Integrating the Central European Past into a Common Narrative: The Mobilizations Around the ‘Crimes of Communism’ in the European Parliament

Abstract

After the Cold War, a new constellation of actors entered transnational European assemblies. Their interpretation of European history, which was based on the equivalence of the two ‘totalitarianisms’, Stalinism and Nazism, directly challenged the prevailing Western European narrative constructed on the uniqueness of the Holocaust as the epitome of evil. This article focuses on the mobilizations of these memory entrepreneurs in the European Parliament in order to take into account the issue of agency in European memory politics. Drawing on a social and political analysis centered on institutionally embedded actors, a process-tracing analysis investigates the adoption of the furthest-reaching official expression of a ‘totalitarian’ interpretation of Communism to date: the Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism from April 2009. This case study shows that the issue was put on the parliamentary agenda by a small group of Central and Eastern European politicians who had managed to ‘learn the ropes’ of effective advocacy in the Assembly. An official vision of Communism then emerged through intense negotiations structured by interwoven ideological and national lines of division. However, this narrative largely remains of regional, rather than pan-European, relevance. In the competition for the definition of ‘Europe’ and its values, the persistent diversity in the assessment of Communism gives evidence of the local rootedness of remembrance despite the pan-European ambitions of memory entrepreneurs.

Keywords::

• remembrance
• European Union
• communism
• European Parliament

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ There are two intellectual origins to the comparison of Communist and Nazi crimes: the discussion on totalitarianism and the controversy surrounding the interpretation of German history. The concept of totalitarianism, which implies that Nazism and Communism have more common points than differences, was widely used in the early phase of the Cold War to discredit the Soviet bloc. It has been increasingly criticized for its analytical shortcomings and political bias in Western Europe from the 1970s onwards, but taken up at the time as a symbolic weapon by the democratic oppositions in the Eastern bloc. The Historikerstreit which opposed liberal and conservative German historians about the integration of Nazism in German history in 1986–1987 raised the issue of the uniqueness of the Holocaust versus the comparison with the crimes of Communism (Knowlton and Cates 1993). At the end of the 1990s, the Black Book of Communism again sparked hefty debates on totalitarianism and the assessment of Communism, both as an ideology and as the matrix of a distinct type of dictatorial regimes (Courtois et al. 1997; Rousso 1999).

² This generic term refers to the state-sponsored institutions established in Central and Eastern Europe to deal with the Communist past. Though their names and scopes of competence vary from country to country, they all conduct research and educational projects that contribute to building official narratives about Communism (KopeČek 2008).

³ This coarse perspective on dictatorship stresses the role of terror in the inception and persistence of the Communist regimes, thereby disregarding the social and political mechanisms (ideological appeal after Fascism or Nazism, social mobility, compromises between States and societies, etc) that may explain their evolutions over time and their longevity (Rousso 1999).

⁴ See Büttner and Leidinger in this special issue (forthcoming).

⁵ See the introduction to this special issue.

⁶ Besides the final resolution the source material includes the motions for a resolution tabled by the political groups; the joint motions for a resolution that the groups agreed on; potential oral and written amendments; debates; explanations of votes; and votes. About 30 semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the relevant MEPs, their assistants and Parliament staff.

⁷ The anniversaries of the end of the Second World War, the Budapest Uprising, the Prague Spring, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the fall of the Berlin Wall provided enabling conditions for the EU to reflect on the recent past. It did so by constructing a teleological narrative which presents European integration as the final outcome of all the struggles against tyranny during the 20th century.

⁸ The adoption of this Resolution cannot be analyzed in this article due to space limitation, but the official documents adopted by PACE and the EP in 2006 and 2009 were interwoven and mutually supporting.

⁹ EU Treaties explicitly mention ‘racism and xenophobia’ as violations of the principles on which the EU is based, which provides a legal basis for European action. In criminal law, EU actions are however limited to ‘serious trans-border crime’ and to crimes that have already been recognized by international law. The scope of the Framework Decision is therefore restricted to

crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court [and in…] Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal appended to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945. (European Council 2008)

In addition, it states that ‘since the Member States' cultural and legal traditions are, to some extent, different, particularly in this field, full harmonization of criminal laws is currently not possible’ (European Council, 2007). Unanimous vote would be required at the EU Council to enlarge the list of crimes which can be tackled at the EU level. The lack of political will of some member states, the principle of subsidiarity and the possible tension between fighting radicalism and respecting free speech are the major obstacles to such an extension of EU action.

¹⁰Knowledge of abstract parliamentary procedures should be distinguished from know-how, defined as an ability to develop specific skills: establishing contacts with representatives of different countries, spotting key players and identifying political allies, and conceiving ‘admissible arguments’ framed in a ‘general Europe perspective’ as opposed to ‘national’ or ‘ideological’ positions (Beauvallet and Michon 2010, 2012). See Hix and Lord (1997) and Costa (2000) for additional analysis of the parliamentary work at the EP and the specific skills it involves. See also Hurka and Kaeding (2012) on the relative marginalization of the EP's new members during the 6th legislature.

¹¹ See for example the memoirs of two of these MEPs (Kalniete 2003; Landsbergis 2009). See also Mark (2010) on the well-known controversy between Sandra Kalniete and the Vice-President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2004.

¹² This specialization derives from their parliamentary activity: membership in commissions, drafting of reports, questions, declarations and motions for resolution.

¹³ Literature on ‘uploading’ has demonstrated that even ‘soft’ EU policy instruments such as an EP Resolution can constitute important symbolic and strategic gains for domestic actors and provide sufficient motivation for seeking to involve the European level. Batory has shown, in a case study on the Hungarian media law controversy, that

uploading issues to the EP arenas is likely to be rewarding for national political actors who are in a weak position in their member state, have an image and values compatible with involving EU institutions in a given conflict, and resources that enable them to form a winning coalition at the European level in a debate they would stand to lose at home. (Batory 2014, 234).

¹⁴ Former dissident, close to Václav Havel, who led the Czech EU Presidency in 2009.

¹⁵ Due to the role of the Communists during the civil war and the fight against the military regime in the 1960s–1970s, there are strong resistances to equalizing Nazism and Communism in Greece for example. Ten out of the 11 Greek MEPs from the EPP abstained from voting on the Resolution. No other EPP member abstained.

¹⁶ Parliamentary Resolutions are adopted on the initiative of one or more individual members. Initially the political groups table a motion for a resolution. Then they usually agree on a joint motion for a resolution which is debated in the plenary assembly. Finally the resolution is put to the vote and adopted by way of simple majority.

¹⁷ See Leggewie (2008) and Kattago (2009) for a scientific discussion of these complex issues.

¹⁸ The Dutch MEP Erik Meijer.

¹⁹http://eureconciliation.wordpress.com/about/.

²⁰ Interviews, European Commission, January 2014.

²¹ From Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria.

²² With the exception of Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland.

²³ Interviews, European Commission, January 2014.

²⁴ The only historian who belongs to its Board of Trustees is Stéphane Courtois, editor of the Black Book of Communism.

²⁵ The Prague Declaration and the 2009 EP Resolution prompted Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Chief Delegate and Director for International Relations, to send a statement to the OSCE in which he condemned ‘a Project to Delete the Holocaust from European History’: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c = lsKWLbPJLnF&b = 4442915&ct = 7548759#.VHXAFc90zIU, accessed 1 December 2014. The American-born scholar and activist Dovid Katz provides another example of strongly negative reaction with his long-lasting campaign against what he calls ‘the obfuscation of the Holocaust’: http://defendinghistory.com/, accessed 1 December 2014.