This article was downloaded by: [Csilla Kiss]

On: 27 May 2014, At: 07:26

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The European Legacy: Toward New

Paradigms
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cele20

Historical Memory in Post-Cold War

Europe
Csilla Kiss
Published online: 22 May 2014.

To cite this article: Csilla Kiss (2014): Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe, The European
Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2014.919189

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2014.919189

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 The European Legacy, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2014.919189

Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe

CSILLA KISS

ABSTRACT This article examines European memory and memory politics. Taking as my starting point
the deepening divisions between the “old” and “new” members of the European Union since the 2004
and 2007 enlargements, I investigate whether differences in official memory concerning World War II on
the one hand and communism on the other should be regarded as permanent. Using examples from the
development of West-European postwar memory-regimes and comparing them to the current state in post-
communist Europe I suggest that with respect to historical memory the two parts of Europe underwent sim-
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

ilar developments, crises and debates, thus making eventual convergence and consensus possible. However,
there are various factors that complicate progress in this area: postcommunist countries have to contend not
only with their wartime history but also with the experience of communism, which latter colours the assess-
ment of the former.

MEMORY-POLITICS AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

Besides the economic and political problems that have plagued the European Union
since the 2004 and 2007 Eastern enlargements and threaten integration in the economic
and financial crisis that started in 2008, European unity has been also challenged by what
Thomas Ferenczi called in his article in Le Monde “Une mémoire à deux vitesses” (a
two-speeded Europe).1 Ferenczi criticizes Poland for blocking EU-negotiations with
Russia as well as for a new law of decommunization which requires representatives of
different professions to declare whether or not they collaborated with the secret services.
(At the time the refusal of Polish Member of the European Parliament Bronislaw
Geremek to give such a declaration and the consecutive threats directed against him met
with widespread international protest.) Although his article was prompted by the poli-
cies of the Kaczynski-twins, Ferenczi argues that signs of this malaise are also perceptible
in other countries of the former communist bloc, and are especially related to the issues
of Nazism and communism.
Indeed, significant differences concerning European memory characterize post-
Cold War European politics. “(Re)joining Europe” was the rallying cry of the regime
transitions in 1989/90 in East Central Europe. Besides the spiritual and cultural assertion
by these peoples that they too belong to Europe despite the forty (sometimes seventy)
years of authoritarian rule that separated them from what was simply called “the West,”
this motto also expressed a very tangible political goal: that of becoming full members of

University of Aberdeen, Department of Politics and International Relations, King’s College Edward Wright Building,
Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, UK. Email: csilla.kiss@mail.mcgill.ca

© 2014 International Society for the Study of European Ideas

 2 CSILLA KISS

the European community of states that had been built for several decades following the
end of World War II, and which in 1993 became the European Union. Finally in 2004
(and in 2007 in the case of Romania and Bulgaria), after a longer-than-expected and
certainly longer-than-hoped-for period of arduous negotiations and painstaking adjust-
ments in many fields of legal, political and economic life, this goal was accomplished
and East-Central European countries attained full membership in the EU.
Since then the new eastern-European member states have reached different levels
of integration, most of them having joined the Schengen border-regime and some also
adopting the common currency, the euro. Some of these states have also irritated Euro-
pean politicians with the actions of their governments, like Poland during the prime
ministry of Jaroslaw Kaczinsky and presidency of Lech Kaczinsky, or Hungary under
Viktor Orbán, raising the question whether the acceptance of these countries was pre-
mature, seeing that after their accession they failed to live up to the so-called Copenha-
gen criteria, even though issues of democratic deficit had also been raised with respect
to “western” member states (e.g., Austria, Italy). However, while such problems might
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

be regarded as passing glitches in relatively young democracies and, as mentioned, are

not restricted to the eastern part of Europe, an East-West divide has been permanently
visible in terms of memory-politics. Poles, for example, resented the European Parlia-
ment’s rejection of their proposal to commemorate the Katyn massacre, or as MEP
Grazyna Staniszewska stated, West European members have different memories of the
past: while for Poles the symbol of the collapse of communism is Solidarity, for West-
erners it is the fall of the Berlin Wall.2 What at first glance seems a symbolic difference
has sometimes led to political and diplomatic conflicts, as, for example, the removal of
the Russian memorial of the “Bronze Soldier” from the center of Tallinn in 2007, or
has created widespread outrage, like the erection of a statue in memory of Lithuanian
members of the Waffen-SS in Vilnius, or of Estonian soldiers who fought on the side of
Nazi Germany against Russia (the Lihula-monument). The European Court of Human
Rights has repeatedly ordered Hungary to amend the law that prohibits the display of
“totalitarian symbols,” among them the red star, which allows those who display them
to be prosecuted regardless of context and occasion. To this the speaker of the Hungar-
ian parliament, László Kövér, responded by criticizing the judges as ignorant about the
suffering of East Europeans under communism, the outcome of which was an over-
whelming right-wing majority in Parliament refusing to abide by the ruling.
The significant divergences in memory-politics between East and West can be
clustered around several topics. The most important pertains to the similarities and dif-
ferences between Nazism and communism, and thus to the potential comparability of
the two. Undoubtedly, this issue came to the fore when postcommunist countries
entered the debate, yet the question is far from new: these countries only brought new
vigor and passion to the discussion. In fact, one could argue that the usage of the
“totalitarian” label for political as well as scientific reasons to describe both
Nazism-Fascism and communism during the 1950s already laid down the basis for such
a comparison, which can therefore be regarded as a natural consequence of the libera-
tion from communism and the simultaneous access to relevant publications and analy-
ses. Underlying this issue there is inevitably the history of the Holocaust, and the
individual countries’ responsibility for the persecution, deportation and murder of their
Jewish citizens.
 Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe 3

