Episode 15: The Criminalization of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War with Laure Neumayer

In this interview with French political scientist Laure Neumayer, we discuss how a particular form of anti-communist memory politics were mobilized and utilized by "memory entrepreneurs" in Europe following the Cold War. A particular interpretation of the socialist past was put up against  official European memory of the 20th century as the EU enlarged into Eastern Europe. A mixture of anti-communist nationalists, former dissidents and liberals wanted a pan-European identity to be rewritten in a way that criminalized communism as it had after World War II criminalized Nazism.   Here's a description of Laure Neumayer's 2019 book The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space After The Cold War: Memory has taken centre stage in European-level policies after the Cold War, as the Western historical narrative based on the uniqueness of the Holocaust was being challenged by calls for an equal condemnation of Communism and Nazism. This book retraces the anti-communist mobilisations carried out by Central European representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament since the early 1990s. Based on archive consultation, interviews and ethnographic observation, it analyses the memory entrepreneurs’ requests for collective remembrance and legal accountability of Communist crimes in European institutions, Pan-European political parties and transnational advocacy networks. The book argues that these newcomers managed to strengthen their positions and impose a totalitarian interpretation of Communism in the European assemblies, which directly shaped the EU’s remembrance policy. However, the rules of the European political game and recurring ideological conflicts with left-wing opponents reduced the legal and judicial implications of this anti-communist grammar at the European level.