Pamięć represji. Świadkowie Jehowy w Związku Radzieckim
The memory of repression. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Soviet Union

Author(s): Tomasz Bugaj
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Customs / Folklore, Theology and Religion, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Sociology of Religion, History of Religion
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: oral story memoire; folk tradition; memory; Jehovah’s Witnesses; repression; Soviet Union
Summary/Abstract: [an excerpt from a review] “The monograph showing the narrative aspects of Jehovah's Witnesses' memory significantly complements memory studies by showing how culture and religion influence images of traumatic events from the past. Analysing the narrations of the respondents, the author draws attention to the mechanisms of evaluation (e.g. of torturers) and taming the trauma of the past, and these mechanisms result – as the reading of the book shows – from the religion and the values transmitted in it.The monograph is therefore an interesting, valuable and necessary study. It is an erudite work, the author refers not only to the works of culture scholars, but also sociologists, including the sociologists of religion, which I think is justified and necessary. It is based on a large, representative, and what should be appreciated, independently collected material, which includes narratives of members of the examined community living previously in the borderlands, as well as those living on the territories of several former republics of the USSR”.

• Details
• Contents