At around the same time , the Soviet geopolitical strategy of territorial conquest was developed , mystified by the messianic theory of the inevitable world revolution , notably by Lenin , which resulted in the failure of the Polish-Soviet war in 1921 , in contrast to the Bolsheviks ’ intentions . We can say , in succinct terms , that the meeting of these two geopolitical approaches resulted first in the Treaty of Rapallo of 1922 ( with a secret clause of military cooperation ), and then in 1939 , in the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact to which we will return later . Stalin , after the victory of 1945 , pleaded the need to build a security belt around the only socialist state , obsessed by the memory of the threats posed to the young Russian revolution by the Western countries supporting the White armies . He was already justifying the conquest of the USSR ’ s neighbouring states with history , interpreted in his own manner . In Stalinist rhetoric , the conquest was camouflaged by the notion of “ friendly countries ”, friends forced to refuse the Marshall Plan and accept the COMECON and the Warsaw Pact .
As we have just seen , geopolitical conceptions are closely linked to the historical context , to the configuration of political geography as well as to the strategic constructions produced by the actors involved in international relations .
What happened in the realm of memory in the post-war period ?
In the immediate post-World War II period , efforts were made to forget painful memories by adapting historical and memorial narratives to the idea of the necessary obliteration of traumas , as the French philosopher Paul Ricœur would have said , who devoted most of his work to the link between history and memory , with memorial actions oscillating between over-valuing and obliterating memory .
The political dictate on the obliteration of memory is illustrated by the speech delivered by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946 , highlighted by the House of European History on one of its walls in Brussels :
« We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past . We must look to the future .»
The last two decades of the Cold War between the 1970s and the 1980s saw the emergence of manifold manifestations of memory . Paradigmatic studies are on the rise . These processes are just
3 . House of European History in Brussels .
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EUROPE INSIGHT
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