Criminal justice and historical master narratives in post-1989 Bulgaria and Germany

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationship between criminal justice and historical master narratives about the communist past in post-1989 Bulgaria and Germany. It focuses on the legal and historical debates that have unfolded within the Bulgarian Revival Process trial and the trial of the National Defence Council of the former German Democratic Republic. Previous literature on transitional justice has argued that trials of former authoritarian officials have an important epistemic function for societies in transition, because they challenge and overturn the dominant historical accounts about the dictatorial regime. In contrast, this article shows how in two different post-communist cases the outcomes of trials had been influenced by entrenched master narratives about the ousted political order. Criminal justice thus played a limited role in providing new readings of the dictatorial past.

KEYWORDS:

• Criminal justice
• historical master narratives
• post-communism
• GDR border regime
• Revival Process

Acknowledgements

I thank Agata Fijalkowski, Stacey Hynd, James Mark, Stephen Skinner and the reviewers of European Politics and Society for their valuable suggestions.

Notes

1 http://www.novinite.com/articles/135623/Bulgarian+MPs+Officially+Condemn+‘Revival+Process’ (accessed 4 June 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, within the project 1989 after 1989. The Fall of State-Socialism in Global Perspective.