This article takes a sociological perspective on the phenomenon of national myth making in collective memory. It develops an original theoretical concept, the ghost hero. The ghost hero, we posit, is a reinvented historical actor who, despite being implicated in acts of moral or legal turpitude, is elevated and venerated within national communities. In building a theoretical frame, we use two historical cases: Latvian aviator and Nazi-era collaborator Herberts Cukurs, and Marshall Ion Antonescu, pro-fascist leader of Romania in World War II. Our concept draws on the microsociological theory of Erving Goffman to characterize a historical narrative as the presentation of a national “self” and the structural functionalist perspective to examine the sociological functions of the ghost hero for state and society. We suggest that the ghost hero concept could extend beyond these cases and regions to analyze the heroization of historical figures implicated in atrocities.
AngrickAKleinP (2009) The ‘Final Solution’ in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944. New York: Berghan Books.
4.
BărbulescuADegeratuLGuşuC (2013) The Holocaust as reflected in communist and post-communist Romanian textbooks. Intercultural Education24(1–2): 41–60.
5.
BirdE (2003) The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
6.
BodnarJE (1991) Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
BrahamRL (1994) The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry. New York: Columbia University Press.
8.
BucurM (2009) Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-century Romania. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
9.
ChioveanuM (2003) A deadlock of memory: The myth and cult of Ion Antonescu in post-communist Romania. Studia Hebraica3: 102–123.
10.
CioflâncăA (2004) “A grammar of exculpation” in communist historiography: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust under Ceausescu. Romanian Journal of Political Science4(2): 29–46.
11.
CooleyCH (1918) Social Process. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
12.
CooleyCH (1922) Human Nature and the Social Order (Revised Edition). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
13.
DurkheimE (2008, orig. 1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Dover Publications.
14.
EglitisDS (2002) Imagining the Nation: History, Modernity, and Revolution in Latvia. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
15.
EzergailisA (1996) The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944: The Missing Center. Riga: The Historical Institute of Latvia and Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
EzergailisA (2015) Caur velna zobiem: Vācu laiki šodien. 1941-1945. Esejas un domas. Riga: Self-published.
18.
FrilingTIoanidRIonescuME (2004) Final Report of the International Commission for the Study of Holocaust in Romania. Iaşi: Polirom.
19.
GoffmanE (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.
20.
GoffmanE (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
21.
GordonA (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
22.
GordonA (2011) Some thoughts on haunting and futurity. Borderlands10(2): 1–21.
23.
HalbwachsM (1992) Maurice Halbwachs: On Collective Memory (edited by CoserL). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
24.
HobsbawmERangerT (1984) The Invention of Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
25.
IonescuS (2015) Jewish Resistance to Romanianization: 1940-1944. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
26.
KansteinerW (2002) Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies. History and Theory41(2): 179–197.
27.
KelsoM (1999) The deportation of Gypsies from Romania to Transnistria 1942-44. In: KenrickD (ed) The Gypsies During the Second World War: In the Shadow of the Swastika. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, pp.95–130.
28.
KelsoMEglitisD (2014) Holocaust commemoration in Romania: Roma and the contested politics of memory and memorialization. Journal of Genocide Research16(4): 487–511.
29.
KopečekM (2008) Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989. New York: Central European Press.
LowenthalD (1985) The Past Is a Foreign Country. New York: Oxford University Press.
32.
MalinowskiB (1948orig. 1926) Myth in primitive psychology. In: MalinowskiB (ed) Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, pp.72–118.
33.
MälksooM (2009) The memory politics of becoming European: The East European subalterns and the collective memory of Europe. European Journal of International Relations15(4): 653–680.
34.
MarkJ (2010) The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
35.
MarplesDR (2007) Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. Budapest: Central European Press.
36.
MeadGH (1964) The nature of the past. In: ReckAJ (ed) Selected Writings: George Herbert Mead. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp.345–354.
37.
MertonRK (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
MoldovanR2015The politics of memory and representation: Film and the Holocaust in central and southeastern Europe. In: The Holocaust in Southeastern Europe conference, Bucharest, Romania, 25–26 May 2015.
40.
Museum of Jews in Latvia. Interview with Mendel Vulfovich, 9 December 1944 [document]. MEL PL 8404.
41.
National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania (2007) Survey of opinions regarding the Holocaust in Romania and perceptions of inter-ethnic relations.
42.
PlavnieksR (2017) Nazi Collaborators on Trial during the Cold War. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
43.
PressB (2000) The Murder of Jews in Latvia, 1941-1945. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
44.
Romanian Public Television (2006) Mari Romani. Available at: www.mariromani.ro(accessed 6 July 2007).
45.
RyanL (2010) Memory, power and resistance: The anatomy of a tripartite relationship. Memory Studies4(2):154–169.
46.
SchwartzB (1997) Collective memory and history: How Abraham Lincoln became a symbol of racial equality. The Sociological Quarterly38(3): 469–496.
SmithAD (1999) Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
49.
SolonariV (2007) An Important New Document on the Romanian Policy of Ethnic Cleansing during World War II. Holocaust and Genocide Studies21(2): 268–297.
50.
TrouillotMR (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
51.
VerderyK (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. New York: Columbia University Press.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Interview with Henry Bermanis, 12 July 1995 [document]. USHMM, RG-50.030(accessed 1 June 2016).
54.
WardJM (2013) Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Josef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia. New York: Cornell University Press.
55.
WezelK (2016) The unfinished business of perestroika: Latvia’s memory politics and its quest for acknowledgment of victimhood in Europe. Nationalities Papers44(4): 560–577.
56.
ZellisL (2006) ‘Baigā gada’ mīts un tā evolūcija. In: Zellis L (ed) Mīti Latvijas Vēsturē. Rakstu krājums. Riga: University of Latvia, pp.92–103.
57.
Zessin-JurekL (2015) The rise of an East European community of memory? On lobbying for the gulag memory in Brussels. In: PakierMWawrzyniakJ (eds) Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives. New York: Berghahn Books, pp.131–149.