Current debates probing the “equally evil” or “which one is more evil” questions
reiterate some of the issues already touched upon in the German historians’ dispute,
except that now East European scholars and politicians also contribute to the debate
and often venture the suggestion that communism might be regarded as the more
harmful of the two, especially since it lasted considerably longer than Nazism and
therefore claimed more victims. Victims, continues the argument, cannot and must
not be separated according to the reason for their victimization, thus people killed on
racial grounds should not be distinguished from people killed for political, class or
other reasons. This approach doubtless overshadows one of Europe’s foundational
myths—the paradigm of the singularity of the Holocaust.
The significance of memory-politics, moreover, is not restricted to theoretical
disagreements between states (in this case EU-member states), concerning crucial epi-
sodes or periods of history, but also pertains to foreign or international politics and
policies: memory-politics can influence relations between EU and non-EU states, as
well as between member states. Eva-Clarita Onken lists a number of international rela-
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

tions issues where memory-politics played a significant role, even before the arrival of
the eastern countries, such as the sanctioning of Austria in 2000 after Haider’s Freedom
Party gained positions in the government, or the demands put forward by EU repre-
sentatives for the Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide in 1915, as a tacit
requirement for Turkey’s EU-accession. France’s recent motion to sanction the denial
of the Armenian genocide resulted in hard diplomatic responses and sanctions by the
Turkish government, otherwise France’s ally in NATO. But with the 2004 enlarge-
ment such conflicts multiplied. The controversy over the absence of the representatives
of two Baltic states from the commemoration of Victory Day in Moscow in 2005 is
another case in point: only the Latvian president decided to accept the invitation,
while the Estonian and the Lithuanian leaders opted to stay away.3 Thus the issue of
European representation of the past and its differences is not simply a theoretical prob-
lem, but one with important and at least potential political consequences. It is there-
fore essential to investigate these differences of interpretations of the past in order to
gain a better understanding of this divide between East and West, and to be able to
account for them. It is particularly important to understand whether they are deter-
mined by the difference in historical experience of the two parts of Europe, or are a
reflection of the very different political cultures of East and West, as suggested by cer-
tain traditional understandings and historical developments, or whether they reflect
similar, though asynchronous, developments, which might even out with time. Such
an investigation might facilitate a better understanding between the two parts of Eur-
ope, and hopefully dissolve some misunderstandings, and eventually contribute to the
development of a close union based on mutual understanding and continuous dis-
course. While I would caution against expecting any deterministic conclusion, the
analysis might contribute to our understanding of the problem. In the following I will
first discuss several key points in Western memory-politics and then explore and
attempt to account for several major examples of differences and conflicts in East
European memory regimes.
Although Siobhan Kattago argues that conflicting memories are a constitutive part
of democratic societies and that a plurality of memories is a clear sign of democracy as
opposed to totalitarian political systems, which only tolerate one official view, the
 4 CSILLA KISS

problem cannot be reduced to this simple point.4 Western societies are also divided by
conflicting memories, and thus depending on historical experience certain representa-
tions are outside the border of tolerable views and are often legally restrained (the most
obvious example being the law against Holocaust-denial). Similarly, the argument pre-
sented here does not claim that East European states have monolithic memory-regimes
that do not allow debates or dissenting views. Various individual interpretations or
representations put forward by different organizations coexist with each other, as well
as with official memory-politics in both East and West; in fact, the former is often
framed against the latter, and this is visible in many domestic political conflicts. Here,
however, I am concerned with official memories and with their differences between
East and West. My focus will be on what Jan-Werner Müller calls “national-collective
memory,” which serves as a frame to organize history in a wider context of meaning
to form a collective identity.5 Furthermore, as survivors of the two most important
memory-points, World War II and the communist regime are dying out (this is espe-
cially true of war-veterans or concentration camp survivors), their individual memories
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

are also dying, and what remains of them is what is deemed worth preserving by vari-
ous groups or by official representations. It is only an additional feature to note that
representatives of memories dissenting from the official view often receive harsh treat-
ment in the East and are even excluded from the “nation,” which occurrence is aptly
summed up in Kattago’s statement that “all too quickly, demos slides into ethnos.”6

MEMORY-STRATEGIES: HOW THE “WEST” DEALS WITH ITS PAST

The comparison between Nazism and communism in Europe is not unique to post-
communist countries: with the end of the Cold War the investigation into and con-
demnation of communism, especially by former and “reconstructed” communists,
gained renewed interest in the West. A striking example of this was The Black Book of
Communism, coauthored by Stéphane Courtois, which equated “class genocide” with
“race genocide,” claiming that the former extracted greater costs in terms of human
lives.7 Ernst Nolte’s argument that one should judge more harshly a movement the
ideals of which are good yet the results of which turn out to be evil than a movement
the ideals of which are evil from the start, also recur in East European discourse.8
However, while in the West such debates are conducted mainly between historians
(though the arguments sometimes appear in political discourse as well), in Eastern
Europe politicians and other public figures are active participants in the conversation.
In fact, such debates often take the form of heated political discussions rather than of
scholarly dispute, and are also expressed through “vehicles of memory” such as muse-
ums, memorials, commemorations, textbooks, including even legislation about mem-
ory or transitional justice.
This may be regarded as a typical response to historical trauma. My examples,
which are drawn from France and Austria, represent two symptomatic European reac-
tions. Austria might be particularly relevant given its long-standing historical and cul-
tural ties with East Europe. France faced a significant crisis regarding its wartime
history approximately at the same time the Historikerstreit (historians’ quarrel) flared up
in Germany. Postwar West European memory was based on the concept of German
 Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe 5

guilt and responsibility: “They did it” was the consensus according to Tony Judt, who
claims that putting all the burden of war crimes on Germany’s shoulders facilitated the
solution of certain tricky geopolitical questions (e.g., the status of Austria), while it also
enabled all other states to reconstruct their history on the basis of the “resistance myth”
without having to face their acts during occupation or jeopardize the “national unity”
so necessary for their democratic systems.9 Just as the German Historikerstreit attempted
to re-evaluate Nazism in the 1980s, the Résistance-myth unraveled in the 1970s and
1980s when the French started reconsidering the Vichy regime. Outstanding examples
of such questioning are Marcel Ophüls’s film The Sorrow and the Pity and Claude
Lanzmann’s Shoah, both of which stirred the emotions of the French public, generated
fierce debates and even faced restricted distribution. On the one hand these films ques-
tioned what John Hellman called the “Vichy half-lie,”10 according to which the
majority of the French either participated in the Resistance or supported active resist-
ers, and collaboration was restricted to a few “rotten apples.” On the other hand, they
re-evaluated the classification of all deportees as “heroes,” that is, resistance fighters
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

who had been imprisoned for their political activities, and thus turned attention to the
racial (mainly Jewish) victims of the war. This, at the same time, also raised the issue
of the role of the French in the Holocaust, which obviously had political
repercussions.
This all came into sharper relief with the controversy surrounding the fiftieth
anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup, commemorating the raid of 16–17 July 1942,
when 13,152 Jews, mainly women and children, were arrested by René Bousquet,
which became the symbol of Vichy’s complicity in the Jewish genocide. What made
this particularly difficult for the French national psyche to come to terms with was that
this raid was carried out by Vichy’s officials without even being prompted by the
German Occupying forces. In planning the commemoration of this mass arrest Presi-
dent Mitterrand was invited to give a speech, but he declined. He claimed that the
Republic always protected all its citizens and that because Vichy was not the Republic,
the Republic could not be held responsible for the crimes of Pétain’s French State,
neither could it be demanded from the Republic to accept any responsibility.11
Accordingly, the text read at the memorial, which was inaugurated in 1994, states that
the Republic of France honours the victims of racist and anti-Semitic persecution
committed under the authority of the “so-called government of the French State.”12
This illustrates that France faced a dual problem of historical consciousness: on the one
hand it was reluctant to admit French complicity in the genocide, while on the other
it blamed Vichy first and foremost for its collaboration with the Germans rather than
for its anti-Semitism, and thereby denied not only the existence of French anti-Semi-
tism but also the historical fact that the Vichy government to some extent carried out,
albeit under restricted sovereignty and German tutelage, policies that were enthusiasti-
cally embraced at least by part of society, even though they bemoaned the fact that the
“National Revolution” of the authoritarian right could only be accomplished due to
military defeat suffered from the Germans that gave power to Pétain in Vichy.
The French declared Vichy’s government illegal: according to an old statute
seeking an armistice was deemed illegal, which thus enabled them to re-establish the
continuity of the Republic. Austria acted in a similar way. After the Anschluss, they
claimed, Austria had ceased to exist and became no more than a province of the
 6 CSILLA KISS

Reich. Austria, unlike France, did not claim to be a “nation of resisters” but a nation
of victims, clinging to the first passage of the 1943 Moscow Declaration which for
political and strategic reasons described Austria as “the first free country to fall victim
to Hitlerite aggression.”13 This Opferdoktrin, included also in the 1945 Austrian Decla-
ration of Independence, designating Austria as “Hitler’s first victim” was not chal-
lenged by Austrian politics or by the public until 1986, when it came to light that
Kurt Waldheim, the ÖVP’s presidential candidate had covered up his Nazi past and
wartime activities. The Waldheim affair generated an intense debate about the coun-
try’s complicity, which revealed that Austria’s involvement in Nazi crimes was deeper
and more severe than people were ready to admit. The debate divided Austrian society
and generated nationalist, even anti-Semitic, remarks from Waldheim’s defenders, and
similar revisionist statements could be heard from Jörg Haider, who credited the SS for
defending the homeland against Bolshevism. When in 2000 Haider’s Freedom Party
became a member of the governmental coalition, the EU responded with sanctions:
Lutz Musner regards this as a crucial moment of European memory-politics. Haider’s
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

