The European Culture of Remembrance

(1)

The European Culture of Remembrance

The development of Europe’s mnemonic

narratives illustrated by an analysis of

the Europe for Citizens programme

MA Thesis in European Studies

Graduate School for Humanities

University of Amsterdam

Author: Daniëlle Ploemacher

Student number: 11397128

Main Supervisor: dr. Claske Vos

Second Supervisor: dr. Erik van Ree

June, 2017

(2)

“The struggle of man against power

is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

― Milan Kundera

(3)

Introduction

We all possess the virtually unconscious capacity to remember or forget what we have experienced. It is this capacity of holding memory that links our past experiences with the current present. But not only do individuals have a memory, also collectives have memories. Since collectives do not hold the individual capacity of remembering, the memory of a collective can better be regarded as a story to interpret the past, based on social processes within the collective (Pakier and Stråth 2010, 6). It has become common to believe that the way this collective past is understood and remembered strongly influences the way the future is perceived (Macdonald 2013, 17). Also, the sharing of a memory within a collective may be a prerequisite for feelings of identification with the collective (Bottici and Challand 2013, 5).

Europe is such a collective, for which an ongoing pursuit of memory has been prevalent in the past decades. We have witnessed that the past decades have been characterized by growing Euroscepticism. The Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016 increased these concerns about the uncertainty of the future of the European Union (EU). This has strengthened the desire for ways to bind citizens to the European project again. A European memory of the past has potential of doing so, as it is capable of telling a story that people can identify with.

As I will decipher, the pursuit of a common memory has thereby been of increased focus within scholarly publications as well as for the EU. A fundamental question that is beneath this pursuit is who belongs to the collective of ‘Europe’. Especially since the people that live on the European continent are not all citizens of the EU. The answer is still equivocal, but I can at least clarify that it is a collective that encompasses a very diverse group of people who have gone through a variety of different pasts and have different national backgrounds. This deduction has prompted the issue that is very often central for the European pursuit of memory, that is, to what extent it is feasible for all those people, to share a memory (e.g. Leggewie 2008, 217). European memory has been analysed from different academic perspectives, such as sociology, cultural anthropology, history, political science and memory studies. This has put forward the main theoretical and practical considerations that are important when examining the European transnational memory. Further did it bring into view the main stories which can provide meaning about the past in the European culture of remembrance, in other words, the main mnemonic narratives. These findings will be expounded in the theoretical framework and following chapters of this research.

The current research will add to the research field by integrating the insights from previous research to apply this on an extensive narrative analysis of one of EU’s policy

(5)

programmes: The Europe for Citizens programme. As this programme is a EU programme, it is within the current research accepted that, even though this does not encompass the whole continent of Europe, the remembrance in the EU represents the European culture of remembrance. The programme was chosen because it contains a remembrance strand that specifically deals with the memory of the past and because each year tens of projects which are initiated by civil society organisations are selected. It will thereby provide valuable knowledge for the way the EU as well as civil society have dealt and currently deal with history. I thus aim to deduce conclusions from the Europe for Citizens programme that can more generally be applied to the European culture of remembrance. Further is this research relatively innovative as it will apply the case study to particularly focus on the possible shift towards a critical culture of remembrance. This is a recent phenomenon that has been brought to light by intellectuals, and that might resonate better at the European transnational level than a shared, collective memory does. A critical culture of remembrance would allow better for the multiple variations and interpretations that are inherent to Europeans’ memories.

Hence, this research aims to answer the question: To what extent does the Europe for Citizens programme reflect the grander European narrative on remembrance and what does that tell us about the development towards a critical culture of remembrance? The expectation is that the current narrative in European remembrance, as can be found in the Europe for Citizens programme, is a narrative that increasingly includes the existence of multiple stories and interpretations, and increasingly focuses on inclusivity, critical reflection and Europeanisation. This is the case as those are key aspects of the critical culture of remembrance and that would thereby substantiate the presumption that Europe is moving towards a critical culture of remembrance to deal with its history.

In chapter 1, I will sketch the theoretical framework for collective and transnational memory. Different theoretical understandings on both concepts will be delineated. This will contribute to determining the main aspects of transnational memory and to be able to personally take a clear stance on the dynamic of it. The chapter will end with a theoretical consideration on transnational memory in Europe to describe what specifically counts for Europe in the formation of a transnational memory.

In chapter 2, I will provide an overview of the mnemonic narratives in Europe. This starts with the relevant European histories that mnemonic narratives could be related to, wherefore I will also emphasize which narratives have yet resonated best at the European level. It will be followed by an extensive examination of the most dominant narrative, which is Nazism. Afterwards, the confrontation to this dominant narrative since the EU’s enlargement

(6)

with Central and Eastern European countries will be scrutinized. For these developments, the role of the European institutions is also investigated. As the challenge to the dominant narrative has given room to the search for an alternative, this chapter ends with a scholarly review of a possible alternative: a critical culture of remembrance.

Chapter 3 encompasses the main case study of my research. I will namely further examine the development towards a critical culture of remembrance by doing a narrative analysis of the remembrance strand of the Europe for Citizens programme. This programme has undergone two periods and I will explicitly focus on the change between the two periods in order to verify whether the change can be characterized by a movement towards the critical culture of remembrance. To do so, the programme guides for both periods are examined to generate a clear picture of the remembrance strand and to observe whether these programme guides already hint towards a movement. This is followed by an extensive analysis of the selected projects in the programme, which have been initiated by civil society organisations. All projects are assessed for the historical theme they focus on, the way they deal with history and the dimension that is highlighted. The results from the individual projects are combined to deduce conclusions about the development of narratives within the Europe for Citizens programme. These conclusions will be linked to the theoretical considerations to determine how transnational memory is formed within Europe and to validate to what extent Europe is moving towards a critical culture of remembrance.

Based on these chapters, this research will end with a conclusion that aims to answer the research question and will set the results in a broader European perspective. For this, the explored shift towards a critical culture of remembrance will again be central. The conclusion will further critically appraise the challenges and chances for European transnational memory and thereby outline how this has contributed to the knowledge on the formation of transnational memory in Europe. This leads to suggestions for possible future research.

(7)

1. Theoretical framework

1.1 Collective memory

Memory is what is remembered of the past. Even though this might sound as a rather straightforward definition, it is heavily flexible, ambiguous and difficult to define. It is challenging and often hardly possible to envision what experiences or aspects will be remembered and, equally important, what aspects will be forgotten. Notably, this also differs extensively between individuals, groups and nations. Therefore, it can occur that people who have gone through the same past, have a totally different memory of this past. Memory is due to these fluid aspects often seen as different from history, which as a discipline rests on the principle of objectivity and the processing of facts (Macdonald 2013, 13; Prutsch 2013, 9). This has resulted in a consideration of memory as intrinsically subjective and fallible. By way of explanation, mnemonic accounts of the pasts are made in the present and are thus subject to present circumstances (Cubitt 2007, 28; Wawrzyniak and Pakier 2013).

