseong decided to raise awareness of Japan's crimes against the so-called comfort women – women and girls subjected to sexual exploitation by the Imperial Japanese Army. The number of victims is estimated at 300,000, and in some estimates as high as 400,000, most of whom are believed to have been Korean. For the South Korean government, the issue matters only in its relations with Japan; it makes no effort to communicate it to a wider international audience.

Hwaseong erected monuments to these women overseas – in China, Canada and Australia. Several other Korean cities began taking similar action, and memorials of this kind were also established in countries including Germany. A monument erected in a foreign municipality creates a permanent place in the urban landscape with specific symbolic and emotional significance. 

Initially, the city's action was a form of opposition to national policy. The first initiatives date back to 2015–2016, when the South Korean authorities were attempting to play down the issue in relations with Japan. Hwaseong concluded that this approach ran counter to Korean interests and showed a lack of respect for the victims and their memory. It erected the monuments entirely without support from national authorities, in direct opposition to their memory politics.

You have studied cities in Poland and South Korea, and your new project covers a further 440 cities in Europe and Asia, in countries formerly occupied by Germany and Japan.  Is the aim to examine how local authorities operate in such varied political environments?

I want to conduct a broad comparative study of the memory politics pursued by cities in countries that suffered under two of the twentieth century's most devastating occupation regimes. At the same time, this selection will allow me to examine how cities behave in different contexts. The sample includes cities in democratic and non-democratic states, in decentralised and highly centralised systems, and in unitary and federal states. I will examine how specific conditions affect whether cities engage in memory politics more or less actively. Do they work towards reconciliation, or do they instead adopt more extreme nationalist positions than their national governments?

How will you conduct the research? 

Gunsan: the only functioning Buddhist temple in the whole country dating from the period of the Japanese occupation of Korea, photo from Natalia Matiaszczyk’s private collection I will begin with surveys, which I will then analyse primarily using quantitative methods. Based on the findings, I will select three cities in Europe and three in Asia. In each, I will conduct comprehensive fieldwork: analysing memorial sites and the narratives presented there, and interviewing officials and others involved in memory politics. I will ask how and why particular decisions are made, what motivates them, what problems and challenges arise, and how local and national authorities cooperate – whether such cooperation exists at all and whether national authorities try to restrict local action. I will then compare the survey findings with the detailed case studies.

Memory is relational: it involves two sides. Will the survey cover only formerly occupied countries, or the former aggressors as well?

I will conduct the survey in countries that were occupied. However, once I have selected the case-study cities, I also want to contact their twin towns in Germany and Japan to understand their perspective. I used the same model in my earlier research on Korean cities.

How many survey responses would you consider a success? I imagine that collecting data will be a major challenge in a project of this scale. 

If I managed to obtain responses from even half of them, that would already be quite a good result. In Europe, freedom-of-information legislation also helps researchers obtain data. It can be used to improve the response rate.

You mentioned that your research will also cover non-democratic countries. Where do you expect to encounter the greatest research difficulties?

In Chinese cities. First, because there are so many of them and, second, because access to information and response rates may prove problematic. China itself is nonetheless fascinating: it is a totalitarian state, yet local authorities still have a small degree of latitude to pursue their own commemorative initiatives. This may therefore be the project's greatest challenge, but it may also yield its most interesting findings.

Some Asian countries have freedom-of-information mechanisms while others do not, so this may present a challenge. That is why the project allows a fairly long period for the surveys – more than a year – so that I can collect and analyse the data.

This is a project about the past, but it also looks to the future. What would you like the project to change?

Above all, I want to show that local authorities are important actors in memory politics. They are closest to local communities and best understand local circumstances and collective memory. Every decision they make affects how residents and visitors perceive past events at memorial sites. That, in turn, shapes how we view our own nation, our history and current politics, as well as another nation with which we have a difficult relationship. Local authorities shape collective memory and identity, which in turn influence the decisions we make.