Duga senka prošlosti: kultura sećanja i politika povesti

The title "The Long Shadow of the Past" alludes to the fact that the 20th century (especially the Holocaust and totalitarianism) still casts a shadow on contemporary society – it does not disappear, but is constantly reinterpreted.

The book is divided into two main parts:

• Theoretical foundations: Assmann distinguishes between individual, social and cultural memory. The concept of "collective memory" is not fixed – it moves from communicative (live, 3–4 generations, oral) to cultural (institutionalized: museums, monuments, archives, canon). He distinguishes between functional memory (active, identity-based, selective) and storage memory (passive, archival, potential). He criticizes the mythologizing of the past and shows how memory and history converge in the shadow of the Holocaust.

• Political dimension: He analyzes how states and societies use the past – from national myths (Renan) to the politics of memory after 1989 (the fall of communism, dealing with the Holocaust in Germany). He discusses tensions: personal experience vs. official memory, trauma vs. triumph, forgetting as a strategy (e.g. new beginnings after the war) and the risks of revisionism.

Assmann emphasizes that memory is not only an ethical obligation, but a dynamic process – it can be constructive (reconciliation) or destructive (nationalism, victimization). The book is interdisciplinary: it combines cultural studies, history, psychology and political science, with examples from Europe (Germany, Eastern Europe, the Balkans implicitly).

This masterpiece of modern memory theory – clear, accessible and provocative – is indispensable for understanding how the past is used in identity politics today. In the Croatian/Serbian context, it is particularly relevant due to the wars of the 1990s and transitional debates on memory.