The belief that memories are made in the present stimulated the idea that we had to deal with the past in a way that we would learn from it. This led to an increased consideration with the past. Since the 1980s, people in Europe and the rest of the Western World have become fairly obsessed with the past and with the memory of it. This can be observed in the large number of publications that have been written about this ambiguous concept, but also in the land-, and cityscapes that have been filled up with products that represent memory, such as heritage sites and memorials (Macdonald 2013, 1). This increase in the use of memory as a revision of the past for the purpose of better understanding present developments and future prospects, has often been referred to as the ‘memory boom’ (e.g. Rothberg 2010; Macdonald 2013; Prutsch 2013, 4; Wawrzyniak and Pakier 2013). Crucial to the concept in its blooming time was that it referred to memories or forms of remembering that were shared by certain (social) groups in contrast to more personal or individual memories (Macdonald 2013, 14). By doing so, it has become regular to understand memory as a collective phenomenon. Collectives can by itself however not hold memory, since the act of remembering is an individual ability that cannot be naturally linked to the public sphere. As collective phenomena, memories should therefore better be regarded as discourses or narratives based on social processes that often include a wish to learn from the memory of the past (Pakier and Stråth 2010, 6; Prutsch 2013, 9).

This idea of collective memories had been initiated decades earlier by the French sociologist Halbwachs (Halbwachs 1925 in Halbwachs 1992). According to him, collective

(8)

memory is formed through social action and social interaction with the larger community. To Halbwachs, the group that a person was part of, strongly influences the collective memory of someone. He assumed that this group was very stable over time. This made him conclude that people remember not principally as individuals, but as group members (Prutsch 2013, 10). His concept shifted the scale from the individual to the group, but also shifted the discourse from a biological framework into a more culturally orientated framework (Assmann 1995, 125). A large debate followed Halbwachs’ conclusions (for an overview see e.g. Apfelbaum 2010) and he has especially been criticized for holding too much belief in the stable existence of social groups and thus for overstating the role of these groups on individual memory. Still, his research has been key in introducing the concept of collective memory. It has also led to a general consciousness on the importance of social groups to create frameworks for remembering and transmitting memory, as well as on the value of a common memory for initiating a feeling of collective solidarity (Macdonald 2013, 14).

As a response to the criticism and as is the case for a lot of theoretical concepts in humanities, the concept ‘collective memory’ became increasingly interpreted in different ways and thereby became ambiguous. This has led to an expansion of seemingly synonymous concepts like ‘collected memory’, ‘social memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ that authors have employed to indicate their own slightly different interpretation of ‘memory for communities’ (Assmann 1995; Macdonald 2013, 15). For example, Assmann’s cultural memory is an institutionalized form of memory that “directs behaviour and experience in the interactive framework of a society and that obtains through generations in repeated practice and initiation” (Assmann 1995, 126). This ‘form’ of memory is far more institutionalized than Halbwachs’ collective memory is, because it assumes that institutions like museums and official commemorations are needed to pass on memory, and to mediate between individuals to thereby create communality (Erll and Rigney 2009, 1). It however still builds from the assumption that the past only exists as a social construction (Uhl 2010, 81). It goes beyond the scope of this research to go further into the nuances of these concepts, but it is important to note that these concepts all assume a kind of memory that has certain features. Firstly, these include an abstraction from individual memories and a reference to the past that is shared by a group of people. Further, it entails that a memory is influenced by societal conditions and by the people of the collective itself. This is the case as the process of selective remembering is influenced by the things that connect these people, while selective forgetting is altered by the things that divide them (Rigney 2014, 344). Lastly, a collective memory itself influences the identity of the collective. This latter aspect assumes, and there is general agreement upon that point, that

(9)

sharing a memory shapes the way these people relate to each other and can thereby enhance a group identity (Eder 2005, 202; De Cesari 2011, 152). Together talking about what one remembers establishes or strengthens a social relation. More concretely, sharing past references and experiences creates a, sometimes imagined, social relationship which often results in a shared collective identity. A collective memory can thus be powerful in shaping the collective identity. This direction can also be reversed as the people who associate with a group are to a certain extent forced to relate themselves to the narrative of the past that is attached to the group (Eder 2005, 206). It should be noted that collective memory can thus shape collective identity, but that it is not always a prerequisite for the formation of a collective identity.

What is particular about the groups that share a memory, the so-called ‘mnemonic communities’, is that the nation state is often taken as the archetype of such a community (Craps and Rothberg 2011, 517; Wawrzyniak and Pakier 2013, 262). This is what De Cesari and Rigney (2014) have called a ‘methodological nationalism’ that governs a lot of studies on memory (1). The national frame has been dominant in various scholarships because it is often considered the ‘natural’ form of the modern world. This counts not only in academia, but also for everyday life. People profoundly live in the “narrative world of the nation” since the nation is the place which is internalized as an imagined community, or as their collective belonging (Eder 2005, 210). The dominance of the nation state in academia can be linked to Anderson’s vision of nations as ‘imagined communities’ (1984). It is this concept that he used to describe nationalism and his vision thus entails a primacy of the nation as the community we ‘imagine’ ourselves part of (5-7). This nationalist way of analysing seems to have been the dominant intellectual school in particularly the 1980s and 90s and this has also shaped memory studies. The key work on this was Pierre Nora’s influential Lieux de mémoire (1984-1992) in which he argued that an imagined community is shaped by common points of reference of the past across the national territory that act as memory sites (Nora in De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 1-2). Also, the ‘invention of tradition’ thesis as proposed by Hobsbawm and Ranger swings to this intellectual tune. They argued that in the modern development of the nation states, traditions that were claimed to be old, were sometimes more recent in origin or even invented. According to them, this was often done for the purpose of legitimizing institutions and cultural practices as well as for establishing membership of groups and creating a national identity (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, 9-10).

For memory, the hegemony of the nation has resulted in a general belief that the nation state creates, keeps, influences or even invents collective memory. Also, it has reinforced the

(10)

understanding that within nations, a lot of people identify with a shared past and commit to a shared future (De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 1-2).

