Confronting the Past: European Experiences Series of Political Science Research Centre Forum Book 10 Series Editors Erna Matanović Anđelko Milardović Davor Pauković Davorka Vidović Nikolina Jožanc Višeslav Raos Reviewers Darko Gavrilović Mila Dragojević Publisher © by Political Science Research Centre Zagreb, 2012 ISBN 978-953-7022-26-6 CIP record is available in an electronic catalog of National and University Library numbered 804399 CONFRONTING THE PAST: EUROPEAN EXPERIENCES Editors Davor Pauković Vjeran Pavlaković Višeslav Raos www.cpi.hr Zagreb, May 2012 Contents Introduction ....................................................................................... 9 I. Politics of the Past 1. Three Aspects of Dealing with the Past: European Experience ............................................................... 17 Anđelko Milardović 2. International Legal and Institutional Mechanisms and Instruments that Influence on Creating Past ............................ 27 Maja Sahadžić 3. The Effects of National Identification and Perceived Termination of Inter-ethnic conflicts on Implicit Intergroup Bias (Infrahumanization, Linguistic Intergroup Bias and Agency) ............................................................................. 67 Csilla Banga, Zsolt Péter Szabó, János László 4. When Law Invades Utopia: The Past, the Peace and the Parties .......................................... 87 Colm Campbell 5. The War is over? Post-war and Post-communist Transitional Justice in East-Central Europe ............................................... 107 Csilla Kiss 6. The Past in the Present: Post-communist Croatia .................. 129 Albert Bing 7. Croatia’s Transformation Process from Historical Revisionism to European Standards ...................................... 163 Ljiljana Radonić 8. The Role of History in Legitimizing Politics in Transition in Croatia .......................................................... 183 Davor Pauković 2. Culture of Memory 1. “I Switched Sides” - Lawyers Creating the Memory of the Shoah in Budapest ...................................................... 223 Andrea Pető 2. Memoricide: A Punishable Behavior? ................................... 235 Šejla Haračić 3. Historical Legacies and the Northern Ireland Peace Process ............................................. 267 Thomas Fraser 4. Rituality, Ideology and Emotions. Practices of Commemoration of the Giorno del Ricordo in Trieste ......... 285 Vanni D’Alessio 5. Conflict, Commemorations, and Changing Meanings: The Meštrović Pavilion as a Contested Site of Memory ....... 317 Vjeran Pavlaković 6. The Wall of Pain: A Contested Site of Memory in Contemporary Croatia ....................................................... 353 Višeslav Raos 7. Consensus, Leadership and totalitarianism: open questions concerning the historiographical debate on Italian Fascism ....................................................... 383 Patricia Chiantera-Stutte 8. Historical Memory as a Factor of Strengthening Belarusian National Identity ............................................. 401 Aliaksei Lastouski Vjeran PaVlakoVić DaVor PaukoVić VišeslaV RAOS Introduction This edited volume is based on the conference proceedings pre- sented and discussed at the international conference Confronting the Past, held on 23 April 2009 at the European House in Zagreb. This academic conference, organized jointly by the Political Science Re- search Centre and the Scientific Forum, gathered researchers from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, United Kingdom (North- ern Ireland), Portugal, Latvia, Belarus, Macedonia, Austria, and Italy. The conference focused on the various experiences and practices of European states and societies in dealing with troubled pasts and often authoritarian legacies in the course of the 20th century. The idea behind the conference was to portray diverse European perspectives on pro- cesses of confrontation with recent history. The papers presented at the conference included a multitude of views and opinions, some of which may be in conflict with each other or provoke controversies in the field of memory studies. The Political Science Research Centre seeks to organize academic events with a strong multidisciplinary character, and this conference brought together political scientists, historians, ethnographers, lawyers, sociologists, and psychologists to discuss the challenges of confronting the past. It was divided in two panels which explored the various facets of collective remembrance and the politicization of historical narratives. The first panel, titled Politics of the Past, dealt with various political processes and practices of con- 10 Editors frontation with the legacy of wars, war crimes, mass crimes and au- thoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The second panel, named Culture of Memory, focused on the modes and manners of remembrance and commemoration of victims of war crimes and crimes and injustices committed by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Due to unforeseen circumstances caused by the global economic crisis which took its toll on the Croatian scientific community and the Political Science Research Centre, the preparation of this edited volume took somewhat longer than initially planned. The editing and reviewing of the papers submitted to this volume, which comprise expanded and revised versions of the papers originally presented at the conference in 2009, resulted in the final selection of those papers which conformed to standards of academic writing and methodology. Also, while trying to retain the diversity of views and topics, as well as country coverage, we selected those papers which could be grouped in a coherent list of research themes. Of the twenty-three papers present- ed at the conference, seventeen were included in this edited volume. This book is organized into two sections, bearing the same titles as the two conference panels – Politics of the Past and Culture of Memory. The first part opens with an introductory chapter by Anđelko Milardović, director of the Political Science Research Centre (Zagreb, Croatia) and scientific advisor at the Institute for Migration and Eth- nic Studies (Zagreb, Croatia). Milardović gives a concise overview of the practice of dealing with the past in contemporary Europe from the perspective of political science. He puts specific emphasis on the German experience and the politics of the past (Vergangenheitspolitik) practiced in that country. Also, Milardović draws a clear distinction between an academic approach to dealing with the past (through the use of scientific methodology) and a political, or ideological, frame- work in which the past is constructed, contested, reinterpreted, and negotiated. In the second chapter Maja Sahadžić from the Faculty of Law of the University of Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) discusses interna- Introduction 11 tional institutional and legal mechanisms in dealing with the past. She analyzes the work of institutions such as the International Military Tri- bunal for the Far East, the International Criminal Tribunal for the for- mer Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Court, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers of Cambodia, the East Timor Special Panels for Serious Crimes, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and the Iraqi High Tribunal. Sahadžić explores the challenges facing these institu- tions in their efforts to rebuild post-conflict societies. Csilla Banga, Zsolt Péter Szabó and János László from the Depar- tment of Psychology at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Pécs (Hungary) examine linguistic integroup bias, infrahumanization, and agency in the context of Central and Eastern European inter-eth- nic historical conflicts�������������������������������������������������in the third chapter�����������������������������. This empirical study inclu- ded the following cases: Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Russia, Croatia, Poland, and Lithuania. The fourth chapter, written by Colm Campbell from the Transi- tional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland, United Kingdom), deals with truth commissions in Northern Ireland and their role in the efforts at achieving transitional justice in that part of Europe. In his analysis, Campbell considers the numerous political, social and legal issues involved with the work of truth commissions in Ulster. Csilla Kiss from ISES at the University of Western Hungary in Szombathely addresses transitional justice in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe in chapter five, with a special emphasis on the con- cept of lustration. Kiss explores the differences between post-conflict justice in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia after World War II (communist transitional justice) and after the fall of the Berlin Wall (democratic transitional justice). In her comparison of these two historic processes, Kiss concludes that they share many similarities. The sixth chapter, authored by Albert Bing from the Croatian In- stitute for History in Zagreb, deals with the role history played in the political culture and governing style of the new post-communist po- 12 Editors litical elite in Croatia, personified by first president Franjo Tuđman, a historian and ex-communist dissident. According to Bing, Tuđman’s politics of the past included both a willingful break away from Tito’s Yugoslavia as well as a continuance of Tito’s politicization of history. In the seventh chapter Ljiljana Radonić, from the Institute for