ascendance broke several taboos: besides his revisionist views it also violated the rule
that far-right parties cannot become major players in the domestic politics of a
European state.14 Only after Wolfgang Schüssel finally formed a new government, did
Austria start a “more honest reckoning with the Nazi past.”15
Thus while France initially focused on national heroism and massive resistance,
Austria emphasized collective victimhood and helplessness in the face of occupation.
These are two different strategies for creating national myths that helped postwar
reconstruction and the creation of national unity, and in both cases it took time and
some domestic or international crisis for the apparent consensus to unravel, for the
national debate over such crucial issues to start, as well as for the growing willingness
to confront past crimes. It also shows that the Holocaust—today regarded as the
founding myth of postwar Europe along with the determination that such monstrosi-
ties should never again be committed—did not always occupy such a central place in
European memory. Today the issue of collaborating in the persecution of Jews is
probably the most important question. This, however, did not come easily in the
West, and it is only with the passing of time that the Holocaust has gained in signifi-
cance. Thus, while it is now regarded as the ultimate crime of the Nazis, and Jewish
victims are honoured and commemorated, this was not always so. Vichy’s half-lie
focused on the heroism of the Resistance fighters, treating all deportees and victims as
having died or suffered “for France.” In the postwar period, European national narra-
tives were dominated by two trends: stories of resistance and victim-narratives. France
belonged, as we have seen, to the first group. As shown in works such as Henry
Rousso’s The Vichy Syndrome, the postwar French narrative focused on the French
Resistance and depicted the French as active participants against the Nazi Occupation.
It was only decades later that the memories of the victims were incorporated into the
French national history. Elsewhere, as in the case of Austria, victimhood was predomi-
nant from the start, and it was replaced, or at least somewhat modified, by a piecemeal
acceptance of national responsibility for participating in war atrocities in general and in
the Holocaust in particular.
 Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe 7

MEMORY-POLITICS: HOW THE “EAST” DEALS WITH ITS PAST

Reckoning with the past and facing up to crimes, complicity and collaboration during
World War II was not easily or even quickly accomplished in the West. Postcommu-
nist Eastern Europe faced an even more daunting task after the Cold War: not only
did it have to come to terms with the communist past, but it had to face the ghosts of
Nazism and war. Regarding their wartime or even prewar actions, the postcommunist
countries shared similar problems as the western examples discussed above, yet with
the collapse of communism, which after a long time offered the possibility of an hon-
est evaluation of their national history, they had to pose new questions such as: to
what extent were they victims of hostile great powers? was there anything heroic in
their past? what responsibility should they accept for their own actions? This task had
to be undertaken against the existing (West) European consensus, which was not easy
to work out, but once in place, was jealously guarded against potential challengers.
One of the most important debates in postcommunist Europe has been the com-
parability of Nazism and communism, often suggesting that because communism had
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

claimed more victims than Nazism it should be regarded as the greater evil. Although,
as noted, this was not an exclusively postcommunist concern, only in the East were
such comparisons enshrined sometimes in legislation: the right-wing Hungarian gov-
ernment amended the existing law that criminalized Holocaust denial and added the
denial of communist crimes as an equally punishable offence. What is of particular sig-
nificance in comparing Nazism and communism is that it is often used to justify or at
least to ease the burden of a given postcommunist country’s participation in World
War II on the German side. In general, apart from extremist views on both sides, East
European governments and memory groups do not deny Nazi crimes yet are often dis-
inclined to take responsibility for their own part in them and for the crimes committed
by their countries, nations, and former governments during World War II.
As we have seen, one of the most difficult legacies to overcome is a given coun-
try’s contribution to the persecution of Jews. Some East European countries carry a
heavy burden in this respect. Anti-Semitic legislation in Eastern Europe often preceded
the German racial laws, and even Hitler’s march to power and his anti-Jewish acts. For
example, the Hungarian Numerus Clausus law which determined the membership of
“races” at university and in certain professions according to their proportion in the
population was passed in 1920: the purpose of the law was to restrict the number of
Jews who could get a university education and fill intellectual positions. This legisla-
tion was followed in 1938 and 1939 by two “Jewish laws”: the first limited the num-
ber of Israelites in business and intellectual jobs to 20%, while the second further
reduced it to 12% and 6% respectively. This law also aimed at excluding all Jews from
public service: moreover, it defined “Jew” on a racial basis, not by religion as the first
law. As the dates of these two Jewish laws show, they were enacted before the out-
break of the war, and long before Hungary’s occupation by Hitler’s troops, and there-
fore it cannot be claimed that they were simply passed under German pressure or by a
government in possession of only limited sovereignty.
In fact, anti-Jewish legislation, just as the murder of hundreds of Jews during the
White Terror that followed the defeat of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, sprang
from nationalism rather than from the Nazi ideology and was therefore indigenous.
 8 CSILLA KISS