1.2 Collective memory beyond national borders

Prevailing global trends and changing circumstances have led to a questioning of the traditional approaches to memory and to the methodological nationalism it has been characterized with. Particularly, communication has become globalized now that the Internet has become a universal tool of interactive communication (Castells 2000, 10) and migration has occurred on a large-scale. This has led to the emergence of a network society with increasing global connectedness and to more interdependence between nations and between people from different nations (Castells 2000, 9; De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 2). Repeatedly insisting on the distinctiveness of one’s history thereby fails to recognize that an individual or nation is in essence part of larger, global historical processes (Craps and Rothberg 2011, 518). Globalization has changed the common assumption that memory, community and geographical proximity belong together (Levy and Sznaider 2002, 88).

This has asked for a reconceptualization of the borders of memory. For national memory, its borders are namely clearly set as there is in principle a fairly general consensus on who belongs to the nation and who therefore shares the memory. This is, however, not so obvious for memory that is less tied to the nation and that increasingly crosses borders as there are no regulations who are in- or excluded for a peculiar memory (Huyssen 2000, 22; Beck, Levy and Sznaider 2009, 111). It is what Beck, Levy and Sznaider (2009) have called “boundary politics within a boundary-less modernity” (125) since boundaries of a community are continuously recalled and redrawn. This has offered space for memory to be flexible and accessible to multiple individuals or groups. However, this flexibility and varying accessibility can also lead to a highly disputable and contested memory in which multiple individuals or groups compete for ‘their’ interpretation of memory (De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 4).Rowlands (2002) has also pointed out that the globalization of memory can lead to exclusion or marginalisation of cultures, groups or people (113). The reconceptualization of borders has had large implications for memory studies since traditional approaches are not adequate anymore to grasp the current dynamics of memory nor to make sense of one's identity (Huyssen 2000, 28; Sznaider 2008 in Nienass 2013). Therefore, scholarly attention has been directed to other forms, or levels, of memory. Although this phenomenon has been described more by case studies (for a bundle see e.g. De Cesari and Rigney 2014) than by theoretical considerations, it

(11)

is possible to construe two main approaches towards the changing dynamics which I will now outline.

Authors as Levy and Sznaider (2002) have argued that the ‘container of the nation state’ in which the concept of collective memory was firmly embedded, is in the process of being slowly cracked (88). According to them, this has led to the formation of cosmopolitan memory, or to a ‘cosmopolitization of memory’ (Levy and Sznaider 2002; Beck, Levy and Sznaider 2009, 111). This entails that even though identifications with memory are produced at the local level as they profoundly have resonance at that level, they are judged according to a wider shared morality that is the key of cosmopolitan memory. This wider shared morality is, according to them, a shared framework for assessing evil out of the experience of what must ‘never happen again’ that has also resulted in global human rights and universal values (Beck, Levy and Sznaider 2009, 112-3; Wawrzyniak and Pakier 2013, 266). The feeling of an uncertain future due to destructive pasts like the Holocaust strengthened the prevalence of this framework. Levy and Sznaider (2002) believe that global concerns have through this shared morality become connected with the local memory cultures and have resulted in a new form of memory that is universally shared (87). According to them, a decoupling of collective memory and national history can thereby be witnessed (Levy and Sznaider 2002, 89). This argumentation implies that memory would totally pass national borders and that the creation of a common, global culture would be possible.

Other authors have adopted the term ‘transnational memory’ and emphasized the dynamic of interlocking scales that connect the local, national and global levels in the formation of memory (De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 3). According to them, collective memories from different scales become intersected and entangled to form a transnational memory (De Cesari 2011, 155; De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 6). This implies that it is possible for national memories to be important building blocks of transnational memory. National boundaries thereby continue to exist and are influential in the construction of a transnational memory (De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 4). Generally, an interplay between borders and memories occurs as practices of remembrance can also draw borders or strengthen existent borders. These authors have therefore plead for recognition of the more multi-layered, multi-sited and multidirectional dynamic that is inherent to the formation of memory (Rothberg 2009; De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 4). This multidirectionality implies that transfers occur between events that seem separate from each other, but have in essence influenced each other through trajectories in history (Stone 2012, 13).

(12)

There seems to be a division for the extent to which national borders and national memories are seen as crucial for the formation of a transnational memory. Deriving from the different visions, three points can be made on how transnational memory will be regarded in this research. Firstly, transnational memory has been triggered by globalisation, but is essentially more than a globalisation of national or collective memories. It is often an entanglement of various collective, individual and profoundly national memories which can include multiple narratives. Secondly, transnational memory can also be a totally new kind of memory that is only possible at the transnational level. Thirdly, transnational memory changes the dynamics between memory, collectives and borders. This latter point needs further elaboration as it also influences the process of identity formation.

As outlined, collective memory can influence a group identity and this also holds for transnational memory. The mental borders that are implicit in a transnational memory can thereby be significant for the imagination of a mnemonic community. Or even broader, mediated acts could influence the formation of an imagined community at another level than the formerly proposed level of the nation state (De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 9). It can thus create a new ‘We’ beyond the already existing ‘We’ of the nation state (Eder 2005, 198). Transnational memory can however also serve as a less integrating mechanism, because the flexibility of its borders may lead to constant processes of integration, disintegration and re-integration of the people within the groups that share memory (Nienass 2013, 43-4). Since (transnational) memory is capable of constructing boundaries and thereby of establishing and dividing imagined communities, it is either way very influential in the formation of group identities. It can regulate the criteria for membership and participation in the particular community that has been formed by the transnational memory. This highly depends on the community that shares a peculiar memory.

1.3 Transnational memory in Europe

Since this research will focus on Europe, the rest of the current chapter will be devoted to transnational memory on a European level. Later chapters outline the development in Europe of transnational mnemonic narratives and the EU policy on this, but it is crucial to also include a more theoretical consideration on European transnational memory.

In line with, among others, Leggewie (2008), I wonder whether it is possible for all those people that we call Europeans to share memories or perhaps a common sense of history (217). As the formation of a European transnational memory is not so evident, I believe it is

(13)

key to examine in this research how the European narratives on remembrance have developed and to what extent they can provide relevance for all Europeans. This question is very relevant for the community of Europe, as Europeans have always had a culture of focusing on the past for imaging the future (Assmann 2007 in Rigney 2014, 342).

Nineteenth-century nation-building and nationalism were already characterized by a preoccupation with the past of the nation’s territory and political actions were legitimized through that past. These processes led to the consolidation of local identities into national identities (Rigney 2014, 342). Memory was thereby re-scaled from the local to the national level. Rigney (2014) observed that it seems as if the EU has tried to replicate and extend this process at the European level with the aim of integrating these national identities into a larger framework (342). Various authors have argued that it is problematic to repeat the creation of these national narratives in the nineteenth century on a European scale due to a few aspects (e.g. Jarausch 2010, 316; Prutsch 2013; Rigney 2014, 348). Firstly, a duplication of national narratives would lead to a past that is biased and incomplete and would fail to do justice to the complexity of Europe’s past. This is likely as for the invention of a European mnemonic narrative only specific elements will be selected and those will probably exclude outsiders or former enemies (Leggewie 2008, 219; Jarausch 2010, 317). Also Rigney (2014) criticized these attempts for the risk of exclusion as it might “perpetuate a nineteenth-century habitus in which the identity of citizens was articulated through a monumental narrative that served, by an appeal to origins and continuities, to differentiate those who belonged from those who did not and that, by an appeal to an exclusive past, created a symbolic, but nonetheless powerful obstacle to the integration of newcomers” (348). Secondly, it has been delineated that the process of memory creation is more complex on a European scale since there are more levels and locations at which mnemonic narratives are produced, circulated, and transformed (Rigney 2014, 346). Thereby, the scales of the local, national and global have become interlocked. This is especially so since ongoing globalization has strengthened the influence of global institutions. Further, the perceptions of the pasts at the different national levels are sometimes diametrically opposed, as some nation states were winners when others were losers. This entails that the pluralism that is inherent in European memory at the different scales has complicated the processes of European memory creation and has made it unfeasible to duplicate the models from the nineteenth-century (Prutsch 2013, 9; 14).

There seems to be general agreement that a European transnational memory should not be a reproduction of nationalist models on a higher scale. Rigney (2014) has, to my opinion, perfectly identified the European developments that should be accounted for in the formation

(14)

of a transnational memory by stating that the "complex dynamic [is] affecting all of society in which the traditional relationship between nationality, citizenship, and memory is in the process of shifting” (342). Even though the complex dynamic might have altered the hegemony of memory in nation states, the importance of nationalist thought is deep-rooted in the old continent of Europe. The path dependency that is specific to Europe should therefore be taken into account. While creating a transnational European memory, I believe that one cannot easily surpass the nationalist specific pasts as lots of Europeans still hold on to their national identities. A few possibilities have been put forward in academia to allow for people still adhering to national memories, yet to create a transnational memory.

Spohn (2005) delineated that the facets of history which are shared by different nation states may together constitute a transnational European memory. His theorization assumes that each nation state has undergone a specific trajectory of modernization that has shaped its national identity and that these specific trajectories developed in Europe in strong synergy with each other. It is the overlap between the heritage of all these specific trajectories that can together form a transnational European memory (7). A transnational memory is then in essence a new way in which various collective memories, of which most of nation states, are mirrored and related to each other (Eder 2005, 213).

A European memory could also entail that European countries come to terms with their past as individual nations, but do so on the basis of shared universal principles and through European practices. Hereby, the nationally specific pasts would be persisted, but there would be a Europeanisation of attitudes and practices in dealing with the past (Müller 2010, 27).

In both cases, an important issue remains who is in- and excluded in the concept of Europe. Therefore, the question of borders that I already described, definitely applies to Europe. There are large differences in the way people would define ‘Europe’ and thus in the way people would draw its boundaries. Often, the boundaries of the EU are taken as Europe’s boundaries, but this is not always concordant with facts, as countries that belong to the continent of Europe are in that way excluded. Also, whereas ‘universal’ knows no boundaries, the concept of ‘Europe’ does imply a bordered entity, even if no one thus agrees on where its boundaries lie (Rigney 2014, 349). Many authors have shown that drawing Europe’s borders is often done in contrast to changing constructions of an ‘other’ (see e.g. Stråth 2002; De Cesari 2011; Bottici and Challand 2013). Throughout histories, these have changed between contradictions to the East, to Communism, to non-Enlightenment and to the Islam. Using a distinct other makes clearer who belongs to the collective of ‘Europe’ and thus who shares the memory that belongs to this collective. Interestingly, this ‘othering’ can also happen against the own past. This

(15)

implies that the present is seen as radically different to one’s former collective self (Nienass 2013, 45). One of the most specific examples of this is the way how Europe has used the past of the Holocaust to build a new future. This is extensively outlined in the next chapter.

The unstable other and changeable European borders have led to a high variety of narratives that Europe has been characterized with. A narrative is a plot or a story, which can provide meaning about a given time that most often lays in the past (Bottici and Challand 2013, 4). Moreover, this increased understanding of the past can contribute to making sense of the present or future. At a narrative’s basis lays a coherent series of events that have been subject to selection and organisation. It is thus, just like memory, based on a selection of what is remembered and what is forgotten. It is thereby possible for a narrative to be analogous to an existent collective memory, but can also be constituted of elements of various collective memories, as long as they together provide a coherent plot.

The mnemonic narratives on Europe correspond to the different times or traces of its history. Europe’s history has been comprised of brighter and darker times, whereby it has held heroic as well as more suspicious roles. Europe is often identified with a large cultural tradition that dates back to the Holy Roman Empire and that bloomed during the Enlightenment (Bottici and Challand 2013, 99). It has further been an influential, dubious, actor in colonialism and imperialism overseas and has dealt with migration and diaspora. Its twentieth century has been characterized by wars, fascism, the Holocaust and Stalinism, but also by democratization and official European integration (Rowlands 2002; Leggewie 2008; Müller 2010).

I do not aim to be inclusive with this enumeration, but I do want to demonstrate that Europe’s past is defined by a highly diverse and multi-dimensional dynamic. The formation of a European transnational memory is difficult and can even be contestable. It is a matter of present circumstances and political will for the different histories to become dominant and to become integrated in the transnational mnemonic narratives of Europe. The memories that will, will be those that shape private and individual memories and define the nature of Europe’s collective identity (Eder 2005, 198). The greatest difficulty for a transnational European memory lays in its aim to be inclusive for all Europeans yet to be solidly European, and not universal. Or more fundamentally, to be able to enforce community-building at lower scales of aggregation than humanity, but at higher scales than the nation (Rigney 2014, 349). The next chapter goes in more detail into which mnemonic narratives have resonated at a European level and in what way this has been influenced by the EU.

(16)

2. European mnemonic narratives and memory policy of the EU

2.1 Introduction

Europe has dealt with a high diversity of narratives concerning its past and regarding the foundation of the EU. These narratives have existed subsequent as well as parallel to each other. Actors like national and European governments, civil society organisations, media, scholars and individual citizens create and influence these European mnemonic narratives (Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1186). Narrative formation in Europe is thereby a process that is top-down as well as bottom-up, which De Cesari (2011) also reasoned when she argued that “the current making of a new European memory is both a project of knowledge and identity production by intellectuals and policymakers, and a cultural process distributed over a wide range of sites” (155).

Especially the EU has been an active policy actor with a lot of influence on the development of the European mnemonic narratives. To the EU, it has been crucial to “bring the common cultural heritage to the fore” (TEC 1992, art. 128; TFEU 2007, art. 167) in order to be responsive to concerns from society and to create feelings of identity, community and attachment to the EU (Lähdesmäki 2014, 402). Put more precisely, the prevailing economic crisis in the 1970s and the increasing charges of a democratic deficit made the EU realize that to create a community, it needed to emphasize that European cooperation essentially entails more than practical or economical cooperation, and also involves cultural cooperation (Castells 2010, 362-8; Rigney 2014). As a result, the EU made attempts to create a common narrative that could bind and which citizens could identify to in order to feel more attached to the EU as a project or Europe in general. The fundament of such a narrative would lay in a common memory and a common heritage that would be capable of telling a story, of connecting to citizens and of putting the ‘common’ to the fore.

This chapter starts with an overview of the relevant histories for Europe that mnemonic narratives can be related to and will outline which narratives have had the best resonance at the European level. I will show that the Holocaust and totalitarianism in general have resonated best and these are therefore clarified extensively in the next section. Thereafter, this prior focus in Europe is critically analysed, which gives room for the search towards an alternative. This is the main focus of this research, as I will dive further into the question whether the current alternative of a critical culture of remembrance has resonance at the European level and if a shift towards such a culture is occurring among European citizens. This examination will in the next chapter be exemplified with a case study on the Europe for Citizens programme.

(17)

2.2 Mnemonic narratives in Europe

The aforementioned enumeration of Europe’s history illustrated that there have been lots of periods and aspects that had influence on the development of Europe. These histories can all create narratives, which has led to an indefinite amount of narratives that circulate around Europe. As the previous chapter has further shown, it is however not always evident for such a narrative to become a transnational European narrative that resonates among European citizens. The presence of a transnational European narrative depends on whether it can include aspects of national narratives, while still having its borders go beyond the borders of the nation states to be adequately inclusive. It should namely be capable of generating a feeling of identification for a considerate amount of European citizens. In this section, I put forward six categorical themes that were identified in scholarly literature to have been influential in Europe’s history and that may therefore be present in Europe’s culture of remembrance. In the subsequent chapter of this research, it will be analysed which of these outlined themes have been present within the remembrance strand of the Europe for Citizens programme, to contribute to the literature on the presence of the various themes in Europe’s culture of remembrance.

Firstly, Nazism, which implies the Second World War and the Holocaust, has played a major role in Europe’s recent history (e.g. Leggewie 2008; Pakier and Stråth 2010). The very high number of deaths due to intended killing has, as the next section will show, affected our way of accessing evil. It affected most of the countries in Europe and the memory that is associated with the war goes thus further than the borders of nation states. Maier (2002) has argued that Nazism has become a ‘hot memory’ in Europe for European citizens as it was already present in their domestic memory cultures (Maier 2002 in Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1183). It has therefore become attractive for the EU to use this ‘hot’ memory in their attempts of creating a common narrative. Leggewie (2008) also observed that the Holocaust has become the central perspective in Europe (220).

Secondly, Europe also dealt with the totalitarian experience of Stalinism in the period after the Second World War. Even though not all European countries lived under Stalinism, it severely affected the development of Europe in the twentieth century. The Iron Curtain, as erected by the Soviet Union after World War II, divided West and East Europe and led to large differences in the progression of these areas. It strongly affected Eastern Europe as lots of people became victim of the regime, either by a severe limitation of their freedom or through death. Leggewie (2008) outlined that it also affected Western Europe, but in a totally different manner as its anti-communism provided an identity to that part (223). This chapter later shows that Stalinism has as a mnemonic narrative been difficult due to the variations of resonance in

(18)

the different countries in Europe, but that it has functioned as an important challenge to the dominant perspective of Nazism.

Thirdly, totalitarian regimes have in general been influential for Europe. Europe not only dealt with expulsions in the twentieth century due to the Second World War and Communism, but also with the first World War, the parallel Armenian genocide, the Spanish Civil War and later with the Yugoslav Wars (Leggewie 2008, 223). These experiences, which may be summarized to other totalitarian regimes in Europe’s modern history, have within Europe’s culture of remembrance not yet had the resonance that Nazism and Stalinism have. This might be caused by having a less transnational character as they are not present in numerous domestic memory cultures and are thus more tied to the boundaries of the nations in which they are part of the memory culture. They have probably influenced the national trajectories of an insufficient amount of nation states and have thereby not yet become entangled with a European mnemonic narrative.

Fourthly, Bottici and Challand (2013) outlined three crucial periods throughout Europe’s history that relate to progress and which legacies we still encounter today. These are: ‘Classical Europe’ which traces Europe back to its alleged Greek and Roman origins mostly focusing on philosophy and spirituality, ‘Christian Europe’ which points to Christian religion as the backbone of European identity, and ‘Enlightened Europe’ where Europe is presented as the birthplace of Western Enlightenment and of modernity (98-100). In the present, we may conclude that these aspects are as narratives combined to represent the ‘European heritage’ or ‘foundation of European values’ as so often referred to in EU communications, policies and legitimations. European heritage has on its own proven to be an insufficient vector for identification with the EU, most likely since it is particularly vague in its meaning and does not resonate well with existing memory cultures at national levels (Prutsch 2013, 23). When the common heritage is, even implicitly, linked to this foundation of European values, the narrative becomes more powerful. The values that are implied are human dignity, tolerance, freedom and equality, solidarity and democracy (Prutsch 2013, 29). The strength of these values as a European narrative lays in the cross-boundary nature, as most European nations adhere to these values. They have also permeated different policy fields, which has made the narrative of common European values more visible. Further, these values correspond to the power and uniqueness of Europe that is eagerly emphasized by the EU.

Fifthly, Europe’s history is since the end of the Second World War very much shaped by European integration. This entails the process since the early cooperation of Europe with the European Coal and Steel Community until the current EU. Leggewie (2008) refers to this part

(19)

of history as ‘Europe’s success story after 1945’ (230). According to Littoz-Monnet (2012), the European institutions have attempted to create a mnemonic narrative around this that can be identified as the ‘grand moments of European integration’ (1188). They have promoted it through the use of cultural and citizenship policy instruments and through implementing Europe’s official symbols such as the European anthem, flag and Europe day on the 9th of May (Shore 2000, 48-50; Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1189; Prutsch 2013, 15). It is a mnemonic narrative that is only possible at the transnational European level, which I outlined to be a potential relevant feature of transnational memory. Still, it has not yet become very powerful as a transnational mnemonic narrative for Europe. This is caused by it being less in line with the existing mnemonic narratives at the national level (Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1189; Prutsch 2013, 15).

