Omnipresent History

Despite a growing body of literature on memory politics and laws, the various national debates have not only remained unconnected, but are often contradicting one another. In Germany, policies like the recently adopted antisemitism resolution, the newly clarified obligation of immigrants “to acknowledge the special historical responsibility of Germany for the Nazi regime and its consequences, notably for the protection of Jewish life” (§ 10 (1) Sentence 1 No. 1a Citizenship Act), and calls for a criminal ban of denying the existence of the State of Israel by the Christian Democratic opposition have rarely been put in relation with discussions on memory laws and policies in other states. Of course, a law which criminalises those who criticise the Polish nation of being co-responsible in Nazi crimes stands in a different context and is of a different quality than laws enshrining the German “never again” topos. But only putting the turn to memory in different states and with different motivations in relation to each other allows recognising the potential problems of this trend.

The crucial question about memory laws and politics is this: to what extent do they help prevent the violation of rights, e.g., by avoiding hate speech and discrimination or justifying the support for a nation that is attacked by an aggressor, and to what extent do they pave the way to authoritarianism as they restrict human rights, notably the freedom of speech, assembly and research, and can easily be distorted to feed a government-friendly narrative?  The research project “MEMOCRACY”, led by the University of Cologne, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Asser Institute in The Hague and the University of Copenhagen (2021-2024), has coined the term “memocracy” precisely to ask about the (non-)authoritarian character of ruling on the basis of memory.

The present symposium, containing contributions from the MEMOCARCY final conference “Memory Rights and Memory Wrongs” in Munich on 11 and 12 September 2024, takes up this thread. This symposium, by putting experiences with memory laws and politics in Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe in relation to each other, aims to spark debate about the positive and negative aspects of “memocracy”. Thus, contributions stemming from young and established scholars from across Europe and various disciplines, including law, history, political science, literary science, gender studies, language studies, sociology and computational sciences, cover aspects relating to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands. After two comparative analyses of memory laws that provide the basis for the symposium, the remaining contributions will be grouped around three main themes in which the question of the  (non-)authoritarian nature of memory laws and politics is raised from different angles. First, the symposium investigates the relationship between memory and illiberalism in domestic politics. Second, it asks about the influence of memory on states’ foreign policy and its consequences. Third, it broadens the view by looking at how all memory laws and politics are undergoing fundamental changes in the digital age.

Point of departure: A comparative view on memory laws in Eastern and Western Europe

This symposium kicks off with a contribution by Andrii Nekoliak, Paula Rhein-Fischer, Miroslaw Sadowski and Dovilė Sagatienė. Based on the four MEMOCRACY country studies on Germany, the Baltics, Hungary and Poland, Russia and Ukraine, they analyse similarities and differences of these states when dealing with their experiences with totalitarianism. The authors trace the consequences of the identified differences, namely for the attempts to establish a common European memory and the various approaches to geopolitics in the region. They are ultimately sceptical towards attempts to harmonise very diverse memories at the EU level and transpose any specific historical narrative to other member states. Rather, they argue, the EU focus should lie on ensuring the good quality of the legal governance of memory.

This comparative picture is complemented by the analysis by Uladzislau Belavusau. He investigates the approaches of France and the Netherlands to govern the memory of their colonial pasts by legal means. While the French legislator has recognised slave trades as crimes against humanity in a formal law, the Netherlands have opted for symbolic acts by government officials and the royal family.  Belavusau firmly argues that the non-formal approach of the Netherlands is preferable as it offers more flexible and contextually appropriate solutions than memory laws, which heavily interfere with the freedom of expression and pose the risk of a chilling effect.

Memory and illiberalism

Some memory laws and politics have proved to be useful instruments of populist forces as well as symptoms of democratic backsliding. Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias delves into the example of Poland, where she investigates the phenomenon of competitive victimhood, manifesting itself in the PiS-government’s attempts to make the Polish nation’s victimhood from Nazi crimes supersede Jewish victimhood. Looking at the sensitive Polish-Ukrainian mnemonic relations, she concludes that the only possible way forward is to drop the competitive victimhood paradigm and recognise the perspective of the other side.

