This article is part of the special cluster, “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka.

The Western outskirts of the former Soviet Union suffered huge levels of destruction during World War II. It is for this reason that the memories of the war in countries such as Belarus and the Baltics have centered on the local opposition to the Nazi occupiers in an attempt to bring societies together after the war. This article compares how Latvia and Belarus have represented their involvement in World War II over time and undertakes an analysis of how young people today perceive of this aspect of their country’s history. Of particular interest is the extent to which young people are prepared to admit the existence of collaboration and whether a persona of moral authority is able to shift how young people assess the need for critical engagement with history. To that end, the study relies on an original survey generated in early 2019, which also enquired into questions related to historical memory. I argue that young Belarusians are, on average, more prepared to acknowledge collaboration than young people in Latvia and that the involvement of a moral authority shifts assessments of history in a decisive way in Belarus only. The results for Latvia stress in particular the persistent divide relating to the country’s two linguistic communities.

本文是由FélixKrawatzek和George Soroka特邀编辑的“这里的住处：东欧的历史政治”专题组的一部分。

第二次世界大战期间，前苏联的西部郊区遭受了巨大的破坏。出于这个原因，在白俄罗斯和波罗的海国家中对战争的记忆一直集中在当地反对纳粹占领者的反对派上，以期在战后使各个社会团结起来。本文比较了拉脱维亚和白俄罗斯如何代表他们随着时间的推移参加第二次世界大战，并对今天的年轻人如何看待自己国家历史的这一方面进行了分析。特别令人感兴趣的是，年轻人准备在多大程度上承认存在协作，以及道德权威人物是否能够改变年轻人评估与历史进行批判性接触的需求的方式。为此，该研究依赖于2019年初进行的原始调查，这也询问与历史记忆有关的问题。我认为，与拉脱维亚的年轻人相比，年轻的白俄罗斯人平均而言更愿意承认合作，而且道德权威的介入仅以决定性的方式改变了对白俄罗斯的历史评估。拉脱维亚的结果特别强调了与该国两个语言社区有关的持续分歧。