The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History

Lavinia Stan: Memory, Justice and Democratization in Post-Communism

laVinia sTan Memory, Justice, and Democratization in Post-Communism The year 1989 remains a remarkable milestone in the history of Eastern Europe, not only because it allowed all countries in the region, with the exception of Albania and Yugoslavia, to transition to democracy and rule of law within the span of just several months, but also because, with their democratization, these countries were for the first time in decades in a position to interrogate themselves honestly and comprehensively about the recent past. True, the past had been examined several decades earlier, during the early stages of communism, when Eastern European authorities condemned Nazi collaborators and sympathizers. But that exercise was tainted by what Helga Welsh presciently called “the politics of the present,” that is, the desire to use investigations to settle scores with political rivals and to weaken anticommunist groups more than a commitment to reveal, to condemn and to renounce the mechanisms of repression, terror, collaboration, and intimidation of the Nazi past.1 Indeed, a considerable number of Communist Party members and individuals unsympathetic to the Nazis fell prey to the show trials, property confiscation, public recrimination, and reeducation of those times. In 1989, by contrast, Eastern Europe got the chance to move away from politically tainted justice. But did it really do so? Did “the politics of the present” play no role in postcommunist transitional justice programs? This chapter tries to explain the role of the remarkable events of 1989, of the nature of the communist regime, and of the first stages of 1 Helga Welsh, “Dealing with the Communist Past: Central and East European Experiences after 1990,” Europe-Asia Studies vol. 48 (1996): 419–28. 496 THE END AND THE BEGINNING democratization in the post-communist pursuit of backward-looking transitional justice, by surveying the theories proposed to date for explaining the progress registered by Eastern Europe in coming to terms with its communist past. During the last two decades, several authors have tried to ascertain why different post-communist countries have responded differently to their communist pasts. Countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were considered ideal from a comparative point of view because they all experienced similar repressive regimes roughly at the same time, and they all effected regime change from communist dictatorship to liberal democracy in the relatively short period between 1989 and 1991. Most of these theories, however, have contrasted the performance of only a handful of post-communist countries , focused primarily on the early 1990s, and reduced transitional justice to lustration, the governmental policy of banning former communist officials and secret agents from being elected or nominated to public posts during post-communist times. Very few authors have considered non-cases (that is, countries that have systematically avoided confronting the past, opting instead for a “forgive and forget” policy), compared all post-communist countries for which data are available, and understood transitional justice as a process going beyond strictly judicial and administrative methods like court proceedings and lustration. Even the most cursory look reveals that post-communist Eastern Europe is clearly divided between leaders and laggards of transitional justice. On the one hand, Central European countries like the Czech and Slovak Republics and Germany, where communism retained a Stalinist flavor even in its later stages, the regime change was effected through pacted and peaceful revolutions or sudden collapse, and the early 1990s witnessed an alternation of power from the former communists to the pro-democratic opposition, have made remarkable progress in reckoning with their communist human rights abuses. (The role of the German unification in promoting Vergangenheitsbewältigung cannot be overlooked, but what is not widely known is the fact that important transitional justice measures were embraced, even before unification, by the East German Volkskammer, the People’s Assembly).2 These coun2 Far from being “an absurdity on the path to German unification,” this parliament established a committee to oversee the breakup of the communist secret political police, the Stasi, and drafted a bill that dealt with access to 497 Memory, Justice, and Democratization in Post-Communism tries have adopted a wide range of truth and justice methods, implemented radical lustration and launched several important court trials, and they did all this during the very early stages of post-communist democratization, without much delay and hesitation. The Baltic republics have closely trailed behind Central Europe, but there the process of coming to terms with the past started earlier...