Andrea Petö contributes another example: the distortion of the memory of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution by Viktor Orbán’s government for illiberal means. Orbán draws from the experience of this revolution that it is supposedly “irresponsible” for Ukrainian President Zelensky to defend against Russia’s invasion. Petö analyses the instrumentalisation of women in this context as well as the reasons for this illiberal hijacking of the 1956 events that have formed Hungary’s identity until today.

Another fascinating aspect of the relationship between memory and illiberalism is explored by Peter Vermeersch. He examines the efforts by Belarusian artists, driven into exile since the crush of pro-democracy protests in Belarus in 2020, to artistically deal with their memories of Belarus’ recent and distant past. His impressive examples of memory art relying on the Belarusian national colours, red and white, are momentous because these are not the colours of Belarus’ current official flag but the ones used during the Soviet era. Vermeersch thus also delves into the risk of misunderstanding that such artistic ambiguity brings about.

Memory and foreign policy

Even where memory is not deliberately used for illiberal means, it has a huge influence on states’ political and legal decisions – with positive or negative outcomes. This is in particular the case for foreign policy.

A striking example of this is the Baltic straight-forward politics of post-war accountability for Russia on which the contribution by Maria Mälksoo centres. She demonstrates how deeply this policy is engrained in the Baltic-specific historical memory of the consecutive Soviet and Nazi occupations. Mälksoo argues that the Baltics, by emphasising the deterrent effect of accountability for protecting the long-term guardianship of the rules-based international order, found a way to escape the usual peace versus justice dilemma that all pleas for criminal accountability of state aggressors face.

Martin Schulze Wessel demonstrates the extent to which the German government’s choices with regard to Ukraine and Russia have been influenced by Second World War memory. Examining politicians’ statements from the 1980s until the ongoing war of aggression, he reaches a remarkable conclusion: While for a long time, Germany’s “never again” paradigm was one-sidedly associated with Russia and mostly limited to not waging wars of aggression or committing genocide, the full-scale invasion of 2022 has changed this topos so that it now also entails the need to support states like Ukraine. Thus, it became clear – and the German government has acknowledged it recently – that Germany has a historically founded special responsibility not only towards Russia but also towards Ukraine.

Marco Siddi chooses another intriguing facet of the relationship between memory and foreign policy: the enabling effect of a “policy of forgetting” for foreign policy. Revealing striking statements of history-whitewashing by the Italian Meloni government, he analyses the instruments from the memory politics toolbox used to forget war and colonial crimes.  He regretfully concludes that Western partners do not mind too much Italy’s deceptive reinterpretation of fascist history, as long as the country stays in line in today’s pressing international crises like Ukraine and the Middle East.

Memory in the digital age

There are various factors that will bring about changes in memory politics and laws in the future, including the occurrence of new crimes that societies will seek to remember and an increasing time distance to the previous main historical reference points of the 20^th century. A perhaps even more significant factor of change, however, is digitization. Taha Yasseri points out key challenges for the future resulting from the fact that artificial intelligence and large language models like ChatGPT will increasingly standardize collective memory, thus propagating illusions of consensus and posing risks to the diversity and plurality of memory. He concludes that legal standards for the training, development and deployment of large language models, as well as an increased public understanding of how they work, are essential.

Vera Zvereva focusses on “disjunctive memory” in the digital world, i.e. the phenomenon that digital memory is not necessarily everywhere connected. While it might be expected that the internet is a large digital archive which links different materials by different individuals, groups, and institutions from across the globe regarding different events of the past and present, digital memory can also be fragmented and non-cohesive. Thus, states like Russia use means like access restrictions or misinformation to increase the disjuncture of memory.

Ana Milanovic is skeptical of the learning effects of memorialisation and argues that building monuments and recalling victims’ suffering is not sufficient, but must be complemented by other policies. Above all, it is important to engage directly with the structural causes of violence, to face difficult truths, and to avoid black-and-white scenarios.

Conclusion

There seems to be no easy answer to the question of how inherently authoritarian and illiberal or democracy-promoting and rights-protective memory laws and politics are. In all three areas examined here – domestic politics, foreign policy, and digitization – memory laws and politics are in part used to promote the rights of individuals or nations, and in part to infringe upon them and undermine democracy and the rule of law. Memory laws are thus Janus-faced and it depends on the specific context in which of the faces one looks. A one-size-fits-all approach must therefore give way to a differentiated analysis of the content and context of each law.