the museum narrative . After a study visit in 2017 , an international group of historians and museum officials dedicated to the history of the crimes of communism or two totalitarianisms , organised in a “ Platform of European Memory and Conscience ” published a rich critical report .
Some of these entrepreneurs of memory achieved real legislative success in the European Parliament . In 2009 , the European Parliament established the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes on 23 August . In keeping with this initiative , several EU member states added to the ban on symbols of the Nazi regime characteristic of communist propaganda . Controversy even flared up over whether to include a ban on Che Guevara t-shirts . The date of 23 August constitutes a strong memorial symbol , as it was the day the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact was signed in 1939 with its secret annex postulating the invasion of Poland by the two signatory countries . This event in European geopolitical history will , to this day , continue to be the most mobilising point in international memorial relations between Russia and Western historians , especially in declaring when the war began for the Russians . In May 2009 , the President of the Russian Federation , Dmitry Medvedev , in the face of symbolic initiatives by the EU and the Council of Europe to equate Stalinism ( and even communism ) with Nazism , elevated history to the level of an attribute of national “ sovereignty ”. On the occasion of the 70 th anniversary of the outset of the Second World War and the German-Soviet Pact , which Europe was preparing to commemorate , the Russian President asserted : « One should not call black what is white , call the aggressor who was defending himself ...». These words were accompanied by the setting up of a Presidential Commission to Counter Attempts to Falsify History . Many Russian historians protested at the time against the likely pressure of this supervisory body that , under the pretext of “ tracking down and countering erroneous interpretations of history abroad ”, would make the arbitrariness of political censorship official . The banning of the Memorial Association under a law that allows a local NGO to be classified as foreign-funded and therefore a foreign agency has undeniably corroborated these fears .
In fact , this phenomenon of state intrusion into the field of history is omnipresent in many societies .
The differentiated regimes of the uses of memory coexist during the post-Cold War years . On the one hand , commissions of historians multiplied , such as the one led by Anatoy Torkunov and Adam Rotfeld , with an optimistic message to neutralise contentious points in Polish-Russian history , such as the recognition of the elimination of Polish elites by Stalin ’ s NKVD in Katyn . Another commission of Polish and Ukrainian historians is endeavouring to neutralise fanciful or differentiated historical interpretations of the Volhynia Massacre or Operation Vistula , trying to quantify the number of victims on both sides and to understand the reasons for the massacres . At the societal level , installation artists revive the painful past of the end of almost the entire Jewish community in Poland with the intention of both civic awareness and
5 . © UNHCR / Chris Melzer Refugees entering Poland from Ukraine at the Medyka border crossing point .
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Observing Memories Issue 6