Official representation, however, often prefers to remember things differently by

emphasizing that Regent Miklós Horthy stopped the deportation of Jews in 1944, and
thereby saved a large number of Jews in Budapest (Jews from the countryside had been
deported by then). Horthy himself is held in high esteem by the Right: in 1993 mem-
bers of the governing right-wing coalition participated in his reburial among 50,000
people, stressing that they did so as “private persons.” The famous Terror House
Museum, inaugurated by then Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in the middle of a bitterly
fought election campaign in 2002, goes as far as to claim that it was the consequence of
Hungary’s German Occupation that the country could no longer “protect” its Jewish
citizens, suggesting that solely the Occupying power could be held responsible for the
persecution of Hungarian Jews. Although a straightforward cause-and-effect relation-
ship between the anti-Jewish laws and the Holocaust cannot be established, the claim
about the protection of Jewish citizens is at the very least disingenuous. While during
the electoral campaign the Left suggested that it would make changes to the Terror
House Museum, in the end the exhibition was left intact in the name of reconciliation;
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

moreover, the socialist prime minister personally intervened in order to provide fund-
ing for the museum. Thus, despite serious criticism raised by the scholarly community,
this museum remained one of the most renowned representations of dictatorship.16
Poland has also had to come to terms with its own wartime atrocities. The books
of Jan T. Gross examined the history of Polish pogroms (especially in Jedwabne on 10
July 1941),17 creating fierce debates in the Polish media, where many took offense for
what they regarded as a slander of the Polish people, an otherwise unquestioned victim
of both German and Russian occupation.18 Although the reactions were not simply
political, since Neighbours: The History of the Extermination of a Small Jewish Town was
also in the crossfire of scholarly criticism concerning its sources and methodology, its
publication was significant: despite its potential faults it directed attention in Poland to
Jedwabne in particular and Polish responsibility and collaboration in general, and its
arguments were also utilized in political campaigns and struggles.19 In this debate some
tried to lay the blame for the massacre on the Germans, similar to the reactions con-
cerning Vichy: “Polish historical writings on the Jedwabne massacre are characterized
by a half-century of lies and obfuscations.”20 Here we can see a familiar reaction from
the immediate postwar years: all the blame was shifted to the Germans—”they did it”
argued many East Europeans just like their Western counterparts, but with a significant
time-lag and the burden of forty years of communist rule and propaganda.
This focus on the heroic deeds of the nation and the silence about its racial vic-
tims who died or suffered for their origins and not for their struggle against oppression
and occupation has been a central part of the communist antifascist propaganda, which
was silent about racial persecution and emphasized fascism’s anti-Marxist and anticom-
munist ideology. This strengthens the difficulty of assessing the memory of the war in
Eastern Europe. Communism had its own explanation concerning fascism and
National Socialism, defining it as the last stage of imperialism, whose main enemy and
target were Marxism and communism. (This—together with the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact—also caused serious schizophrenia to the French communists in the beginning of
the war, until Germany finally attacked the USSR and things were once again clear.)
Thus racial persecution and the memory of its victims met with silence in official pro-
paganda as well as in society, which was disinclined to face its own actions and
 Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe 9

responsibility. By stressing anticommunism, postwar communist governments lifted or

at least alleviated the burden of complicity of East European societies in the persecu-
tion of Jews, even though such persecution occurred both in countries allied with
Germany (Hungary, Romania), or occupied by it (Poland).
In fact, in order to strengthen their rule the communists, among whom were
many Jews, did not press the issue of the Holocaust or investigate the guilt of their
respective societies for it. Instead they emphasized resistance even when there was
none or very little, and designed their commemorations accordingly. Many Jews also
preferred to move on and concentrate on the future, and many of them also welcomed
the arrival of communism with enthusiasm, or at least with positive expectations, hop-
ing that an ideology that rejected nationalism might offer them an existence where
their origins would become unimportant.21 Thus these societies had to re-evaluate this
aspect of their history and confront their acts only after the collapse of communism,
that is, during the last twenty years. Although significant historical works in the 1970s
and 1980s investigated the fate of Jews and the responsibility of Hungarian society and
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

politics, a genuine confrontation with the past did not take place at a societal and
political level. As Tim Snyder points out, Holocaust-survivors did not receive the same
attention in the East as in the West. Even in the West it did not come easily or
quickly: as mentioned, immediate postwar narratives and memories focused on resis-
tance and heroism, and it took time till the stories of Jewish victims were heard or lis-
tened to. Still, Western survivors could at least freely write and communicate about
their plight. In the East, however, they could not do so, and thus their memories are
to a large extent still marginalized.22 And when they were finally free to speak, they
had to compete for attention with the memoirs of communist-era victims. This type
of communist propaganda also had a lamentable effect on many East European politi-
cians and citizens: the propaganda was believed and interiorized, and thus put World
War II and the alliance or collaboration with Germany into a different light. Revision-
ism received a new lifeline: if Nazism was first and foremost anticommunist, it cannot
be denied some historical clear-sightedness, and this resulted in a certain apology for
Nazism and collaboration. Furthermore, in a strange way this communist propaganda
fit well with Nolte’s arguments in the Historikerstreit, and could lend some credibility
to his claims: it is not surprising that the German historian enjoys a good reputation in
certain scholarly or political circles in many East European countries.
Assessment of the war is not the same everywhere in Eastern Europe. Official
interpretations vary according to wartime histories: they are different in countries
which were allied with Germany during the war (Hungary), or were unquestionably
victims of German aggression (Poland). They are further complicated in the Baltic
States which faced the German attack while occupied by the Soviets, and therefore
regarded the Germans with at least mixed feelings. At least two narratives compete and
conflict here: whether the war and the subsequent communist period should be
regarded as occupation or liberation, and whether participation in the war on
Germany’s side can be understood as a struggle for national independence or simple
collaboration.23 Memorials commemorating members of the Waffen SS in Lithuania
and Estonia, yearly demonstrations in honour of Lithuanian soldiers fighting in the SS,
or such exhibitions as the museum of communism in Tartu that shows that the Nazis
allowed Estonians to fly their national flag next to the swastika, while the Russian
 10 CSILLA KISS