Sixthly, Europe has been a continent of transnational migration in the past centuries (Rowlands 2002, 113). Migration has been a transnational feature since most regions and various countries have dealt with it, although in different manners. Further, it has come back at different periods whereby Europe has been a continent of immigration as well as emigration. Especially immigration is very much related to Europe’s colonial and postcolonial history (Leggewie 2008, 230). This might be the reason why it has never had the resonance that the Holocaust narrative has. Identification with colonialism namely calls into question the morality of Europe and the Eurocentric perspective (Müller 2010, 35). This makes it less attractive for the EU to promote a narrative around that phenomenon or for Europeans to identify with that. These six categorical themes have had different resonances at the European level, even though they all played a role in European history. The image of the European wars in the 20th century and Nazism in particular have become key in the perception of the past for European citizens (Bottici and Challand 2013, 48). This is in line with the often regarded idea that Europeans cannot but perceive themselves as former enemies or as parallel victims of a traumatic history (Bottici and Challand 2013, 47; Van der Laarse 2013, 121). Even though this idea indeed counts for Nazism, it does not explain why solely Nazism has become such a central perspective and has given little space for some of the other dark pasts. Only Stalinism has partly succeeded in challenging this dominant perspective. The subsequent sections will thereby extensively outline the development of these two narratives on the totalitarian regimes. This makes it possible to examine why exactly these narratives on totalitarian regimes have prevailed. It will also pay attention to the EU’s attempt of creating a common mnemonic and the possibility for using these narratives in doing so.

(20)

2.3 The development of the narrative on Nazism

It was difficult for political elites to address the memories of the Second World War and of the Holocaust specifically in the early post-war years. There were large national differences in how citizens remembered the conflict and in the extent to which countries were characterized by victim, perpetrator or heroic resistance narratives (Berger 2010, 119). Memories of World War II were therefore treated merely on a national level. Still, the fact that this history of World War II had happened, provided an important anchor for European integration. Political elites even considered World War II the ‘founding event’ of European integration and this way of thinking is nowadays sometimes called ‘Europe as born out of the war’ (Bottici and Challand 2013, 52). References to the Second World War in early declarations also show this way of thinking. The Schuman Declaration of May 1950 referred, for example, to the desire to make war “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible” and referred to the proposed Community as “the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace” (Schuman 1950). The Preamble of the Treaty which constituted this European Coal and Steel Community in April 1951 had similar references to historical rivalries and bloody conflicts (Bottici and Challand 2013, 52). A broadly shared narrative of collective, transnational resistance to fascism was thus key in early European integration (Rigney 2014, 344).

Even though there were frequent references to World War II, the Holocaust was not mentioned in these early treaties and declarations and was in general in Western European states quasi-silenced or even collectively forgotten (Karlsson 2010, 43; Littoz-Monnet 2013, 492). Any memory to the Holocaust was limited to certain groups, privatized within victim’s families and overshadowed by national narratives (Assmann 2005, 97; Berger 2010, 128). Western political elites hang on to their traumatic narrative of being victims and depicted the German as perpetrators. They did not take any responsibility for the persecution of Jews and anti-Semitism in general for 20 post-war years. It was this implicit denial of any responsibility that resulted in an initial ignorance of the Holocaust past.

There were various events that grew awareness on the prevalence of collaboration under Nazi occupation. This slowly shifted the narrative in Western Europe to a Holocaust-focused narrative that included a more critical confrontation with the dark past (Wawrzyniak and Pakier 2013, 266; Rigney 2014, 344). This started in the early 1960s with the Eichmann trial in Israel and the trials of concentration camp administrators in Germany. It culminated in the end of the 1970s and the 1980s with the screening of the Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss television series in 1978 and 1979, the production of Hollywood and German movies about the Holocaust and the broader integration of the Holocaust in popular culture (Banke 2010, 168;

(21)

Littoz-Monnet 2013, 493; Van der Laarse 2013, 123). Hereby, traditional national narratives about World War II became increasingly questioned and the public representation of the Nazi crimes shifted in a lot of European countries (Berger 2010, 126). A prime example of this preoccupation with the Holocaust is that people in Western Europe are recently so concerned with Auschwitz because it is considered the place where ‘our’ Jews from West-European cities went to (Van der Laarse 2013, 124).

The shift from a focus on the Second World War towards the preoccupation with the Holocaust took long to follow at the EU level (Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1188). But when it in the mid 1990s finally reached momentum, it resulted in a decisive turn in EU’s memory discourse. In July 1995, the European Parliament (EP) published a ‘Resolution on a day to commemorate the Holocaust’ (European Parliament 1995, emphasis added by me) and this resolution was in the subsequent years followed by at least four other resolutions and one declaration on the Holocaust, which made it one of the central topics on the EP’s memory agenda (Kucia 2016, 102-3). Especially the ‘Declaration on the Remembrance of the Holocaust’ in 2000 was influential as it explicitly pointed out the need for remembrance of the Holocaust, but also called on the European Commission (EC) and Council to strengthen efforts and encourage study and remembrance (European Parliament 2000; Prutsch 2013, 19).

This particular timing could be attributed to the Yugoslav crisis and its genocidal politics that peaked at the end of the 20th century (Huyssen 2000, 23). The EU had always articulated that it was against any more wars and since a war was now occurring on European soil, the EU needed to take measures to strengthen its story and learn more from what happened in the past. The trauma of the Holocaust could serve this purpose as it was a memory that went far beyond the nation state, but was at the same time relatively close to European citizens. The prevention of another Holocaust thereby became the foundation of a new official European memory, at the time that the Yugoslav war was at its height (Levy and Sznaider 2002, 100-1; Van der Laarse 2017). The Holocaust memory grew as an anchor for the evils that should never happen again, closely connected to the discourse on human rights and became a legitimation for military and non-military intervention to prevent or halt genocides (Huyssen 2000, 23; Levy and Sznaider 2002, 100-1; Beck, Levy and Sznaider 2009, 111-3). A general belief had arisen that Nazism had changed Europeans’ understanding of human rights and democracy and that the EU should therefore act as a global defender of democratic values and an investor in universal human rights (Littoz-Monnet 2013, 493; Rigney 2014, 344). This made the Holocaust memory very powerful.

