Neumayer - The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space After the Cold War

Memory has taken centre stage in European-level policies after the Cold War, as the Western historical narrative based on the uniqueness of the Holocaust was being challenged by calls for an equal condemnation of Communism and Nazism.

This book retraces the anti-communist mobilisations carried out by Central European representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament since the early 1990s. Based on archive consultation, interviews and ethnographic observation, it analyses the memory entrepreneurs requests for collective remembrance and legal accountability of Communist crimes in European institutions, Pan-European political parties and transnational advocacy networks. The book argues that these newcomers managed to strengthen their positions and impose a totalitarian interpretation of Communism in the European assemblies, which directly shaped the EUs remembrance policy. However, the rules of the European political game and recurring ideological conflicts with left-wing opponents reduced the legal and judicial implications of this anti-communist grammar at the European level.

This text will be of key interest to scholars and graduate students in memory studies, post-Communist politics and European studies, and more broadly in history, political science and sociology.

Laure Neumayer is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University Paris 1 Panthon Sorbonne and Researcher at CESSP laboratory (CNRS), France. She has co-edited the book History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe Memory Games (2013).

Mapping European Empire

Tabulae imperii Europaei

Russell Foster

Revisiting the European Union as an Empire

Edited by Hartmut Behr and Yannis A. Stivachtis

Unleashing Social Justice through EU Public Procurement

Antoinette Calleja

European Identity Revisited

New approaches and recent empirical evidence

Edited by Viktoria Kaina, Ireneusz P. Karolewski and Sebastian Kuhn

Discourses and Counter-discourses on Europe

From the Enlightenment to the EU

Edited by Manuela Ceretta and Barbara Curli

The Democratic Quality of European Security and Defence Policy

Between practices of governance and practices of freedom

Evangelos Fanoulis

Lobbyists and Bureaucrats in Brussels

Capitalisms brokers

Sylvain Laurens

Europeanization as Discursive Practice

Constructing territoriality in Central Europe and the Western Balkans

Senka Neuman Stanivukovi

The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War

Laure Neumayer

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

First published 2019

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2019 Laure Neumayer

The right of Laure Neumayer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-8153-5113-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-351-14176-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC