This article provides an overview on some of the key issues related to the Bleiburg commemoration and more broadly the cultural memory of Partisan crimes at the end of the Second World War. Drawing upon four years of fieldwork, media analysis, and recent historiographical debates, the authors take a transnational approach in examining why Bleiburg remains one of the most controversial commemorations not just in Croatia but in the region. The article focuses on historical narratives in the commemorative speeches, the role of space in shaping memory politics, symbols and monuments present at Bleiburg Field, and the broader context of how Austrian politics affects the commemoration and its public perception.
What are the consequences of a culture of victory in countries undergoing new state formation and democratic transition? In this article, we examine ‘foundational legitimacy,’ or a hegemonic narrative about the way in which a new state was created, and the role particular groups played in its creation. We argue that the way in which victory is institutionalized can pose a grave threat to the democratic project. If reconciliation and democratization depend of integrating losers into the new order and recognizing plural narratives of state formation, then exclusivist narratives based on foundational legitimacy pose a direct challenge to both. We focus on two Yugoslav successor states, Kosovo and Croatia. For both cases, we trace how appeals to ‘foundational legitimacy’ by groups that claim a leading role in the struggle for independence fostered a politics of exclusion, which ran counter to both the spirit of democracy. In Croatia, foundational legitimacy was partly challenged after 2000 by reformist political forces, though more recently it has re-appeared in political life. In Kosovo, foundational legitimacy was never successfully challenged and continues to shape political dynamics to the present day.
In recent years and decades, authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies have passed and enforced punitive memory laws, intending to ban certain interpretations of past events or sheltering official versions of history against challenges. This comes with no surprise in countries whose governments undermine pluralism and assume the existence of a historical truth that is stable over time, invariable, and self-explanatory. But why do liberal democracies, committed to political pluralism and open debate, pass laws that penalize challenges to certain interpretations of the past and restrict freedom of speech? This article argues that liberal democracies may do so yielding to bottom–up pressure by courts and to regulate civil law disputes for which existing legislation and jurisprudence may not suffice. Based on case studies from Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, we also found punitive memory laws in liberal democracies narrower and more precise than in nonliberal states.
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