What is it about?
Historical memory institutions have been established across post-communist Eastern Europe to address the communist past. Whereas in most cases their role and effect tend to be overbearing, in the Albanian case it is the opposite. The article asks why that is so.
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Why is it important?
The findings show that constructing a usable past after a dictatorship is difficult if the post-authoritarian society is polarised and culturally divided. Instead of a shared memory of the past, we witness restorative memories of victims of the dictatorship, on the one hand, and of inheritors of the past regime, on the other, competing in the public sphere. Ultimately, the post-communist social order has a bearing on the effect of institutions.
Perspectives
Writing this article was motivated as well by a personal reflection as a concerned citizen, born in last decade of the communist regime in Albania.
Sokol Lleshi
University of New York at Tirana
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reconstructing the past in a state-mandated historical memory institute: the case of Albania, European Politics and Society, July 2019, Taylor & Francis, DOI: 10.1080/23745118.2019.1645420.
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