Dealing with the communist past: Central and East European experiences after 1990

Deepening democratisation? Exploring the declared motives for “late” lustration in Poland

“…One particular variant of those who adopted the so-called 'politics of the present' approach developed originally by Welsh (1996) 6 is to try and explain the recurrence of the lustration issue though what might be termed a political elite strategy explanation. This is based on the notion that political actors responded rationally to impulses such as (actual or anticipated) popular and societal demand to further their own partisan interests.…”

Truth Commissions in Post-Communism: The Overlooked Solution?

“…Only the strict Stalinist communism of Romania (and Albania, a country Moran does not consider) would lead to transitional justice, a prediction invalidated by postcommunist developments. Welsh (1996) proposed that the "politics of the [postcommunist] present" played a greater role than the nature of the communist regime or the exit from communism in determining a country's choice for or against coming to terms with its recent past. For her, "the weaker the electoral strength of the former communists, the easier it has been to move ahead with de-communization efforts" (Welsh, 1996, 422).…”

Governing the memories of communism in Central and Eastern Europe: policy instruments and social practices

“…A number of authors thus examined the policies of decommunization and lustration with the goal of determining whether they were successful, hampered or aborted (e.g. Courtois, 2002Courtois, , 2011Krasnodebski, Garsztecki, & Rüdiger, 2012;Mayer, 2001;Radzyner, 2007;Rousso, 1999;Troebst & Baumgartl, 2010;Welsh, 1996). Later, the study of the intervention of public authorities into the presence of the communist past was extended to other domains: history-writing, public commemorations and monument-building, patrimonialization, rewriting of school textbooks, etc.…”