Teaching transitional justice and memory politics contents and experiences

1. Teaching transitional justice and memory politicscontents and experiences Nordic-Baltic-Russian Network Transition Studies Workshop Tartu, 4 May 2006 Eva-Clarita Onken

2. Basic assumptions Any study of transition to democracy has to include the question of how the democrati-zing state and society deal with the institu-tional, structural and personal legacies of the previous regime It is a challenge to teach these issues on a comparative level, since memory and identity politics is fundamentally case related

3. Background • First experience: course on politics of memory within Prometheus • Particular circumstances: • Students from different backgrounds • Transitional countries, young and old democracies (including the US) • Different disciplines (including non-social sciences) • Different learning cultures and expectations • Limited time (7 sessions) and foreign language for most students

4. Course content • History and memory • Memory representation and power • Transitional justice • Impact of memory on policy and political culture • Specifics of the post-Communist transition cases

5. History and memory • History and historiography • What is history? What makes a fact of the past into a historical fact? • The role of the historian in society and vis á vis historical facts • Individual and collective (social) memory • How can we remember collectively? • What and who determines collective memory?

6. Memory representation • Question: How is collective memory created and maintained? • Monuments and Memorials • Examples! (War memorials/ Babij Yar) • Commemoration days / celebrations • Examples! (VE day/ 9 May / 27 January) • School textbooks • Compare history textbooks from different times • Museums, arts and films • Examples! (Jewish Museum Berlin, Guernica, Schindler‘s list)

7. Discussion: • Relationships between • Memory and identity • individual, social and national identity • Identity politics • Memory and political power • actors, institutions and means • A priori deplorable or sometimes to be welcomed?

8. Transitional justice • Question: Should young democracies deal with the legacy of the previous regime (i.e. engage in truth and justice policies)? • Pro: it builds trust in the accountability of the new state, which is a crucial precondition for the establishment of democratic procedures and institutions (pluralism and the rule of law) • Con:it destabilizes the society and the system in a time when social stability is most crucial to establish new institutions, laws and policies.

9. Truth and justice policies • Violent retribution • Trials • Purges (lustration) • Amnestie (policy of forgetting) • Truth-telling (commissions, inquiries) • Rehabilitation / Compensation • Property restribution • Symbolic gestures of acknowledgement through building monuments or declaring official commemoration days

10. Truth and justice policies • Violent retribution • Trials • Purges (lustration) • Amnestie (policy of forgetting) • Truth-telling (commissions, inquiries) • Rehabilitation / Compensation • Property restribution • Symbolic gestures of acknowledgement through building monuments or declaring official commemoration days

11. What kind of transition? • Result of the collapse of the old regimes or regime forces • Negotiated between a new democratic elite and an the old regime‘s elite • After foreign intervention giving total victory to occupying forces • After revolutionary or civil war leading to the military defeat of dictatorial forces • After regime collapse due to wearing down of internal legitimacy and loss of control of key power or ideological resources  Countries of the Communist bloc?

12. Key variable • Key to understanding various ways of truth and justice policies is to look at the power relations between pro-reform groups emerging from the old regime, moderate opposition, and extreme groups on both sides, namely the authoritarian elite and radicals within the opposition.

13. Discussion: • How significant are truth and justice (accountability) policies for the process of democratization or/and “democratic deepening“? • Destroying “bad social capital“ • Social empowerment/ justice as recognition • Laying ground for shared values and norms • When truth and justice? • Who? Political leaders and elites, civil society, intellectuals, individuals?

14. Outside influences • How much can international actors in-fluence domestic accountability proces-ses? (after defeat, through incentives) • Examples: Iraq/ CE/ post-War Germany

15. Measuring memory impact • On policy decisions • IR and domestic politics • On long term political culture • Concepts of history culture, historical consciousness and history politics • Memory regimes and public discourse competition

16. Good example: • The case of Germany • historical: post-WWII transitional justice • „Victor‘s justice“ and institutional continuities • 50 years of Vergangenheitsbewältigung • Impact of collective memory on policy decisions and political culture (West – East) • Post-Communist transition (“double past“) • Learning from experiences?

17. Post-Communist transitions • What are the particular challenges for truth and justice policies in various post-communist countries after 1990? • Short intro to theories of totalitarianism (political uses and developments – Linz, Arendt et al.) • What was socialism/communism “in practice“? (Verdery)

18. Post-Communist cases: • Poland: Round table (pacted?) transition, mode-rate, strong old elites, relatively strong civil so-ciety; competing policies of “thick line“ and lustration; outcome: successful establishment of democratic institutions and procedures, lack of trust and participation, new nationalist populism? • GDR: “swollowed“ transition; implementation of “foreign“ norms and values; policy of lustration and trials; public debates; outcome: successful institutional integration, „Ostalgia“ and identity crisis; right wing extremism? ( Comparing both with Czech Republic?)

19. Post-Communist cases: • Latvia/Estonia: social movement/ sessession; popular front / nationalists; legal restorationaism - politics of identity (nation-building, exclusion); new myths and ethnopolitics; outcome: successful establishment of democratic institutions and procedures, exclusion of parts of population via citizenship law, history along ethnic lines; divided society (two-community state) • Russia: Shock of breakdown, feeling of power loss; old elites, weak civil society; “Buried past“; myths about former glory; heroism; strength (politics of identity); outcome: weak divison of powers (centralization), non-democratic policies, control; re-inventing the past; ignoring the victims; new chauvinism?

20. Post-Communist cases • Romania: revolutionary change, violent retribution; weak opposition, re-establishment of old elites; outcome: weak institutions, corruption and lack of rule of law; half-hearted truth and justice policies; new history; slow transition.

21. Material and tasks • Readings (secondary and primary) • Pictures and films • Writing and little research tasks • Pick a monument in your local town and discuss its history and meaning • Compare history textbooks for secondary school from before and after 1990 (textbook analysis) • What recent controversy about an historical event do you remember? Analyse and discuss how it emerged, who the contrahents were and what the actual issue was! (newspaper analysis)