Central and East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CEERES) – Master’s Theses

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Browsing Central and East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CEERES) – Master’s Theses by Subject "ajalooteadvus"

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    “Communism” as an empty signifier in the rhetoric of Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) party in Poland
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2024) Liapin, Ilia; Mach, Zdzisław, juhendaja; Terry, George Spencer, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
    The thesis is going to utilize discursive approach and Essex school of discourse analysis and analyse the discourse of Polish populist far-right leaders. The main hypothesis is that in the Polish political discourse, due to certain historical premises and state policies (especially in the area of memory and remembrance) the far-right in their discourse utilize the concept of communism\anticommunism as an empty signifier. I will analyse the speeches of the most prominent PiS members and trace the following markers to prove that it is indeed an empty signifier: Lack of Fixed Meaning, Polysemy, Contextual Dependency, Ideological Investment, Shifting or Contested Meanings, Ambiguity and Indeterminacy.
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    The inherent dissonance of heritage in contemporary Polish museums
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2022) Jessup, Sarah Kristen; Peikarska-Duraj, Łucja, juhendaja; Pääbo, Heiko, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
    The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 represent the bravery and courage that emerged during Europe’s darkest period. Despite both occurring in occupied Poland, the narratives have not both been universally accepted as part of the Polish collective memory, national identity, and heritage. In this thesis, I seek to analyze and understand how the narratives constructed by museums regarding the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising illustrate the inherent dissonance of heritage in contemporary Poland. The influence of political powers, the inability to confront the difficult reality of the past, the boundaries of Polish identity, and the manipulation of memory have led to the attempt to construct a single, linear narrative of heritage that does not reflect the diversity of memory and illustrates its dissonance. As the events of the Second World War and Polish-Jewish relations continue to evoke heated discussions, the narratives portrayed by two of Poland’s most prominent museums, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Warsaw Rising Museum, may provide a deeper understanding of how memory is selected, identity is formed, and heritage is constructed in contemporary Poland, and how dissonance is inherently part of these narratives.
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    The relationship between external crises and national narrative shifts cases of the Great Patriotic War and the Sino-Japanese War
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2023) Kao, Chia-Lin; Kaczmarski, Marcin, juhendaja; Ibadildin, Nygmet, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
    The thesis aims to analyze the variations of national narratives in Russia and China through the changes from 2015 to 2020. It focused particularly on the narratives of the Great Patriotic War and the Sino-Japanese War to see how authority shifted narrative approaches in the face of external crises. To assess the variations in the framing patterns during the targeted time frame, the thesis collected elite speeches of 2015 and 2020 on the commemorative events of the Great Patriotic War and the Sino-Japanese War from Russia and China, respectively. The thesis encoded the collected elite speeches to assess the shifts in theme to understand the national narrative framing variations of Russian and Chinese elite speeches. To create the communications between the two datasets and conduct a comparison between Russia and China, the thesis designed a codebook to bridge the analysis and engage the narratives from both countries. The speech analysis was undertaken with Nvivo 12. There are eight main coding themes in the codebook, with subthemes as complements, and they are defined by the primary theme from both datasets to have the analysis parallel. The thesis contributed to the existing literature by confirming three hypotheses regarding the relationship between external crises and national narratives in authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian governments tend to have a more inward-facing narrative in the face of external crises, including drawing a line between the image of self and others. Apart from that, within authoritarian regimes, different institutional designs also contributed to the narrative formats.