Abstract
In her book, Laure Neumayer presents a thorough empirical analysis of the political arguments and attempts to criminalize the communist regimes of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. Uniquely, she focuses specifically on the actors behind these transnational initiatives who have been active in different European political institutions and forums, most importantly the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the European Parliament (EP). The overwhelming majority of these memory entrepreneurs come from the right-wing parties of the former socialist countries, and Neumayer argues that the criminalization of the communist past has been an important political project for the socialization and professionalization of representatives from the new member states. Hitherto marginalized actors from the former socialist member states made their mark on the European political scene by arguing for the anti-communist cause. In this process, they furthered their political careers, formed cross-border alliances, gradually gained command of European roles, and learned the ropes of the “European political game” (p. 12). Neumayer’s book “aims to account for the ability of these newcomers, hence relatively marginalised in European assemblies, to strengthen their position in those institutions and obtain some European consecration of a controversial interpretation of communism that altered dominant European-level historical memory” (p. 4). For this reason, the political project to criminalize the communist past could be considered an important element in the process of European integration.
The attempts to criminalize the communist past rely on a particular reading of Eastern European history that posits that criminality and violence are the essence of the communist ideology. The blanket condemnation of communist regimes and communist ideology relies on the assumption that the peoples of Eastern European as a whole were victims of systemic state violence imposed from above by the Soviet occupiers. Critics of this reading of communist regimes and communist ideology argue that it disregards the everyday dilemmas people faced in these countries, the many ways the majority of the population of Eastern Europe collaborated and compromised with the socialist regimes. Some political actors from Eastern Europe, almost exclusively from the right wing of the political spectrum, aimed to introduce this particular reading of communism to European institutions very shortly after they joined these organizations. By arguing for declarations that clearly express the political and moral condemnation of the communist past, these actors also pushed for more concrete, legally enforceable measures such as lustration, vetting, and other institutions of transitional justice. With almost two decades of hard work, they achieved the adoption of several declarations and resolutions, the most important of which were the PACE Resolution 1481 on the need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes (2006) and the EP resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism (2009). These two texts clearly denounced the crimes committed by communist regimes in the past and recognized their victims. Apart from this important political and moral stance, however, these European institutions stopped short of adopting the more controversial and even extreme claims of the anti-communist memory entrepreneurs such as legally binding measures, the blanket condemnation of communist ideology in general, or the claim that Nazism and Stalinism were “equally criminal.”
Neumayer primarily examines these political initiatives which were the most alive at the European transnational level from the early 1990s to the late 2000s. Specifically, she is interested in the actors involved in shaping these debates and the political competition between them. An important assumption of the book is that this political discourse at the European level was not simply an extension of the “memory boom” which has allegedly been raging in Europe (or the whole world) since the 1980s. Instead, Neumayer starts from the premise that these political processes were the result of a myriad of individual actions of individual social agents, and she sets out to specify the main characteristics of the “anti-communist grammar” and the actors who produced and employed it to great effect.
Political initiatives for the condemnation of communist crimes often trigger a controversial and emotional discussion. The most likely reason is that they are often coupled with arguments for the equal treatment of the crimes of Nazism and Stalinism and their victims. Unlike many previous works in this vein, Neumayer refrains from taking positions in this debate or assessingthe historical validity and moral legitimacy of these claims. Her focus is the anti-communist memory entrepreneurs and their “political play,” their biographies, motivations, and strategies. “The biographical approach adopted here examines to what extent social positions and personal trajectories structured these actors’ representations of Communism and commitments to defining its European narrative, as well as the individual and collective resources they were able to mobilise for that purpose” (p. 8). The advantage of this approach is that it goes beyond just enumerating and exploring the arguments put forward by these actors; it also gives a holistic view of the most important people involved in the debate by considering how their arguments potentially served wider strategic or ideological purposes, “such as increasing the legitimacy of a political camp or actor, disqualifying competitors or reinforcing group cohesion” (p. 9).
In her analysis of the most important anti-communist actors, Neumayer identifies three hypotheses which constitute the backbone of the book. First, the memory entrepreneurs’ individual political resources and their career path in European institutions influence how they can contribute to the debate about European memory. Second, the logic of political coalition-building in European institutions required the watering-down of the more extreme claims of the anti-communist cause to a more widely acceptable blanket condemnation of all totalitarian regimes in Europe in the 20th century. Third, due to the segmentation of the European political scene, the resolutions adopted by different European institutions have had negligible legal implications and have had little impact on the memory entrepreneurs’ standing in national politics.
With the adoption of the resolutions mentioned above, the anti-communist cause was successful on paper, but its legal effects were very limited. Neumayer explores this puzzle by analyzing the biographies of the most important figures behind the anti-communist position. She finds that the lack of practical policy outcomes is mainly due to the failure of the anti-communist memory entrepreneurs to build coalitions outside their right-wing home turf. In addition, despite paying lip service to a common European approach to all totalitarianisms, the anti-communist memory entrepreneurs could not meaningfully engage with European memories of dictatorial systems other than communism.
Neumayer’s book must certainly be credited for its actor-based approach and truly transnational perspective which are important qualities that were missing from many earlier works on this topic. Neumayer also surveys the actors’ actions in, and even movements between, the EP and the PACE in an integrated way, whereas scholarly works often unjustifiably treat them separately. What makes the book stand out the most, however, is the level of empirical depth and the incredible attention to detail with which Neumayer reconstructs the career journeys of the anti-communist memory entrepreneurs.
While the book’s methodology is otherwise solid, the critical link missing from the argumentative chain is the justification about how the 18 anti-communist memory entrepreneurs were selected for study. Their political careers are explained in detail, but we do not know how this group was selected for deeper analysis while other supporters of the anti-communist cause were not. As a result, some of the book’s observations seem to be simply the result of this selection bias. For example, the finding that members of what Neumayer calls the anti-communist young guard “were on the whole more active than the average of enlargement MEPs” (p. 58) should not be surprising, because presumably they were selected for analysis exactly because they were relatively active MEPs.
The book also makes much of the concept of the “European political game,” how the anti-communist memory entrepreneurs played their cards in this game, and how their actions could be interpreted as investments in a European career. While these considerations certainly played a role in the choices of these political actors, they do seem to be depicted as too rational, calculating, and cynical. Without examining the emotional and affective side of these public figures, we cannot fully comprehend their motivations and actions.
Despite these shortcomings, Laure Neumayer’s book is definitely an important contribution to the fast-growing literature about transnational memory politics in Europe. Certainly, it should be read by all those interested in how this debate unfolded in European institutions in the last 30 years, and how a handful of actors shaped the political decisions along the way.