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

Abstract:

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.

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