The road to modern Jewish politics. Political tradition and political reconstruction in the Jewish community of Tsarist Russia

This article examines how Maoist theory and practice were imported to France during the 1960s. A syncretic phenomenon, as notions developed in the Chinese cultural context were adapted to the very different Gallic situation, French Maoism proved to be especially influential among students at the École normale supérieure at the rue d’Ulm in Paris, where the Marxist theoretician, Louis Althusser, was teaching. Maoist philosophy facilitated critiques of the Moscow-aligned French Communist Party and its student union; it enabled Althusser's rethinking of the Marxist tradition, and it ultimately provided ammunition for his students’ eventual break with his “theoreticism.” Maoism's fecund contribution to French intellectual culture in the 1960s, helping to lay the groundwork for the events of May 1968, derived principally from its dual theoretical and practical nature. This article highlights two specific Maoist tenants—the inevitably violent nature of revolution and the ersatz-empiricist method of the “investigation”—and suggests how, after 1968, French Maoism ultimately surrendered the former as the latter proved more useful to direct democratic politics.     

By the People,for the People. The Case of a Community Museum of Traumatic Greek Heritage

Abstract

This article will delineate the history and activities of the Museum of Political Exiles of Ai Stratis in Greece. The museum was founded in the 1980s by a group of former inmates who were banished in the North Aegean island of Ai Stratis, a site of political confinement between 1920s and 1960s. Since its inception, the museum has aspired to be a platform of communication, a place of healing that is by the people for the people. The aim here is to examine how this was achieved and what lessons have been learned from the endeavours of an organization that deals with a rather traumatic chapter of modern Greek history. Emphasis will be placed especially on what role the subjects of history have assumed in the design of the permanent exhibition and the educational and cultural activities.