In the last twenty years, memory entrepreneurs have proliferated memories of Communism from Central and Eastern Europe transnationally across Europe, but for some an invisible Iron Curtain persists. How has the European memory field changed in the last two decades, and more broadly, what determines which mnemonic actors are successful in diffusing their historical memories transnationally? This dissertation demonstrates that transnational historical memory diffusion is, holding all else constant, determined not so much by the content of the memories themselves or the values they stand for, but the mode by which they are shared. Drawing on European historical policy documents, I find that since the 2004 European Union (EU) enlargement, the unified European memory field based on the Europeanization of the Holocaust has morphed into a pillarized memory field because it now also includes a totalitarianism memory regime that promotes the commemoration of Communism (but not its criminalization). Moreover, the EU has established the "dialogic imperative"––the inclusive and open mode by which historical remembering should take place. To determine which memories are most likely to get diffused transnationally, I draw on eight months of participant observation at two transnational organizations, which are both in different ways subverting the hegemonic European mnemonic regime based on the Holocaust by infusing the European memory field with memories of Communism. One tries to diffuse its memories of Communism through a "victimhood regionalism" strategy, which depends on essentializing Communism and defining the mnemonic contest as a zero-sum game of "us" versus "them," which primes it to propose retribution as the solution to the Communist legacy problem. The other tries to propagate its memories of Communism through a "reconciliatory regionalism" strategy, which relies on differentiating Communism across time and space and defining the mnemonic contest as a negotiation between "us" and "them," which prompts it to propose reconciliation as a solution to the Communist legacy problem. I argue that this latter strategy proves more successful at the European level because it is more compatible with the EU's dialogic imperative. In other words, successful transnational mnemonic diffusion necessitates a match between the memory entrepreneurs' regional strategy and the mode of communication hegemonic to the larger memory field. The major implication of this research is that they best way to resolve transnational mnemonic misunderstandings and foster reconciliation is to detach mnemonic positions from national/regional and political identities that cause intractable cleavages and instead interrogate the rules of mnemonic communication that govern the memory field.

Last modified

• 01/29/2019

Creator

• Iga Kozlowska

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N21X2W

Subject

• Sociology

Keyword

• Law
• Central and Eastern Europe
• European Union
• Culture
• Public Policy

Date created

• 2017-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright