Original scientific paper
Historical Consciousness of Young People in Europe at the Turn of the Millennium
Nebojša Blanuša
orcid.org/0000-0002-9430-7446
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper analyzes the general structure and coherence of the historical consciousness of young people in five clusters of European
countries, using the results of the international study Youth and History of 1995. The analysis suggests there are two main patterns of
historical thinking and the construction of historico-political identity
that the author calls works of historical progressivism and the forge of
patriotism. These modernist schemes of thought, grounded in the
conflicting perceptions of the nation, democracy and Europe, make
historical consciousness ambivalent. The coherence of historical consciousness is somewhat lower in the countries of Eastern Europe,
which can be explained by the impact of the “neuralgias” of the collapse of socialism and the discontinuity in social, political and cultural spheres as expressed in the ideological cleavages of that time. In the postsocialist Central-European countries on the other hand, this coherence is the highest, the fact that the author attributes to the radical shift from the ideology of socialism and the domination of the cleavage traditionalism-occidentalism.
Keywords
historical consciousness; disciplinary matrix; works of historical progressivism; forge of patriotism; ideological cleavages; Jörn Rüsen
Hrčak ID:
20744
URI
Publication date:
12.6.2006.
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