The full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 triggered painful soul-searching within the Russian pro-democratic opposition milieu. Why did Russia’s attempted democratization go up in authoritarian and militarist smoke? What must be done differently so that the country does not miss its next chance at democracy, if it ever occurs? To answer these questions, politicians, journalists, activists, and pundits often turn back to Russia’s authoritarian past. Is it because Russian society failed to work through it, the argument goes, that the country’s democratic transition went awry. While the comparison between Putin and Hitler is drawn again and again, Russia’s presumed inability to come to terms with its Soviet past is contrasted with Germany’s apparent success in confronting its Nazi one. Yet, as this article will discuss further, a link between working through an authoritarian past and building a democracy is not a direct and unambiguous one.
From Justice to Democracy: What Is Transitional Justice?
The notion that the path toward a bright democratic future lies in facing up to and learning from a dark authoritarian past is the very essence of the broad theoretical (and practical) framework of Transitional Justice (TJ). Indeed, autocracies leave in their wake difficult legacies of political repression and violent conflict. The proponents of TJ suggest that unless these are worked through, democratization is doomed to fail.
Yet TJ is anything but a one size fits all process. It includes complex prescriptions of restorative measures (i.e., focused on repairing the harm inflicted upon victims) and retributive ones (aimed at punishing the perpetrators). Acknowledgment of past wrongdoings is a vital component of TJ, which may take various forms: official apologies and truth commissions, erecting memorials and making films, publishing historical research and fictional books, introducing memorial days and building museums. Whichever form working through an authoritarian past takes, victims are at the heart of it. Remembering them is not only considered a moral obligation. It is expected to promote human rights and prevent future violations.
The gist of the TJ imperative is best grasped by the «Never Again» motto associated with Holocaust remembrance. While the Holocaust is seen as the ultimate crime, the memory of its victims is considered something of a paradigmatic memory. It is believed to have given rise to a specific memorial culture, which goes far beyond Europe and has universal significance. In the meantime, (Western) Germany’s working through its Nazi past is regarded as an example to follow to remember victims of mass atrocities properly, and, at the same time, evidence of the fact that a difficult past has to be properly remembered to be overcome.
The TJ movement gained momentum in the 1980s and onwards as waves of democratic transitions swept Latin America, South Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe. The expectation was that the countries of the Communist Bloc would acknowledge the crimes of communism — just like Western Europe had reckoned with those of Nazism — and move on towards a democratic future. Importantly, TJ did play a role in the political lives of nearly every Warsaw Pact country. Thus, Eastern Germany opened the Stasi archives; the Czech Republic adopted lustration measures; and Poland created the Institute for National Remembrance to memorialize victims of communism. However, among the Soviet successor states, only Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia pursued TJ. In Russia, Yeltsin wrapped up its inconsistent policy of working through the Soviet past by 1996. Since he first came to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin’s approach to this past has famously been to paper over its darkest pages while relying heavily on exploiting the heroic ones. Thus, the successful democratic transition of many Central and Eastern European countries, including the Baltics, and Russia’s dramatic failure, seem to support the TJ dictum of «no democratization without working through an authoritarian past.» At least, such is the view that many within the Russian opposition seem to share. But is it an accurate one? To answer this question, we must look deeper into Europe’s experience of confronting its dark past.
Remembering or Forgetting Authoritarian Past? Democratic Transitions in Germany and Spain
First, it’s worth introducing a little nuance into the simplistic yet popular understanding of what working through the past in Western Europe was like. In postwar France, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and elsewhere, democracy was consolidated despite — and probably even owing to — suppression of unwanted memories of collaboration with the Nazis and complicity in the Holocaust. In Western Germany, the government of Konrad Adenauer reversed the denazification policies of the immediate post-war period. Many of the convicted Nazi criminals were eventually pardoned and could gradually return to their professional and public lives.
While its society was consumed with the German wartime suffering rather than the German guilt for the war, the political class, under the tutelage of the Allies, focused on eradicating the institutional legacy of Nazism. Public debates about the Nazi past began decades later, in the late 1960s, and were initiated not by those who lived under Nazism and committed crimes in its name but by their children and grandchildren. Even more importantly, by that time, Germany had already established itself as a thriving democracy and Europe’s economic leader.
Spain’s tremendously successful democratization was predicated upon forgetting its authoritarian past rather than confronting it. In 1977, two years after Francisco Franco’s death, the so-called Pact of Forgetting, an Amnesty Law that prevented any criminal investigation into the crimes of the regime, was adopted by the Parliament. Only in the 2000s did Spain turn to a painful reckoning with those crimes. Much like in Germany in the 1960s, the children and grandchildren of victims and perpetrators led the way.
In other words, only after they had tackled the immediate economic, social, and political challenges that arose during their respective democratic transitions — however different those transitions were — could both Germany and Spain truly engage in confronting their difficult pasts. Their experiences suggest that the devastation that authoritarian regimes and military conflicts often leave in their wake hardly favors repentance for past sins; security and prosperity do. Moreover, working through the past is better done within robust democratic institutions. After all, it is these institutions — most notably, independent judiciary — that were (and still are) crucial for dealing with the legacies of Nazism in Germany and Francoism in Spain.
