Contenu du sommaire : Mémoire de la Première Guerre mondiale en Europe médiane

Mémoire de la première guerre mondiale au sein des jeunes droites roumaines de l'entre-deux-guerresAt first glance, the First World War represents, in terms of ideology and organization, the alpha and the omega of the right-wing youth movements, notably the fascist Iron Guard. A sharper look, however, reveals two deep faults. The most obvious one is the generation gap between these rightists and the older classes concerned by the war : Romanian fascism strives to minimize the achievements of the preceding generation in order to boost its own messianic mission. For the members of the Iron Guard, glorification and imitation of the military are not addressed to the « great men », but to the anonymous unknown soldier, the hero sprung from the masses. Three examples will serve to verify this captatio memoria of the Great War, to the benefit of a dynamic projection, that of fascism.

La mémoire roumaine de la mission Berthelot (1918-2007) The remembrance of the Berthelot military mission is a sort of mirror of Franco-Romanian relations and even of the fluctuations in Romania's domestic policy. Between 1918, when the mission ended, and 2007, when the mission entered the EU, several different stages need to be identified. First, in Berthelot's lifetime, and afterwards, up to the Second World War, gratitude is the dominant feeling ; after 1947 the Stalinist regime destroys the legend, which survives only in emigration literature ; the Ceauêescu period is characterized by a sort of rehabilitation of the mission grounded in Russophobia, feigned or authentic ; finally, in the post-communist period, various currents blossom, between historical authenticity and nationalism, but above everything, recollection is fading.

Une guerre invisible ? The First World War, if not negated or omitted, is somehow curiously invisible in the Bulgarian historical narrative. It disappears in the successive wars fought by Bulgaria at that time : the First Balkan War of 1912-1913, the Second Balkan War of 1913, and the First World War of 1915-1918. All these conflicts follow the same logic of ethno-territorial rivalry with the neighbouring Balkan countries and their disastrous result for Bulgaria. The memory of these events was kept in different ways. In the twenties and thirties the responsibility of defeat was thrown on to the politicians and the gallantry of the Bulgarian soldiers was glorified ; under the communist regime, the mutiny of September 1918 was stressed as an event parallel to the Bolshevik revolution ; in post-communist Bulgaria, as a new member of the European Union, the commemoration of the First World War is hard to cultivate.

La mémoire et l'identité nationale : la mémoire de la grande guerre en Serbie
In Serbia commemoration of the First World War is flanked by the commemoration of two important political events : the Balkan wars and the creation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Hence a dilemma whether commemoration of the First World War should be a part of the continuing Serbian experience or whether the war was a unique event that created a new Yugoslav identity. It must be stated that the two kinds of approach have existed side by side and lived parallel lives. The veterans' associations have preserved the Serbian memory. The Yugoslav memory, created by King Alexander, was transformed in the seventies into the concept of Serbia as the Yugoslav Piedmont.

La mémoire polonaise de la première guerre mondiale
The War of 1914-1918 is considered by Poles as « their » war only because it led to the recreation of the Polish state. This point of view ignores almost entirely two other aspects of the war : the horror and extreme misery of the soldier's life in the trenches, as well as the everyday life of the civilian population. Chapters dedicated to this period in various monographic studies on Polish history are sometimes entitled : « The struggle for the Polish cause. » A book on historical and statistical data, published in 2000, lists the Poles who served in various Polish military units, but not those who served in the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and German armies. The Polish Legions were and remain preponderant in the memory, mainly because of the position held by Józef Pilsudski, and the fact that their military engagement far surpassed that of other military units. The pro-German and pro-Austrian position of Pilsudski, based on his opposition to Russia, stood in contrast to that of Roman Dmowski, who supported the Entente. Controversy, symbolized by these two names, remained vivid in political life and in historical works of the interwar period and in unofficial discourse in the People's Republic of Poland, even after the collapse of communism. The final part of the article deals with a small but significant aspect of remembrance of the First World War : a small guidebook to the war cemeteries in Galicia (Austrian Poland), elaborated and published by an amateur local historian.

Des luttes fratricides à la gloire de l'injustice subie : grande guerre et petites guerres dans la mémoire Hongroise du premier conflit mondialIsolated among both the victors and the vanquished, Hungary has developed a specific memory of war in Europe. Fighting on the 1913 territory, not to mention the Trianon borders, took place (with one noticeable exception) only between November 1918 and 1921. The battlefields after 1919 were out of reach. The predominant chronology, therefore, cuts into reality. Deep internal divisions within the old kingdom also interfered with collective remembrance. The Trianon cult, associated with political revisionism, made it impossible for example to cope with the history of the Italian front. Though the first memorials, including extensive lists of names, were a by-product of the Great War, the dominant recollection of it in Hungary was mostly restricted to the private sphere.

Une mémoire hongroise particulière : le cas d'Aladár Kuncz
In Hungary, as in all the European countries involved in the First World War, literary works have contributed to building the collective recollection of the conflict. In commemorating the 1920s and the 1930s, autobiographies and testimonies take the lion's share. Certain works stand out for the echo they raise, for the scale of their diffusion and for the imprint they leave in the mind. In the case of Hungary, a narrative eloquently illustrates this dialogue between collective and individual memory. Such is Fekete Kolostor (Black Monastery) by Aladár Kuncz. The success of this testimony, translated into several languages, has never flagged since its publication in 1931. This work is a document of undeniable historical worth, and is almost the only narrative with literary value about the internment of foreigners in France from 1914 to 1918. Other Hungarian memoirs of the war have skipped the barrier of language but none has maintained the reputation of Black Monastery. This latter still nourishes the Hungarian recollection of the war years and continues to feed historiography, thanks to a growing interest in the shadowy zones of the Great War wherever individual resistance to the prevailing political and military logic was expressed.

La legiobanka, un outil contre la brutalisation de la mémoire de guerre Tchécoslovaque
SUMMARY. — The analytical approach of George Mosse, which examines the brutalization of the combatants and of European societies during the First World War, is highly stimulating and relevant to the analysis of many European countries. Even if it is open to criticism like any other analytical method, it is generally applicable to most of the Central European countries, in spite of their peculiar history and their precarious recollection of it. One exception stands out : Czechoslovakia between the two World Wars. Building the Legiobanka as a Legionnaires' memorial site served to present alternative values : pacifism, solidarity, the constructive mind, support of economic enterprise, the social rehabilitation of veterans into democratic society, and the promotion of modern art.

Les Tchécoslovaques de France et la mémoire de la première guerre mondiale
The First World War, in which Czech immigrants in France served as volunteers in the French Foreign Legion, provided these immigrants with a memorial site on which to build their recollections of the conflict. Through this they were able both to maintain a link with their native land, the Czechoslovakia born from the victory of 1918, and to build a community in France, thanks to the monuments they constructed and the ceremonies they observed. Their aim was also a symbolic appropriation of French territory, and the result was a faster assimilation.

L'« europe des 52 »... A mediatized and popular European union, grouping its fifty-two member states, exists in the form of the European Union of Football Association (UEFA). Founded in 1954, the UEFA grew up in the same period as Europe's political construction, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Consequently, it is legitimate to analyse the major stages in the construction of this Europe, and to study its mechanism and basic values. It is also useful to examine the possible existence of links between the construction of this Europe and the development of the UEFA : should European competitions, in the most popular sport in the world, be seen as a means of familiarizing people to the European idea or as a way of rekindling in the popular mind the conflicts of the past ?