made no similar allowances, suggest that collaboration with Germany is regarded in a

more favourable light than in the West, thereby undermining the European antifascist
consensus and revealing an ideological division within Europe. Although Hungary
could not claim even such mitigating circumstances as a taste of Soviet occupation
before the war, the anticommunist credentials of Germany’s war have been empha-
sized there as well: ancient general Kálmán Kéri, MP in the first freely elected parlia-
ment ventured to say in the plenary session that he considered Hungary’s participation
in World War II a “just war against Bolshevism.”24
Confronting the nation’s responsibility with unspeakable crimes is always a diffi-
cult task, as it usually means a hard blow to nationalism and national self-esteem. It is
therefore not exceptional that countries and nations would escape to denial, look for
excuses or scapegoats: we have seen examples in Western democracies of which I
mentioned a few. Eastern Europe behaved no differently, and the process of forgetting
or denial was facilitated by official postwar propaganda, policies and their effects. Post-
war accounting and de-Nazification were undertaken by the communists: on the one
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

hand this ideologically saturated the process, while on the other it undermined it in
the eyes of the people. Although most historians agree that in general the judicial pro-
cesses of war crime trials can be regarded as fair and conforming to the requirements
of due process, it is undeniable that most courts were party-courts (in which at that
time most so-called “democratic,” i.e., anti-fascist parties participated), and that the
accompanying communist propaganda utilized these trials to legitimize communist
rule, emphasizing class struggle and the historical responsibility of former ruling classes,
rather than the crimes committed against Jews. This had very serious effects on (post)
communist countries and on their collective mentality. Furthermore, forty years of
communist rule resulted in the self-victimization of these nations, and regarding them-
selves as victims of communist oppression forced on them from the outside was not
conducive to collective soul-searching, to facing historical crimes or honest stock-
taking. Social classes held responsible by the communists also emerged as communism’s
victims, their role being reconceptualized in the light of their anti-Bolshevik creden-
tials. Instead of investigating their past acts, these nations emphasized their own suffer-
ing and oppression, and quickly found those responsible for their plight in external
sources: first and foremost in the USSR, but also in those Western powers they
thought had betrayed them by selling them out to the Soviets.

MEMORY OF COMMUNISM
Furthermore, postcommunist countries had to face their precommunist past through
the prism of subsequent communism, as well as against an international consensus con-
cerning the war and concerning the Soviet Union and communism. This latter can be
called at least divided, especially if we compare it to the virtually unanimous condem-
nation by East Europeans, who also express their resentment, because they feel that
their suffering and misery under communism are not taken seriously enough by the
West and that the crimes of communism are overshadowed by the horrors of Nazism
and the war. We can also sense certain bitterness over what a significant part of the
population and political elites in postcommunist states regard as their betrayal by the
 Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe 11

West, the key-word being Yalta (even though the Yalta conference itself did not have
any particular bearing over their fate), as well as Western indifference (at least the lack
of assistance) regarding the Hungarian uprising, the Prague Spring, and the Solidarity
movement. They also hold Western “marxissant” intellectuals responsible, some of
whom were also Jewish and therefore brought a personal vulnerability to the debate.
Moreover, as mentioned earlier, they feel that the West is still reluctant to give East
European opposition its due in the overthrowing of communism. We therefore have
to say a few words about the place of communism in European memory and the
divide it has caused between East and West. “I believe it correct to argue that the
memory of Nazi crimes has not faded, but that of Communist crimes has,” writes
Charles Maier. However, he also points out that such “fading” did not simply affect
the memory of left-wing dictatorships: fascism, like Mussolini’s rule in Italy, or
Franco’s Spain also receive a “pass,” or at least do not meet the same condemnation as
Nazism.25
While in the East communism was a firsthand experience and is still a vivid mem-
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

ory, for the West it is much more remote. Although countries with strong communist
parties, like France and Italy also had their Stalinist period, it only affected party-mem-
bers. So, while Stalinist policies could ruin individual lives, there were no conse-
quences in the West similar to the Stalinist purges or deportations in Eastern Europe
or in the Soviet Union, and neither did communist practices influence whole societies
or states. Many westerners treat communism as a well-intentioned but lamentably
failed experiment, they honour the memory of communist resistance in the war, or
the efforts of the USSR in World War II, in the struggle against the chief evil. Even
committed anticommunists oppose communism for political and ideological reasons,
without direct experience or memories. Furthermore, a friendly attitude towards Rus-
sia and communism expressed political reservations, even social antagonism towards
the United States during the Cold War. Easterners, on the other hand, look at com-
munism as evil and as the cause of their plight and poverty; they deny the validity of
communist ideology, and therefore regard it as something alien to their nations and
their history, imposed upon them from the outside by the Soviet Union, to be sure,
but with the tacit agreement or even support of Western democracies, and thus they
evaluate their wartime experiences in the light of the upcoming Soviet dictatorship.
Kattago suggests that in countries such as Estonia both Nazism and communism are
considered evil, but communism is regarded as the greater evil, so the primary trauma
is not Jewish but Estonian national suffering,26 which is a sentiment shared by many in
postcommunist Europe. Communism is a more vivid, a “living” memory in these
countries, which first and foremost wanted to come to terms with their experience of
communist rule and find those responsible for it, and paid only limited attention to
the period of the war.
The efforts to deny historical continuity by placing communism within a coun-
try’s history loom large in the region. The most extreme example is Hungary’s new
constitution, but other examples can easily be found. What is important here is the
interesting similarity between this rejection of continuity between communism and
the present state of affairs and the rejection of Vichy or the post-Anschluss Austrian
period, as well as the establishment of postwar Czechoslovak continuity with the
First Republic. This points to a desire shared by East and West to eradicate the
 12 CSILLA KISS

