In any culture, collective memory conveyed through rituals, ceremonies, and similar events reinforces a link with the past of a kind that involves no explicit reflection on the distance that separates us from it.
We usually regard such reflection as becoming possible only with the emergence of historiography, a literary genre that aims among other things to record and preserve information about events worth remembering. But it is a political, social and pedagogical task at the border of historiography, society, and politics that underlines the danger of any politics of history, as historiography has always been used by totalitarian rulers.
The importance of cultivating such a culture of memory exceeds the values of knowing history, because society determines who we are and where we go.
Center for Comparative and International Studies and SCiDEV, as part of the project “Culture of Memory and the European future of Albanian youth”, supported by the Kongresi Rinor Kombëtar /National Youth Council and Tirana Municipality, as part of the Tirana European Capital 2022 program, are bringing young people together from Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo in a discussion on the communist past of these countries, the need to recognize history as the main axis for the European future of young people.
Three decades after the fall of the communist regime, the knowledge of the past and the approach to it, still constitutes an axis to build the present and the future in Albania, not only as a need to know history, but also as a rejection of the culture of impunity in the country. The disregard of the past, of human destinies, of different social groups, began immediately after the fall of the regime and still continues, causing the former nomenclature to still have an impact on society in various forms. Seen in this direction, there can be no reconciliation and peace without historical memory, so the project suggests deepening the work for the awareness of the new generation, opening a debate through the analysis of the causes and consequences of dictatorial regimes, and above all the discussion on European identity and the opening of a dialogue for the European future of Albanian youth.
We discussed today with our speakers Edon Qesari, Roland Lami , Nevila Sokoli Xhindi, Geron Kamberi, Holta Heba and Dorina Gjipali , and excellent young people the obstacles for the development of the culture, society and economy of Albania as well as the positive and peaceful development of the countries in the region is related to the confrontation with the past.
Young generations must know history, understand what happened in the past and learn from it, so that history does not repeat itself, and we move towards peace and development.
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UNIVERSITETI MESDHETAR I SHQIPERISE
