Integrating the past: regional integration and historical reckoning in Central and Eastern Europe

TitleIntegrating the past: regional integration and historical reckoning in Central and Eastern Europe
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2011
AuthorsJohn Gledhill
JournalNationalities Papers
Volume39
Issue4
Pagination481-506
ISSN00905992
Abstract

This article considers how regional integration in Europe has informed processes of collective remembrance and transitional justice in Central and Eastern Europe. By taking the cases of Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic, two claims are made. First, although European institutions have not initiated top-down projects of historical reckoning, activists who have an interest in promoting engagement with the recent past have been able to draw the political, financial and/or judicial weight of European institutions behind particular reckoning initiatives, on an ad hoc basis. Second, the nature of the projects that have been realized with the assistance of European resources has varied across the region, according to the extent of prior efforts to promote collective remembrance and transitional justice at the national level. Where there have previously been constraints on historical reckoning, activists have drawn “Europe” behind efforts to promote national-level confrontations with particularly national experiences of communist rule. By contrast, where there has previously been extensive state sponsorship of collective remembrance projects and/or processes of transitional justice, European resources have been used in support of efforts to raise awareness of the repressions of communist rule, and transitions from that system of rule, among a wider, international audience.

URLhttps://libproxy.cc.stonybrook.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74669305&site=ehost-live&scope=site
DOI10.1080/00905992.2011.580733
Short TitleIntegrating the past