Transitional Justice and Post-Communist Transition: A Medicine with Side Effects
Thirty years of post-communist democratic transition complicates the picture even further. Indeed, in many countries of the Communist Bloc, working through an authoritarian past took the form of lustration, with the Czech Republic and Lithuania standing out as the region’s «eager lustrants» and Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia emerging as «lustration laggards.» Yet, in all these cases, the decisions to lustrate were primarily motivated by the desire to manipulate political competition. Political elites in newly democratic states used the memory of the victims of communism to discredit their political opponents amidst fears of a re-emergence of the left. As anti-communism became a form of ideology used to legitimize the political and economic power of the post-communist elites, this memory became a form of symbolic capital not only in domestic but also in international politics. Although the issue of the crimes of communism was put on the agenda by a small group of memory entrepreneurs, it played a crucial role in the power struggle between the newcomers and older member states in the EU enlargement process.
The victim-centered memory of communism emerged in response to the presumably universal — but, in fact, firmly associated with Western Europe — memory of the Holocaust. It originated from Central and Eastern European countries’ desire for victimhood status and ended up triggering a toxic competition of victimhood nationalisms in Europe. While the crimes of communism were elevated to the level of those of fascism, antifascism was delegitimized. Memory laws were passed that openly protect past perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Alarmingly, far-right ideologies were effectively legitimized in countries such as Lithuania, Croatia, and Romania. Thus, the memory of the victims of communism eventually became an instrument of ethno-nationalist politics.
Equated with one another, communism and fascism were represented as foreign impositions, alien interventions into the logic of national pasts. The trope of double occupation allowed for diverting attention from the complicity of local populations in fascist and communist crimes. Likewise, the term «genocide», which proliferated in the narratives of national sufferings endured, turned out helpful in avoiding responsibility for the sufferings inflicted upon others. In other words, while many were eager to talk about the crimes that they had fallen victim to, few were willing to acknowledge the crimes that they had committed. Thus, working through the dark communist past quickly turned from meaningful, even if painful, soul-searching into pernicious finger-pointing and blame-assigning.
All in all, it turned out that the victim-centered memory could not prevent the rise of right-wing populists to power in Poland and Hungary. Nor could it impede the electoral successes of far-right parties in Germany, France, Austria and elsewhere. Furthermore, the memory of mass atrocities did not make people more appreciative of human rights values. On the contrary, attempts to promote a «proper» way of remembering the victims perpetuated old ethnic conflicts and produced new social inequalities.
Today, the 1989 «end of history» optimism is long gone. If anything, the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall prove that democratic transition is not a one-way street and memory is hardly a remedy for evil. In fact, the victim-centered memory of mass atrocities can be used by aspiring autocrats striving for power. Nowhere is it more evident than in Russia, where the memory of victims of the (Stalinist) repressions became a political instrument in the hands of Boris Yeltsin. Indeed, Yeltsin never forged a propaganda machine around this memory like the one Putin created around the memory of the Great Patriotic War. Yet, the memory of the repressions was central to Yeltsin’s political struggles throughout the 1990s. He invoked it in 1993 to delegitimize his opponents in the Supreme Soviet and justify the dismantling (in fact, the shelling) of the legislative branch of government. He turned to it again in 1996, striving to secure victory over Gennady Zyuganov in less-than-perfect presidential elections. In the process, Yeltsin solidified his power, undermined Russia’s nascent democracy, and paved the way for Putin’s authoritarianism.
In Place of a Conclusion: We Need to Talk about Transitional Justice
Overall, Europe’s complex — not always healing, often disappointing, and sometimes self-defeating — experience puts into question the linear relations between working through an authoritarian past and democratization. If anything, this experience teaches us that TJ is a medicine with considerable side effects, so caution must be exercised by those who prescribe it. Yet, caution is often lacking in the current debate on TJ, which members of the Russian pro-democratic opposition vigorously engage in. Not only do they lament Russia’s failure to work through its authoritarian past in the 1990s. They also firmly suggest that Russian society should correct this mistake when a chance occurs. The general assumption is that to finally succeed in building a democracy, Russia must first confront all its many dark pasts: the pre-Soviet, the Soviet, and the post-Soviet ones.
The problem is that the crucial dilemma of TJ — whether to pursue it at all — is not (only) an ethical but (also) a political one. So, when addressing it, it’s worth considering that, as the long history of TJ demonstrates, confronting an authoritarian past may, in fact, be detrimental to building democracy. Anticipation of harsh justice after the transition may delay the latter. When implemented, TJ may create losers of democratization within a society and alienate considerable portions of it. TJ often implies retroactive measures, which are hardly compatible with democracy. Neither TJ helps foster the culture of compromise, which is as vital for democratic consolidation as fair elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary are. Finally, when going for TJ, a new regime risks being seen as seeking revenge instead of accountability. After all, a democracy where the judicial system is used against political opponents painfully resembles authoritarianism. When planning for Russia’s potential future democratic transition, it is also necessary to entertain TJ’s many «technical» questions: what counts as wrongdoing and what forms of suffering constitute victimhood, how to punish the wrongdoers and compensate the victims, and more.
Until all these issues are included in the Russian opposition’s debate on TJ, the latter will remain shallow, which it unfortunately currently is. Let’s hope that this will change soon. After all, it seems that an earnest conversation about the future of TJ in Russia is much needed and long overdue.
