The archive as active memory within the framework of historical policy. An outline of the research problem

Abstract

Contemporary discussions about historical policy are emerging among historians, as well as ordinary citizens. What role do archives play in collective memory and historical policy? Are they merely passive repositories of cultural memory, as Aleida Assmann argues? Or are they rather institutions of active remembering? The text is an attempt to outline this topic and answer these questions by analyzing contemporary examples of the activities of various types of archives, both state and community-run. The presented activities of archives place them, like museums, in the circle of institutions of active cultural memory. Consequently, archives acting in the service of critical history cannot be detached from the historical policy that exists regardless of times and systems, carried out either as state policy or its opposite “counter-policy.”