Laure Neumayer

History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe memory Games Introduction Laure Neumayer, Georges Mink

Integrating the Central European Past into a Common Narrative: The Mobilizations Around the ‘Crimes of Communism’ in the European Parliament

After the Cold War, a new constellation of actors entered transnational European assemblies. Their interpretation of European history, which was based on the equivalence of the two ‘totalitarianisms’, Stalinism and Nazism, directly challenged the prevailing Western European narrative constructed on the uniqueness of the Holocaust as the epitome of evil. This article focuses on the mobilizations of these memory entrepreneurs in the European Parliament in order to take into account the issue of agency in European memory politics. Drawing on a social and political analysis centered on institutionally embedded actors, a process-tracing analysis investigates the adoption of the furthest-reaching official expression of a ‘totalitarian’ interpretation of Communism to date: the Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism from April 2009. This case study shows that the issue was put on the parliamentary agenda by a small group of Central and Eastern European politicians who had managed to ‘learn the ropes’ of effective advocacy in the Assembly. An official vision of Communism then emerged through intense negotiations structured by interwoven ideological and national lines of division. However, this narrative largely remains of regional, rather than pan-European, relevance. In the competition for the definition of ‘Europe’ and its values, the persistent diversity in the assessment of Communism gives evidence of the local rootedness of remembrance despite the pan-European ambitions of memory entrepreneurs.

Symbolic Policies versus European Reconciliation: the Hungarian ‘Status Law’

Since the end of the Cold War, painful historical events that could not be openly discussed during Communism have become more salient in public debates throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The border changes and forced population transfers that occurred after the First and the Second World War, and more specifically the plight of the civilians who experienced these traumatic events, have been one of the most contentious issues discussed in the new democratic regimes. The enduring tensions surrounding the situation of the Hungarian minorities are another striking example of the contemporary political consequences of these ‘wounded histories’. The redrawing of Hungary’s borders in the wake of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which resulted in the loss of a large part of its former territory and population,1 is still portrayed as a ‘historical injustice’ by some parts of the Hungarian society and political leaders. This perception justifies ‘symbolic policies’ aimed at reinforcing the link with the diaspora, as was made clear as early as 1989 when the Hungarian Constitution was amended to include the following statement of support: ‘The Republic of Hungary bears a sense of responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living outside its border and shall promote and foster their relations with Hungary.’

Advocating for the cause of the “victims of Communism” in the European political space: memory entrepreneurs in interstitial fields

The European Parliament (EP) adopted, between 2004 and 2009, a series of resolutions calling for recognition of Communist crimes and commemoration of their victims. This article focuses on an overlooked aspect of anti-Communist activism, the awareness-raising activities carried out by some Central European Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to perpetuate the cause through networks that enable them to exchange institutional credibility, scientific legitimacy, and policy-oriented knowledge with Institutes of National Memory, parts of academia, and victims associations. Although they use the techniques of expertise and scandalization that are often effective in European institutions, these memory entrepreneurs have largely failed to further their claims in the European Union (EU) after 2009. In line with the turn toward “practice” in EU studies and the increased attention paid to agency in memory politics, this article contends that the conditions of production of their narrative of indictment of Communism accounts for this relative lack of success. Because their demands produced a strong polarization inside the EP while colliding with established Western patterns of remembrance, these MEPs’ reach remains limited to their Conservative peers from the former Eastern bloc. This weak national and ideological representativeness hinders their capacity to impose their vision of the socialist period in the European political space.