The politics of finding historical truth: reviewing baltic history commissions and their work

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Notes

1  For interesting comparative discussions of transitional justice of more recent years, see Barahona de Brito et al. (2001) and Sriram (2004); and specifically on post-communist Europe, see Calhoun (2004).

2  There is no study to date that puts the Baltic commissions in a wider context of truth commissions worldwide. With the political mandate to investigate crimes against humanity committed in the past on its own territory, the Baltic commissions do qualify as ‘truth commissions’ and a broader comparative study as to the impact of such commissions on the establishment of justice in transitional societies might provide interesting new perspectives. See, for instance, Hayner (1994).

3  In recent years several English-language publications have also appeared in Lithuania. Many of them cover especially the Holocaust and Jewish–Lithuanian relations in the twentieth century; see Bubnys (2005), Truska and Vareikis (2004), and Eidintas (2003). The Lithuanian Historical Commission, however, has yet to publish the results of its overall investigation in English.

4  The term ‘genocide’ is also frequently used by Lithuanian authors to classify the Soviet terror against the local Lithuanian population during the 1940s. This has caused controversies in past years, especially with the Lithuanian-Jewish community. For an interesting discussion of these, see Budryte (2002).

5  For a more detailed discussion of European memory politics, see Onken (2007).