(22)

Generally, the Holocaust memory was a very forward-looking memory that did an active appeal to learn from what had happened in history. The EU emphasized this aspect of being able to deal with divisive and troublesome pasts for realizing a better future to underline its uniqueness in dealing with the past. The Holocaust even became considered the ‘founding myth’ of the EU, due to the idea that a future catastrophe like the Holocaust should be prevented and that the only way to realize that, was decent cooperation in, and of, Europe (Leggewie 2008, 219; Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1188; Rigney, 2014, 346).

This stimulated a ‘politics of regret’ in Europe (Olick 2007; Müller 2008) for dealing with bilateral conflicts and, in a limited manner with colonialism (Rigney 2014, 347). The politics of regret means politics in which national leaders engage in public apologies and redemption and assume collective responsibility for past misdeeds and human rights violations (Müller 2008, 360). Coming to terms with the past through public state apologies, admitting responsibility for past actions, truth inquiries and reconciliation has been important to generate solidarity and the circumstances for peaceful co-existence (Rigney 2012, 252). The idea existed that this would be key for unifying the memories of European nation states, thus for being able to generate a common European mnemonic narrative. Participation in this culture of apology has thereby become a ‘semi-official passport’ for entry in the EU (Rigney 2014, 347). This had its effect as European integration towards the East indeed stimulated processes of critical self-reflection in these countries (Müller 2010, 32). The Holocaust memory did an active appeal on the politics of regret and thereby stimulated it, but also became more powerful due to the association between the two.

The Holocaust has as a collective memory also on the global level been formally enshrined with the Stockholm Declaration of the International Forum of the Holocaust in January 2000. The Holocaust was declared the main challenge of Western civilization which should be “forever seared in our collective memory” (IHRA 2000). The declaration was signed by forty-four representatives of states and although it was an international declaration, it was especially in Europe important for constructing and institutionalizing Holocaust memory (Kucia 2016, 105). This was the case because the Holocaust memory was in Europe very closely connected to the discourse on human rights and even to Europe’s identity. The declaration had a strong intergovernmental dimension and this was relevant in a time in which the EP, a supranational institution, was the major agent in Europeanizing the Holocaust (Kucia 2016, 102). Due to the declaration, national member states became more active agents in the process as well.

(23)

Although it thus took a while for political elites to follow the emphasis on the Holocaust, they have since then actively promoted an image of the Holocaust as unique and as the founding moment for a new understanding of human rights and democracy. The European memory of the Second World War was still relatively divided between different countries of the EU (Bottici and Challand 2013, 61). Nonetheless, the activating and forward-looking ingredients of the prevailing mnemonic narrative led the Holocaust, and Nazism in general, to maintain their very central place in the EU’s memory discourse. This lasted until at least the Eastern enlargement of 2004. Since then, the narrative has increasingly been challenged (Littoz-Monnet 2013, 494).

2.4 A challenge to the dominant narrative

The Eastern enlargement of 2004 and 20071 to the EU has changed the apparent consensus that had surrounded the dominant mnemonic narrative at the level of the EU. In a way, the Eastern enlargement showed the paradox of memory that is for new member states inherent in being included in the EU. Acknowledging the primacy of Holocaust, thus the Western way, had namely also become a ‘soft membership criterion’ (Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1182; Stone 2012, 10). However, it was yet this inclusion and ‘Europeanness’ that was necessary to challenge the same memory for the asymmetry between the Western and Eastern perspectives. This active challenge, also as a desire to be included, enhanced the memory of Stalinism as part of the European mnemonic narrative. When they could, the new member states questioned the dominant mnemonic narrative for two main aspects. Firstly, they challenged the dominant Holocaust narrative for its content as they had experienced the Holocaust and World War II in a different manner. Secondly, they challenged the dominance of the ‘Holocaust as unique’ narrative by a desire to have their own, recent Communist experience included in a mnemonic narrative of the EU. This latter aspect led to the promotion of a narrative of ‘Nazism and Stalinism as equally evil’. Using the words of Mälksoo (2009), the new member states in fact challenged the West-centric writing of European history (653).

The end of World War II in 1945 was for the old member states the year of liberation and of the restart of democracy. It however meant the complete opposite in Eastern European countries as it marked the beginning of a new dictatorship (Rigney 2014, 345). During the Communist regime that these countries lived under, there was almost no possibility of a critical

1_{In 2004, ten countries joined the EU being Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,}

(24)

recollection in the public sphere of the recent past with the two World Wars. The version of the past that was communicated under the Soviet regime was a mythical one which set communism as an anti-fascist resistance and a revolutionary post-war transformation, and which externalised national collaborators as foreigners or singular cases (Karge 2010, 138). This narrative on the heroic Soviet Union that Snyder (2015) has called ‘liberation from the East’ undeniably contained fallacies and disinformation (31). In private, many people did share the real version of their past and this created lots of personal and communal memories. The memory of Eastern Europe has thereby become extremely diverse, mutually conflicted and often considered ‘unofficial’ (Judt 2002, 173; Wawrzyniak and Pakier 2013, 267).

Further, the fact that Eastern Europe was not able to historicize and analyse its past led to an over-identification with the West concerning the Holocaust. The Cold War decades marked in Western Europe an intensive production of narratives which did re-interpret the recent past. This over-identification with the West can, for example, be observed in the victims that are universally well known such as Anne Frank or Victor Klemperer. These Jewish victims are atypical as they belong to a smaller group of Jews from Western Europe who had, paradoxically enough, a relatively big chance of surviving in comparison with Jews from the East. There was however more information left of those victims of whom a greater amount survived and who came from countries that did not experience the Communist regime (Snyder 2015, 32). Hereto, the realities of the war in Eastern Europe are generally unknown to the Western European public and are rather considered a supplement than a foundation of the European memory of World War II.

Another reason why it is so striking that the memory of this geographical part has long been considered of minor importance is that this is the part where most deliberate killing happened. Snyder (2010) has famously called this the bloodlands. The space has however almost exclusively been included in terms of the horrible terrains, killing fields and death facilities where the Holocaust took place and Western European Jews were killed and not as a place that itself lost large amounts of its inhabitants (Snyder 2015, 33). This aspect was especially of big issue to a lot of Eastern European countries which could not accept that the Holocaust was solely concerned with Jews. In these nations also non-Jewish groups such as the Roma or Slavic people fell victim to the War.

The European transnational memory of World War II was thus characterized by an over-identification with the West. But not only were the experiences of Eastern Europe unknown to Western Europe, also the Holocaust memory that was developing in Western Europe did not arrive in Eastern Europe until the nations liberated themselves from communism (Kucia 2016,

(25)

98). Thereby, the differences in World War II experiences were a motive for Eastern European countries to challenge the Western European narrative of the Holocaust.

