The vanishing truth? Politics and memory in post-communist Europe

East European Quarterly

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 383-408

  Stan, Lavinia ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 43249176306     PISSN: 00128449     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. During the last 15 years, the literature on transitional justice in Eastern Europe has grown exponentially, touching on almost every aspect and every country. For comparative assessments of different elements of transitional justice, see Neil J. Kritz, ed., Transitional Justice. How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 1995), 3 volumes,
2. Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism (New York: Vintage Books, 1995),
3. Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
4. Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen Gonzalez-Enriquez and Paloma Aguilar, The Politics of Memory. Transitional Justice in Democratising Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),
5. Priscilla B. Hayer, Unspeakable Truths. Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York: Routledge, 2002),
6. and Noel Calhoun, Dilemmas of Justice in Eastern Europe's Democratic Transitions (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004). This article itself is part of a major comparative study of lustration, file access and court proceedings as post-communist transitional justice tools, which will be available soon.
7. Gilbert Durand, Les structures anthropologiques de l'imaginaire: Introduction a l'archetypologie generale (Paris: Bordas, 1969).
8. I have used the same framework in "Democratic Delusions: Ten Myths Accepted by the Romanian Democratic opposition," Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 50, no. 6 (November/December 2003), pp. 51-60.
9. These myths informed the presentations delivered by representatives of the independent agencies charged with effecting transitional justice in post-communist Europe at the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe 1944-5/1989 conference, organized by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, the Czech Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, and the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the National Security Services of East Germany, Warsaw, 16-18 June 2005. This was the first time representatives of a number of Eastern European independent agencies met with researchers working on the topic.
10. An exception is Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy. Nationalism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). He identifies the myth of de-communization, but none of the myths presented here.
11. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 48.
12. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
13. The International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia was established in The Hague in 1993 by a Security Council resolution. Its purview was represented by the serious violations of international humanitarian law, that is, crimes committed after the collapse of the communist regime. As such, this tribunal is not considered an instrument of decommunization.
14. These agencies include the State Commission on Information Security (in Bulgaria), the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (in Romania), the Historical Office and the Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security (in Hungary), the Institute of National Memory (in Poland), the Slovak Nation's Memory Institute (in Slovakia), the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (in the Czech Republic), and the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the National Security Services of East Germany (in Germany). No such agency was set up in Albania, but the Albanian Cold War Studies Center has been at the forefront of efforts to promote access to secret records of the communist regime.
15. See Krzysztof Persak and Lukasz Kaminski, A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944-1989 (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2005).
16. See, among others, Andrzej Walicki, "Transitional Justice and the Political Struggles of Post-communist Poland," in Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies, ed. by James A. McAdams (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 187 and 194-205.
17. Romania and Bulgaria, which after 1989 experienced elite reproduction, undertook spectacular gestures to break with their dictatorial past. In Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu was subjected to a speedy show-trial and quickly executed commando-style, along with his wife Elena. The trial and the execution were selectively broadcast on the national television. In Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov was also tried, found guilty and sentenced to prison term for mostly economic crimes. While other countries in the region undertook court procedures against top communist officials, no where else did they receive the death penalty or extended prison terms.
18. An example is a new mini-series based on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's once banned 1968 anti-Soviet novel, First Circle. The series reportedly attracted 15 million viewers a night. See Time (20 February 2006), p. 55.
19. For such a claim, see Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, pp. 395-407,
20. and Jurgen Habermas, "Constientizarea trecutului," Lettre Internationale, editia romana, no. 13 (Spring 1995), pp. 33-36. While the comparison between totalitarian regimes was undertaken by a number of authors, arguments failed to convince. Those who regard Stalinist communism and Nazism as two sides of the same totalitarian coin do not see eye to eye with those who claim that the Nazi record of human rights infringements was by far the worst. Members of these two camps do not change sides. The totalitarian model is far more accepted in Europe than in North America.
21. See, among others, Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, eds., Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorship in Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
22. Francois Furet and Ernst Nolle, Fascisme et Communisme (Paris: Plon, 1998),
23. Anne Applebaum, Gulag. A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2004),
24. and Henry Russo, ed., Stalinism and Nazism. History and Memory Compared (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
25. Stephane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism. Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
26. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, p. 227.
27. Nicolae Manolescu interviewed by Iosif Sava. "Seratele lui Iosif Sava," TVR International (23 March 2006).
28. Gazeta Wyborcza (25-26 September 1993).
29. Almost every country provides examples of old and sick victimizers whom local courts could not hold accountable for past abuses. In 1995, Stalinist-era Polish judge Maria Gurowska stood accused that in 1952 she sentenced to death General August Emil Fieldorf (alias Nil), the Home Army's chief of diversionary activities, following a show-trial. Gurowska rejected the charge, insisting that she had acted in accordance with her conscience: Fieldorf had to be "eliminated from society." Gurowska died before her case come to court. In 1993, former head of communist secret services Czeslaw Kiszczak was accused of causing the deaths of nine miners and wounding 25 others in a clash with special anti-riot police at Wujek in 1981. While traveling to the court, Kiszczak had a heart attack and could not cooperate with the investigating magistrates. In Romania, Stalinist-era Ministry of Interior Alexandru Draghici died in the early 1990s before being held accountable.
30. See the summary of the Ceausescus' trial, available at www.timisoara.com/ timisoara/rev/trialscript.html. For Jaruzelski's trial, see Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, pp. 125-258.
31. For the Polish examples, see Lavinia Stan, "The Politics of Memory in Poland: Lustration, File Access and Court Proceedings," Studies in Post-Communism Occasional Paper no. 10 (March 2006), p. 10.
32. Andrew Nagorski, The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 59.
33. Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Ride: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 30.
34. Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation, p. 116.
35. Calhoun, Dilemmas of Justice, especially the Introduction.
36. John Borneman, Settling Accounts. Violence, Justice and Accountability in Post-socialist Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. viii.
37. Robert Austin and Jonathan Ellison, "Albania," in Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe, ed. by Lavinia Stan (forthcoming 2007).
38. The author's personal interview with Paul Goma, Paris, August 2004.
39. Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, Album Memorial (Bucharest: Asociatia Fostilor Detinuti Politici, 2004). I thank Dr. Juliet Johnson for the information on the Memorial society.
40. Lavinia Stan, "Access to Securitate Files: The Trials and Tribulations of a Romanian Law," East European Politics and Societies, vol. 16, no. 1 (December 2002), pp. 55-90,
41. and "Spies, Files and Lies: Explaining the Failure of Access to Securitate Files," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 37, no. 3 (September 2004), pp. 341-359.
42. Associated Press (13 February 2005). The list was available at http://lista.atspace. org. Also Stan, "The Politics of Memory in Poland," pp. 30-31.
43. Joni Lovendusky, Politics and Society in Eastern Europe (London: MacMillan Education, 1987).
44. Barahona de Brito et el., The Politics of Memory, p. 222.
45. George Konrad, The Melancholy of Rebirth: Essays from Post-Communist Central Europe, 1989-1994 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1995), pp. 2-3.
46. For the Vasile Vetisanu case, see Gabriel Andreescu, "Cazul Vasile Vetisanu si aplicarea Legii 187/1999," Revista Romana de Drepturile Omului, no. 25 (2003), pp. 63-81.
47. For the Ludovic Rakoczi case, see Lavinia Stan, "Moral Cleansing Romanian Style," Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 49, no. 4 (July/August 2002), pp. 52-62.
48. Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "The Devil's Confessors: Priests, Communists, Spies and Informers," East European Politics and Societies, vol. 19, no. 4 (December 2005), pp. 655-685. Historians Gabriel Catalan and Dorin Dobrincu were the first to make the revelations.
49. Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "The Romanian Orthodox Church and Post-Communist Democratization," Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 52, no. 8 (December 2000), pp. 1467-1488,
50. republished in East European Perspectives, vol. 3, no. 4 (22 February 2001), and vol. 3, no. 5 (7 March 2001),
51. and "Religion, Politics and Sexuality in Romania," Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 57, no. 2 (March 2005), pp. 291-310.
52. One of the rituals of joining the ranks of informers involved choosing the code name together with the officer to whom the informer was to work for. Whereas the informers had the luxury of selecting their code names, the victims were assigned code names by the officer. Before the secret archives were turned public, the victims had no knowledge of their code name. See Lavinia Stan, "Inside the Securitate Archive" (Cold War International History Project, February 2005), available at www.wilsoncenter.org.
53. Also Dennis Deletant, Communist terror in Romania. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State 1948-1965 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999),
54. and Ceausescu and the Securitate. Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).
55. Tanase's secret file was selectively published in a book cleverly contrasting the entries in the writer's own diary with the reports and information notes included in his Securitate file. The diary did not divulge the names of those Tanase was in contact with while pursued by the political police. The secret file mentions the spies only by their code names. After being unmasked, Oprescu was expelled from the Group of Social Dialogue. Oprescu never publicly apologized. Stelian Tanase, Acasa se vorbeste in soapta (Bucharest: Compania, 2002).
56. The extant Securitate archive includes around 1.9 million files on victims and informers (for a population of 23 million), while the Stasi archive includes some six million files (for a population of 17 million). See John Koehler, Stasi. The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999).
57. Marius Oprea, Banalitatea raului. O istorie a Securitatii in documente. 1949-1989 (Bucharest: Polirom, 2002).
58. The Institute of National Remembrance determined that the spy with the code name Nowak was in fact Niezabitowska. See Andrew Purvis, "The Reckoning. How Accusations of Communist-Era Collaboration Are Shaking up Central Europe," Time Europe (4 April 2005),
59. and The New York Times (14 January 2005).