traumatic or unpleasant episodes from life or history, despite the difference in the
length of time they are trying to eradicate. Dismissing the experience of occupation
and dictatorship, postcommunist countries preferred to conceptualize them as a per-
iod alien to their national history and traditions, just as the French looked at Vichy
as a clear break with the republican and therefore “true” traditions of France. Transi-
tional justice procedures or attempts at such legislation testify to this. As I argued
elsewhere, such efforts can be understood as an attempt to find select culprits who
can be held responsible for the maintenance of communism in these countries, while
denying the relevance of any homegrown communist movements, and preferably to
give a pass to society regarding collaboration by conceptualizing the culprits as vic-
tims of occupation and repression. This East European “Opferdoktrin” is similar to the
Austrian postwar version in its refusal to recognize collective and national responsibil-
ity for the communist period, or at least to investigate the role of society in it. And
yet it is also different, because communism is not a victim of silence in these coun-
tries: it has a continuous presence in their political life, both as a recurring reference
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

as the chief evil in their history, and as a continuous search for collaborators who
can be proclaimed guilty for their plight: former communist officials, secret service
agents, party-leaders. This bears a stronger resemblance to the post-Vichy period in
France, though it has lasted for a much longer period.
There are thus marked similarities in how countries deal with their dictatorial or
traumatic past, and the whole picture also presents an interesting tension between dif-
ferent national master narratives. In postcommunist countries the main narrative
favours victimhood. Even where a case could be made for resistance or heroism, such
as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, or the memories of Estonian “forest friends” who sup-
ported anti-Russian resistance and suffered on its account, the self-portrayal as victims
carries the day—people are portrayed as innocent sufferers under dictatorship—and
with it the competition over who suffered more wins a place in nation-building pro-
jects, where certain victims are given priority over others.27 This leads back to the
question “which is more evil?” and in a way pits the wartime experience and the com-
munist experience against one another. The absolution of collaborator wartime gov-
ernments can be understood in this context: a “victim nation” cannot also belong to
the perpetrators. In this framework the persecution of Jews is often passed over in
favour of the suffering of the nation both in the war and under communism. Thus we
find an attempt to establish collective victimhood: this is not conducive to a factual
and historically grounded analysis of the Nazi or the communist era, but at least it
might help us understand the roots of the problem. If a whole society is given victim
status, it is very difficult at the same time to investigate its wartime responsibility or its
nuanced history with respect to communism. This, however, was no different in the
case of Western countries following World War II.28

CONCLUSION
I have attempted to show some parallels and significant differences between postwar
West European and postcommunist East European attitudes to national history, espe-
cially with respect to World War II, Nazism, and the Holocaust. I argued that on the
 Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe 13

one hand there are notable similarities between the ways these two parts of Europe
handle the problem of national reckoning, yet because this happens with a significant
time-lag, westerners are often bewildered by East European memory-politics. On the
other hand, I underlined an important difference between the way the two European
sides interpret the past: postcommunist countries are often inclined to regard their
wartime history through the lenses of the subsequent communist rule, projecting their
postwar experiences of the dictatorship backwards in time to justify or at least to
account for their wartime behaviour. Moreover, communist propaganda has also dis-
torted the way many East Europeans regard Nazism and the war. Thus, while compar-
isons between western and eastern approaches might suggest a potential convergence
between the two parts of Europe, these differences must be taken into account if we
are looking for ways to reconcile divergent and often conflicting historical memories
and narratives in order to promote a deeper understanding between old and new
members of the European Union.
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

