Vyhľadávanie
“Small History has a green light”, comments the compiler and editor of this book, the ethnologist Zuzana Profantová. The two-part publication on this topic with its 500 pages is the proof of that.
“Small pictures of great events” (which is the title of the article written by sociologist Vladimír Krivý) are presented by Slovak as well as foreign authors from different fields – ethnology, history, folk and literary studies - who met at an international conference of the same title. Besides research presentations it contains more theoretically charged passages about collective historical memory, about the interpretation of different types of narratives and about working with sources.
It is very interesting reading. Individual microcosms, family environments, personal memories and period documents are revealed before our eyes. They are not about the years after 1948 only. Even older, long forgotten history emerges: for instance, the relationships between the Jewish minority and the majority population of Zlaté Moravce from 1918 to 1945; the life of a well-known wine entrepreneur from Dolné Orešany; the lives of Germans imprisoned in the Nováky work camp after 1945; or how the people’s propagandist machine used the message left by Milan Rastislav Štefánik to legitimize its authoritarian regime.
These are painful topics and it is so also in the case of the later years and events, whether it is the persecutions after 1948 or 1968.
Even though oral history does not strive to replace historiography, it can contribute to the forming of collective memory. That is something that in our country had been, for decades, fabricated to support one direction only. Today, with the objectivity rendered by time and change, the collective memory and its layers are molded using different resources: the truth gained from the historiographical exploring of the past which is more of a truth derived from reason, is joined by the emotion-saturated truth of the heart. “Great History” is being populated.
Unwittingly, we remind ourselves how colorful (socially, religiously and ethnically) Slovak society had been, until it was weeded out by dictatorships. We are overwhelmed by the traumatic nature of critical events, entire decades and the difficult choices of the persecuted individuals and their families.
A book like this serves as a tool for educating and breeding of character instead of raising bookworms who only accumulate information. It contains ways how to catch one’s attention through personal testimonies, how to communicate the experience of a different generation, how to search for one’s own, individual, family or national narration, and how to paraphrase the “Slovak story”.
There are books, thanks to which we know more. Thanks to the authors of this publication we also have a chance to understand more.
