As the war in Ukraine unfolds, the Hungarian government seems less enthusiastic about the idea of state sovereignty than one might have anticipated given Hungary’s historic past. Moreover, there is a surge of pro-Russian sentiment among government supporters. This is counterintuitive in light of prevailing mnemonic practices which put heavy emphasis on Hungary’s struggle for freedom and independence. The new developments suggest that the role of collective memory in collective identity formation needs to be reconsidered, especially concerning the apparent inhibition of otherwise persistent and widely shared memories. The article discusses the problem in the context of socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting and social identity complexity theory. It puts forward two complementary arguments: (1) this Janus-faced public behaviour might be accounted for by selective commemorative practices of the government and (2) how memories of historical events sustain a shared sense of belonging and continuity is not only contingent on group membership but also on the ever-changing group interest.
AbelMUmanathSWertschJV, et al. (2017) Collective memory: how groups remember their past. In: MeadeMLHarrisCBVan BergenP, et al (eds) Collaborative Remembering: Theories, Research, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 280–296.
2.
AnastasioTJEhrenbergerKAWatsonP, et al. (2012) Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation: Analogous Processes on Different Levels. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
3.
AndersonMCBjorkRABjorkEL (1994) Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition20(5): 1063–1087.
4.
AssmannJ (1995) Collective memory and cultural identity. New German Critique65: 125–133.
5.
Bar-TalD (2000) Shared Beliefs in a Society: Social Psychological Analysis. London: Sage.
6.
BenazzoS (2017) Not all the past needs to be used: features of Fidesz’s politics of memory. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics11(2): 198–221.
Bíró-NagyAJuhászVSzászi VargaÁA (2023) The world through Hungarian eyes: foreign policy attitudes in Hungary in 2023. Report, Policy Solutions, Budapest, 7 June.
9.
BlatzCWRossM (2009) Historical memories. In: BoyerPWertschJV (eds) Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 223–237.
BrewerMB (2011) Identity and conflict. In: Bar-TalD (ed.) Intergroup Conflicts and Their Resolution. New York: Psychology Press, pp. 125–143.
12.
BrewerMB (2010) Social identity complexity and acceptance of diversity. In: CrispRJ (ed.) The Psychology of Social and Cultural Diversity. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 11–33.
13.
BrownADKouriNHirstW (2012) Memory’s malleability: its role in shaping collective memory and social identity. Frontiers in Psychology3: 257.
14.
CaseyES (1992) Forgetting remembered. Man and World25: 281–311.
ComanAHirstW (2015) Social identity and socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting: the effects of group membership. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General144(4): 717–722.
17.
ComanAStoneCBCastanoE, et al. (2014) Justifying atrocities: the effect of moral-disengagement strategies on socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting. Psychological Science25(6): 1281–1285.
18.
ConnertonP (2008) Seven types of forgetting. Memory Studies1(1): 59–71.
19.
ConwayB (2003) Active remembering, selective forgetting, and collective identity: the case of bloody Sunday. Identity3(4): 305–323.
20.
CucAKoppelJHirstW (2007) Silence is not golden: a case for socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting. Psychological Science18: 727–733.
21.
CucAOzuruYManierD, et al. (2006) On the formation of collective memories: the role of a dominant narrator. Memory & Cognition34(4): 752–762.
22.
DeimR (2022) Entanglements of art and memory activism in Hungary’s illiberal democracy. Heritage, Memory and Conflict2: 61–75.
EchterhoffGHigginsETLevineJM (2009) Shared reality: experiencing commonality with others’ inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological Science4(5): 496–521.
25.
FaginMM (2018) Effects of conversations with sites of public heritage on collective memory. In: LabradorAMSilbermanNA (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 405–418.
GaskellGDWrightDB (2008) Group differences in memory for a political event. In: PennebakerJWPáezDRiméB (eds) Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives. New York: Psychology Press, pp. 175–189.
GyániG (2006) Memory and discourse on the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Europe-Asia Studies58(8): 1199–1208.
30.
HackingI (1995) Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
31.
HalbwachsM (1992) On Collective Memory (ed and trans. CoserLA). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
32.
HarmsV (2017) A tale of two revolutions: Hungary’s 1956 and the un-doing of 1989. East European Politics and Societies31(3): 479–499.
33.
Heenen-WolffSVerougstraeteABazanA (2011) The Belgo-Belgian conflict in individual narratives: psychodynamics of trauma in the history of Belgium. Memory Studies5(1): 58–73.
34.
HirstWComanA (2018) Building a collective memory: the case for collective forgetting. Current Opinion in Psychology23: 88–92.
35.
HirstWEchterhoffG (2008) Creating shared memories in conversation: toward a psychology of collective memory. Social Research75(1): 183–216.
36.
HirstWEchterhoffG (2012) Remembering in conversations: the social sharing and reshaping of memories. Annual Review of Psychology63: 55–79.
37.
HirstWManierD (2008) Towards a psychology of collective memory. Memory16(3): 183–200.
38.
HirstWYamashiroJK (2017) Social aspects of forgetting. In: MeadeMLHarrisCBVan BergenP, et al (eds) Collaborative Remembering: Theories, Research, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 76–99.
39.
HoggMAReidSA (2006) Social identity, self-categorization, and the communication of group norms. Communication Theory16: 7–30.
40.
HydeL (2019) A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.
41.
IvanovHLaruelleM (2022) Why still pro-Russia? Making sense of Hungary’s and Serbia’s pro-Russia stance. Report, Henry Jackson Society, London, December.