NOTES

1. Thomas Ferenczi, “Une mémoire à deux vitesses,” Le Monde, 20 July 2007.

2. Matt Killingsworth, Gosia Klatt, and Stephan Auer, “Where Does Poland Fit in Europe?
How Political Memory Influences Polish MEPs’ Perceptions of Poland’s Place in Europe,”
Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11.4 (2010): 367.
3. On these issues, see Eva-Clarita Onken, “The Baltic States and Moscow’s 9 May Commem-
oration: Analysing Memory Politics in Europe,” Europe-Asia Studies 59.1 (2007): 29, 24.
4. Siobhan Kattago, “Memory, Pluralism and the Agony of Politics,” Journal of Baltic Studies
41.3 (2010): 383–94.
5. Jan-Werner Müller, “Introduction: The Power of Memory, the Memory of Power and the
Power Over Memory,” in Memory and Power in Post-War Europe, ed. Jan-Werner Müller
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3.
6. Kattago, “Memory, Pluralism and the Agony of Politics,” 390.
7. Stéphane Courtois, “Introduction: The Crimes of Communism,” in The Black Book of
Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, ed. Stéphane Courtois, et al., trans. Jonathan
Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1–33. See
also Richard Shorten, “Europe’s Twentieth Century in Retrospect? A Cautious Note on
the Furet/Nolte Debate,” The European Legacy 9.3 (2004): 291.
8. Shorten, “Europe’s Twentieth Century in Retrospect?” 291.
9. Tony Judt, “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” Daedalus
121.4 (1992): 87.
10. John Hellman, “Wounding Memories: Mitterrand, Moulin, Touvier, and the Divine Half-
Lie of Resistance,” French Historical Studies 19.2 (1995): 461–81.
11. On this, see Éric Conan and Henry Rousso, “Le Vél’ d’Hiv ou la commemoration
introuvable,” in Eric Conan and Henry Rousso, Vichy, un passé qui ne passe´ pas (Paris:
Gallimard, 1996), 47–96.
12. Conan and Rousso, “Le Vél’ d’Hiv ou la commemoration introuvable,” 91.
13. Quoted by Jenny Wüstenberg and David Art, “Using the Past in the Nazi Successor States
from 1945 to the Present,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science (2008): 78.
14. Lutz Musner, “Memory and Globalization: Austria’s Recycling of the Nazi Past and Its
European Echoes,” New German Critique (Spring-Summer 2000): 86.
15. Wüstenberg and Art, “Using the Past in the Nazi Successor States from 1945 to the Pres-
ent,” 80. See also Musner, “Memory and Globalization,” and Günter Bischof, “Founding
Myths and Compartmentalized Past: New Literature on the Construction, Hibernation,
 14 CSILLA KISS

and Deconstruction of World War II Memory in Postwar Austria,” in Austrian Historical

Memory and National Identity, ed. Gunter Bischof and Anton Pelinka (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers, 1997), 302–41.
16. Current suggestions by the right-wing government to change the permanent exhibition of
the Holocaust Museum in Budapest in order to lessen the responsibility of the wartime
government for the Holocaust could also be mentioned.
17. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbours: The History of the Extermination of a Small Jewish Town
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
18. It most likely did not help that the book received many reviews that took it as an affirma-
tion of their long-standing conviction about Polish anti-Semitism. Cf. Tony Judt with
Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century (London: Heinemann, 2012), 268–69.
19. See, for example, Ewa Wolentarska-Ochman, “Jedwabne and the Power Struggle in
Poland (Remembering the Polish-Jewish Past a Decade after the Collapse of Commu-
nism),” Perspectives on European Politics and Society 4.2 (2003): 171–89.
20. Frank Fox, “A Skeleton in Poland’s Closet: The Jedwabne Massacre,” East European Jewish
Affairs 31.1 (2001): 87.
21. Hungarian aesthete Péter György illustrates this through the history of his father and goes
as far as claiming that the 1 May 1957 speech of communist leader János Kádár, only six
Downloaded by [Csilla Kiss] at 07:26 27 May 2014

months after the brutal oppression of the 1956 uprising, implied a tacit deal between the
Communist Party and Hungarian society—for accepting the communists’ rule and
renouncing the goals of the uprising, they can also receive a pass for the crimes of 1944.
See Péter György, Apám helyett [Instead of my father] (Budapest: Magvető, 2011).
22. Timothy Snyder, “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality,” The New York Review of Books, 16
July 2009. A telling example is Nobel Prize winning Hungarian writer Imre Kertész’s auto-
biographical Holocaust novel Sorstalanság [Fateless], which was published only in limited
numbers without any significant publicity in communist Hungary.
23. Kattago, “Memory, Pluralism and the Agony of Politics,” 383.
24. http://www.parlament.hu/naplo34/030/0300006.html.
25. Charles S. Maier, “Hot Memory... Cold Memory: On the Political Half-Life of Fascist and
Communist Memory,” Tr@nsit online, Nr. 22/2002. At the same time, it is worth noting
that East European (e.g., Polish) extreme right efforts which would like to portray Franco
as a commendable politician who “saved Spain from communism” usually meet strong
Western condemnation. At the same time, a recent debate in the EP about holding a min-
ute’s silence in memory of Manuel Fraga and comparing (almost equating) him to Vaclav
Havel is also telling: a fierce debate took place and the EP was criticized, but the silence
was also held: this would not have been possible in case of German Nazis. See “European
Parliament Under Fire for Equating Václav Havel with Franco Ally,” Guardian, 17 January
2012; http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2012/jan/17/eu-francisco-
franco)
26. Siobhan Kattago, “Commemorating Liberation and Occupation: War Memorials along the
Road to Narva,” Journal of Baltic Studies 39.4 (2008): 443.
27. Other existing resistance movements, such as the Hungarian “democratic opposition” or
the Czech Charter ’77, are problematic for other reasons: apart from political competition,
the small number of participants causes a certain embarrassment in their respective societies.
Polish Solidarity is somewhat different in this respect, although it was also not exempt from
political struggles.
28. Just to mention one example: official memory often refuses to distinguish between different
stages of communist rule, such as the Stalinist era, the consequent thaw, and the various
harder or softer phases, which varied from country to country, but usually attaches the
much contested “totalitarian” adjective to the whole period.