Join the third roundtable of the series "1991-2021: Thirty Years After External link, opens in new window."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union former Soviet republics took different approaches to dealing with the Soviet past. German historian Stefan Troebst made classification of countries according to the approaches they took:

1) societies which have established a general consensus about the foreign character of the communist regime imposed from outside (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania);

2) countries with a continuity of authoritarian tradition and without articulated distance from the communist past (Russia, Belarus);

3) countries in between with no clear distinction towards the Soviet past (Ukraine).

These different paths taken in dealing with the (common) Soviet legacies show not only that different societies had different experiences of the past itself but also that different societies started moving in different directions imagining different presents and futures for themselves. After the fall of the URSS, victims, perpetrators and bystanders had to cohabitate. How could that be done? Is it possible to avoid the repetition of the past and calm compulsion of retaliation?

With the panel “Dealing with the totalitarian past: Laws on memory and legislation” we propose to approach the question of dealing with the Soviet past in different countries by discussing the legislation and production of “memory laws” (the laws that are directed to the state’s management and administration of the past) in these countries. For the past 30 years, we could witness that the past was often highly politicised, presented as the problem of justice and even framed as the question of state security. How was the Soviet past dealt legally by the countries that were part of the Soviet Union? What these different approaches tell us about the societies we are dealing with? If victims of the totalitarian regime might have been rehabilitated and liberated, have the perpetrators been condemned? Is the political demand reflected in the legal system?

Speakers:

• Maria Mälksoo, University of Kent
• Andrii Nekoliak, Tartu University
• Nataliya Sekretareva, lawyer at the Human Rights Center "Memorial", Russia
• Felix Krawatzek, Centre for East Europe and International Studies, (ZOiS), Berlin

Organizers:
Florence Fröhlig, Senior Lecturer, CBEES, Södertörn University
Yuliya Yurchuk, PhD, a Senior Lecturer of History at Umeå University

Join the roundtable in Zoom External link, opens in new window.
Meeting ID: 634 6621 6403
Passcode: 338195

You are welcome to stay in this Zoom meeting and after a short break join a build-up workshop Memory Laws: An Interregional Perspective on Commemoration and Legislation External link, opens in new window.