spark a debate within the group of authors and a spate of academic , political and media positions , highlights the affirmation of the intrinsically and essentially criminal nature of communism and condemns a hemiplegic European history , between the memory of the genocide of the Jews of Europe , given as unique , and the concealment of the crimes of communism . The approach sets itself a two-fold “ memory ” obligation as a moral horizon , in tribute to the victims of communism , and of history , to bridge the gaps in the European history of totalitarianism and to counter the fables of communist memory . Whereas the plan to work history and to address the violence , repression and terror brought about by Stalinism has practically gone uncontested , putting Nazism and Communism on a par and even more so “ class genocide ” and “ racial genocide ” has ignited an ideological debate that never stops smouldering . Widely translated and disseminated in Eastern Europe , The Black Book of Communism has provided a historical rationale and an analytical framework for the unequivocal rejection of communist regimes .
This rejection , which has become a constitutive part of democracies in the making in a number of Central and Eastern European countries , has resulted in decommunisation and “ lustration ” laws like in Czechoslovakia , and the purging of certain institutions , as was the case of universities in the former GDR . Widely shared practices include the opening of archives authorising the denunciation or stigmatisation of communists or former communists , the removal of symbols of communism in public spaces such as street names or statues , the establishment of dedicated institutions such as the Museum of Communist Terror in Hungary or the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland . The staging of the rupture must not however conceal real continuities . Under them , the memory of communism seems to have inscribed itself in many respects within the frameworks of communist memory itself and of the practices of an official and sometimes strictly national history , as in Poland or Hungary today . Furthermore , stigmatised communists have not always been disqualified and many of them , especially among the political , intellectual or economic elite , have managed to harness the heritage and expertise acquired to adapt through their adherence to the new democratic and liberal norm . Conversely , however , here and there , formerly anti-Communist intellectuals declare themselves to be “ anti-anti-Communists ” while others underline the ambivalence of communism between “ dark side and bright side ”, to use a phrase by Annie Kriegel , historian of communism , herself a former communist and reputed to be anti-communist . However , while manifestations of disappointment or nostalgia – specifically known as “ Ostalgia ” in reunified Germany – are not lacking , it cannot be disputed that Europeans have not experienced the same history since the end of the Second World War , no more I might add than the citizens of Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Wall . Memories of communism are , nevertheless , an effect of the present at least as much as they are an effect of the past . In this respect , they are indeed still a topical political issue , both in East and West .
For further information :
À l ’ Est , la mémoire retrouvée , edited by Alain Brossat [ et al .], Foreword by Jacques Le Goff , Paris , La découverte , Paris , 1990 .
Mémoires du communisme en Europe centrale , Introduction by Marie-Claire Lavabre and Antoine Marès , Cahiers du CEFRES No . 26 , Prague , 2001 .
Mémoires à l ’ Est , Etudes comparatives EST-OUEST , edited by Françoise Mayer , volume 37 , No . 3 , Paris , 2006 .
L ’ Europe et ses passés douloureux , edited by Georges Mink and Laure Neumayer , Paris , La découverte , 2007 .
L ’ Europe et ses représentations du passé . Les tourments de la mémoire , edited by Marie-Claude Maurel and Françoise Mayer , L ’ Harmattan , Logiques sociales Collection , Paris , 2008 .
D ’ une « mémoire européenne à l ’ européanisation de la « mémoire », edited by Sarah Gensburger and Marie-Claire Lavabre , Politiques européennes , L ’ Harmattan , no . 37 , 2012 .
EUROPA , notre histoire , edited by Etienne François , Thomas Serrier [ et al .], Les Arènes , Paris , 2017 .
EUROPE INSIGHT
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