Introduction: “Formulas of Betrayal”—Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory

Abstract

Basing their study on conceptualizations current in anthropology, history, memory studies, and cultural sociology, Eleonora Narvselius and Gelinada Grinchenko offer a new, complex approach to understanding the violations of loyalty and trust that constitute betrayal, as well as their present-day revisions. Acts of betrayal and their subsequent reinterpretations are viewed through the prism of power, boundary-making, and actorship. The main argument is that in the shifting political–ideological contexts of twentieth-century Europe, these three variables correlate in various, but not infinite, ways. This introductiory chapter addresses several possible strategies evident in revising the old and constructing the new “formulas of betrayal” in the current European context. One part of these strategies refers to the political and legal modalities of betrayal, while in others the cultural and social underpinnings of moral border-crossing and change of loyalty are decisive. The following chapters in the volume take the underlying motivations of “formulas of betrayal” into consideration in more detail.