LambertAJSchererLNRogersC, et al. (2009) How does collective memory create a sense of the collective? In: BoyerPWertschJV (eds) Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 194–217.
45.
LehmanMMalmbergKJ (2011) Overcoming the effects of intentional forgetting. Memory & Cognition39: 335–347.
46.
MarquesJPáezDSerraAF (2008) Social sharing, emotional climate, and the transgenerational transmission of memories: the Portuguese colonial war. In: PennebakerJWPáezDRiméB, et al (eds) Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives. New York: Psychology Press, pp. 253–275.
47.
MichaelianK (2011) The epistemology of forgetting. Erkenntnis74: 399–424.
48.
MutlutürkATekcanAİBodurogluA (2023) The structure and organization of collective memory representations. Memory Studies16(5): 1343–1359.
49.
NyyssönenHMetsäläJ (2019) Building on legacy and tradition: commemorations of 1956 in Hungary. National Identities21(4): 379–393.
50.
OlickJKRobbinsJ (1998) Social memory studies: from ‘collective memory’ to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices. Annual Review of Sociology24: 105–140.
OysermanDDawsonA (2020) Your fake news, our facts: identity-based motivation shapes what we believe, share, and accept. In: GreifenederRJafféMENewmanEJ, et al (eds) The Psychology of Fake News: Accepting, Sharing, and Correcting Misinformation. London: Routledge, pp. 173–195.
54.
PáezDLiuJH (2011) Collective memory of conflicts. In: Bar-TalD (ed.) Intergroup Conflicts and Their Resolution. New York: Psychology Press, pp. 105–124.
55.
PasupathiMWainrybC (2017) Remembering good and bad times together: functions of collaborative remembering. In: MeadeMLHarrisCBVan BergenP, et al (eds) Collaborative Remembering: Theories, Research, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 261–279.
56.
PietraszewskiD (2016) Priming race: does the mind inhibit categorization by race at encoding or recall?Social Psychological and Personality Science7: 85–91.
57.
RainerJM (2011) The crimes of the communist regime in Hungary: national report. In: Proceedings of the international conference of the crimes of the communist regimes: an assessment by historians and legal experts (ed SvobodaDO’ConnorC), Prague, 24–26 February, Prague: Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, pp. 157–192.
58.
RajaramS (2017) Collaborative inhibition in group recall: cognitive principles and implications. In: MeadeMLHarrisCBVan BergenP, et al (eds) Collaborative Remembering: Theories, Research, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 55–75.
RoccasSBrewerMB (2002) Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review6(2): 88–106.
61.
RoedigerHLIIIZarombFMButlerAC (2009) The role of repeated retrieval in shaping collective memory. In: BoyerPWertschJV (eds) Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–170.
62.
RothbergM (2022) Lived multidirectionality: ‘Historikerstreit 2.0’ and the politics of Holocaust memory. Memory Studies15(6): 1316–1329.
63.
RuinH (2018) Being with the Dead: Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
64.
SelenyA (2014) Revolutionary Road: 1956 and the fracturing of Hungarian historical memory. In: BernhardMKubikJ (eds) Twenty Years After Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 37–59.
65.
StetsJEMcCaffreeK (2019) The moral identity and immoral behavior. In: StetsJESerpeRT (eds) Identities in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 137–165.
66.
StoneCBHirstW (2014) (Induced) Forgetting to form a collective memory. Memory Studies7(3): 314–327.
67.
StoneCBBarnierAJSuttonJ, et al. (2010) Building consensus about the past: schema consistency and convergence in socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting. Memory18(2): 170–184.
68.
StoneCBLuminetOJayACV, et al. (2022) Do public speeches induce ‘collective’ forgetting? The Belgian King’s 2012 summer speech as a case study. Memory Studies15(4): 713–730.
69.
StormBCLevyBJ (2012) A progress report on the inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting. Memory & Cognition40: 827–843.
70.
SükösdM (2022) Victorious victimization: Orbán the Orator – deep securitization and state populism in Hungary’s propaganda state. In: KockCVillasdenL (eds) Populist Rhetorics (Case studies and a minimalist definition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 165–186.
71.
SuttonJ (2020) Place and memory: history, cognition, phenomenology. In: Floyd-WilsonMSullivanGA (eds) Geographies of Embodiment in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 113–133.
72.
TanesiniA (2018) Collective amnesia and epistemic injustice. In: CarterJAClarkAKallestrupJ, et al (eds) Socially Extended Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 195–219.
73.
UrbánÁPolyákGHorváthK (2023) How public service media disinformation shapes Hungarian public discourse. Media and Communication11(4): 62–72.
74.
Van DijkTA (2014) Discourse and Knowledge: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
75.
Vinitzky-SeroussiVTeegerC (2010) Unpacking the unspoken: silence in collective memory and forgetting. Social Forces88(3): 1103–1122.
76.
WertschJV (2002) Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
77.
WertschJV (2008) Collective memory and narrative templates. Social Research75(1): 133–156.
78.
WertschJV (2009) Collective memory. In: BoyerPWertschJV (eds) Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–137.
79.
WertschJVKarumidzeZ (2009) Spinning the past: Russian and Georgian accounts of the war of August 2008. Memory Studies2(3): 377–391.
YamashiroJKHirstW (2020) Convergence on collective memories: central speakers and distributed remembering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General149(3): 461–481.
82.
ZerubavelY (1994) The death of memory and the memory of death: Masada and the Holocaust as historical metaphors. Representations45: 72–100.