An even stronger motive for most nations was that they not only considered the Holocaust as perceived by Western Europe inadequate, but definitely did not regard it as ‘unique’. After having experienced more than four decades of the dictatorial Communist regime, these countries considered that experience equally evil as the Holocaust or Nazism had been. They thereby also challenged the hegemonic narrative with their narrative of ‘Nazism and Stalinism as equally evil’ (Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1189; Prutsch 2013, 6). The start of the memory conflict that surrounded these opposing narratives was when Sandra Kalniete, former Foreign Minister of Latvia, stated a few weeks before the big Eastern enlargement in 2004, that “the two totalitarian regimes –Nazism and Communism– were equally criminal” (Kalniete 2004). With this statement, she managed to put Communism on the agenda of the politics of remembrance and to start a debate on the evilness of the totalitarian regimes (Troebst 2010, 61). This was further reinforced through an active lobby by the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. A year later, the first mention of suffering by the nations that had lived under the Communist regime was made in EU’s primary communication. The Resolution ‘The Future of Europe Sixty Years after the Second World War’ of the EP made notice of “the magnitude of the suffering, injustice and long-term social, political and economic degradation endured by the captive nations located on the Eastern side of what was to become the Iron Curtain” (European Parliament 2005). Following, the EP adopted in April 2009 a ‘Resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism’. Therewith, the EP expressed respect for all victims of totalitarian and undemocratic regimes in Europe and highlighted the importance of keeping memories of the past alive. They called for, amongst other aspects, the establishment of a Platform of European Memory and Conscience to specialise in the subject of totalitarian history and the proclamation of 23 August as a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes as a supplement to Holocaust Remembrance Day (European Parliament 2009a; Prutsch 2013, 19). The lines in the original joint motion which mention Communist regimes as an independent crime had however been removed or adapted in the final resolution, and a sentence affirming that the “uniqueness of the Holocaust must nevertheless be acknowledged” had been included (European Parliament 2009b).

Still, these were big steps that were taken in the acknowledgement of Communism, and these would probably have been inconceivable ten years earlier (Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1190). Eastern European countries also improved their organisation. This resulted in several initiatives such as the creation of the informal parliamentary group the ‘Reconciliation of European

(26)

Histories’ which lobbied the EC to get better resources for remembrance. It also resulted in the institutionalization in 2011 of the ‘Platform of European Memory and Conscience’ which was in 2009 endorsed by the EP and Council of the EU under the Czech Presidency (Clarke 2014, 104). In case of the Council of the EU, it was chiefly under the Presidency of the Eastern European countries that it took initiatives on the remembrance of Stalinism or totalitarian regimes in general (Clarke 2014, 104-5; personal interview with Pavel Tychtl).

As a response, the EC instructed a study on the way the memory of crimes committed by totalitarian regimes in Europe is dealt with within the member states. It concluded that “the Commission is convinced that the EU has a role to play, within the scope of its powers in this area, to contribute to the processes engaged in the member states to face up to the legacy of totalitarian crimes” (European Commission 2010, 10). They further proposed that member states in Western Europe should be more aware of the tragic past of the member states in Eastern Europe and that “it is important to address knowledge gaps concerning the totalitarian past of all member states, and especially concerning the period of time in which Eastern and Western Europe have lived two different experiences” (European Commission 2010, 6-10). They also called themselves ready for using financial programmes to achieve these purposes.

Generally, attention towards the remembrance of undemocratic regimes rose since the enlargement with the former communist countries. This is sensible as those countries put their totalitarian experiences on the European arena and thereby asked for awareness and knowledge of their history. Before enlargement, the history of totalitarianism was for most countries in the EU fairly similar as they were Western European countries and profoundly had to deal with their history of Nazism. This might explain why remembrance politics had been less prevalent before enlargement.

The EP was from the start the most important European platform for Eastern European countries to lobby for attention and consideration on Stalinism, even though all institutions dealt with totalitarian regimes. It was in the EP possible for Eastern European states to ally with centre-right MEPs from Western Europe for whom it was difficult to find a platform for condemnation of communist crimes at the domestic level (Littoz-Monnet 2013, 494). The competing narratives became thereby not only an issue between Eastern and Western Europe, but also between the political left and political right. The left resisted strongly against any attempts to condemn the crimes of Stalinism on an equal footing with those of Nazism, as they felt that the heroic role that communists had played in the anti-fascist struggle, was defamed in that way (Himka 2008, 369; Littoz-Monnet 2012, 1192). Further, the debate between the West and East also implied a debate between the old and the new member states as the outcome on

(27)

the EU level could represent the extent of inclusion of new member states to the European memory culture. This is indeed what Littoz-Monnet (2012) outlined: that the struggle of having their own memories promoted at the European level has for the Eastern European states also been about recognition of full membership and equality in the EU (1193).

The ‘Nazism and Stalinism as equally evil’ narrative has thus become increasingly prevalent at the EU level, primarily due to the lobby by Eastern European countries in their wish to be included. It has however definitely not replaced the narrative of the ‘Holocaust as unique’. The EU and civil society organisations are very engaged on retaining an important status for the Holocaust. It seems as if they regard memory as a zero-sum game and believe that the memory of communism, or other histories, would come at the expense of memory of the Holocaust (Stone 2012, 10). This would also explain why most of the other themes that have been influential for the development of Europe are still barely included in the resonating mnemonic narratives in the EU (e.g. Leggewie 2008).

The memory conflict at the level of the EU did lay foundation for more discussion about Europe’s history and about the possible lack of inclusivity of the other deportations, and aspects of history in general. We could therefore say that in the decade following the Eastern enlargement, the narratives on Nazism and Stalinism have existed in parallel, but that Stalinism still competes for centrality. There thus continues to exist a memory conflict between these narratives, which has given space to a more general consideration about Europe’s mnemonic narratives.

2.5 A critical culture of remembrance

In the last years, the debate on Europe’s memory has slowly moved beyond the dichotomy of Nazism and Stalinism. Within most Eastern European countries, the internal dynamic has namely changed which moved the preoccupation with Stalinism and Communism to a broader focus on the complexity of their histories (personal interview with Pavel Tychtl). Also, the zero-sum logic which had characterized the debate on Nazism and Stalinism and entailed that remembering one thing must come at the expense of forgetting the other, has increasingly been criticized in academia for being historically problematic and inaccurate (e.g. Craps and Rothberg 2011, 518; Stone 2012, 10). Thirdly, Prutsch (2013) outlined in a report as requested by the EP that the simplistic view of Nazism and Stalinism as Europe’s sole ‘dark past’ does injustice to the complex nature of European history and leaves out aspects that happened before the 20th century like colonialism or more positive phenomena like European integration (6).

The European Culture of Remembrance