Legitimation crisis, memory, and United States exceptionalism: Lessons from post-communist Eastern Europe

Abstract

The article examines how the experiences of post-communist transitional justice policies could inform current controversies in the United States regarding its reckoning with the past. To lay the ground for this analysis, three facets of American exceptionalism—the dual state reality, the triumphalist myth, and the denialist myth—are identified as principal obstacles that have preempted any substantive reparations for the crimes against humanity perpetrated against enslaved Africans and their descendants. This is followed by a presentation of how the 1989 revolutions in East and Central Europe failed to promote an inclusive and pluralistic model of the past. Instead, current representations of the past rooted in essentialist and ethnocentric historical narratives are weaponized by non-democratic political actors. Finally, the authors caution against misguided representations of historical trauma and memory wars in the United States that could potentially reproduce White supremacist ideologies and escalate existent political and cultural divisions.

Narrating Communist Repression in and Outside the Courtroom: The Case of Former Prison Commander Alexandru Vișinescu and its Resonance with (Societally) Available ‘Narrative Worlds’

“…The persecution of the elite and middle classes and the peasantry altered the social structure and extinguished resistance. Peasants resisting forced collectivisation represented about one-third of the prisoners (Ciobanu, 2021).…”

“…Against the backdrop of this nationwide detention system, ‘R.S.’ was known as the “prison of silence”. Initially used as a transit station for political prisoners, later the most famous members of the historical political parties or clergymen were imprisoned in ‘R.S.’ for a longer period of time (Ciobanu, 2021). From the mid-1950s, i.e., during Vișinescu's active time as prison commander, this included members of various religious sects, former democratic leaders, or previously disgraced members of the regime such as the husband of Valentina, one of the civil parties to the trial.…”

“…The accounts put forward by the courts adjudicating Romania's violent revolution, or by the former nomenclature and Securitate officers that dominated politics, located responsibility predominantly in Ceauşescu. The widespread abuses under Gheorghiu-Dej during Romania's “obsessive decade” were distorted or silenced (Ciobanu, 2021).…”

“…Amidst this politics of amnesia, documenting “traumatic experiences of communist repression, resistance, and exile in oral history projects dominated public discourse” (Pohrib, 2016: 11) in the 1990s. The accounts by former political prisoners or dissidents shared the “generalized sentiment of having experienced a human catastrophe that needed to be publicly addressed” (Ciobanu, 2021:33). Communist repression in and through political prisons was framed in terms of individual trauma, resistance and survival.…”

“…While the official condemnation did little to stimulate personal, institutional or societal reflections, it marked a turning point. State actors now appropriated the narrative of suffering and resistance, inserting it “into a much broader historical and cultural narrative that emphasises collective trauma and victimhood” (Ciobanu, 2021: 9). The renewed official discourse was followed by the opening of the archives containing the secret files in 2007 and the establishment of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of Romanian Exile (IICCMER) in 2009.…”