During the last two decades, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have attempted to address the numerous human rights abuses that characterized the decades of communist rule. This book examines the main processes of transitional justice that permitted societies in those countries to come to terms with their recent past. It explores lustration, the banning of communist officials and secret political police officers and informers from post-communist politic, ordinary citizens’ access to the remaining archives compiled on them by the communist secret police, as well as trials and court proceedings launched against former communist officials and secret agents for their human rights trespasses. Individual chapters explore the progress of transitional justice in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovenia and the successor states of the former Soviet Union. The chapters explain why different countries have employed different models to come to terms with their communist past; assess each country’s relative successes and failures; and probe the efficacy of country-specific legislation to attain the transitional justice goals for which it was developed. The book draws together the country cases into a comprehensive comparative analysis of the determinants of post-communist transitional justice, that will be relevant not only to scholars of post-communist transition, but also to anyone interested in transitional justice in other contexts.

Reviews

"’Transitional justice’ is a phrase that embraces a wide variety of practices in new democracies, some of them more transitional than others, some not always entirely just. This thorough comparative assessment of the experience so far in all the countries of the former Soviet bloc examines the "non-cases" as well as the more exemplary processes, and it takes into account not only policy intentions but actual difference in implementation (right up to the po most of the countries in question joined the European Union). What emerges is a quite variegated picture, with pre-transition historical experiences and the specific correlation of forces between communist rulers and opposition challengers providing much of the explanation for the observed divergences. This is an important contribution to post-communist studies and to the comparative analysis of democratization in general. Experience from elsewhere suggests that unresolved conflicts in this area can continue to fester and may impede the stabilization of the democratic system despite generational change."

Laurence Whitehead, Oxford University

"Coming to terms with unpleasant historical episodes is never easy for any society. The process has been especially difficult in the former Communist countries, most of which have failed to hold anyone accountable for the atrocious crimes of the Communist era. In some states, especially Russia, Belarus, and the Central Asian republics, officials...