When communism fell in Czechoslovakia, contemporary observers rejoiced in the feeling that the newly liberated country was “returning to Europe.” Capitalism and democracy had triumphed, and the winds of history seemed to be blowing in the direction of progress and collective happiness. On the surface, the Czech case is a stunning success: the country in the socialist camp with the highest rate of communist party members per capita became an exemplary transitional state and a member of the EU within fifteen years. In reality, this façade conceals a divided society when it comes to dealing with the communist past. Therefore, the Czech case is an interesting example of what to do and not to do in matters of punishment and recognition, history and memory, justice and injustice.

This project aims to write the history of this coming to terms with the past from 1989 until today. It is based on the assumption that a deep knowledge of the communist past is necessary in order to fully understand the country's politics of remembrance after 1989. The following aspects are relevant: what to do with the various social actors (lustration, legal restitution measures, laws relating to the past); how to deal with the documents (archive policy, epistemology); how to write the history of communism (historiography); how to remember this period (memory research). All these aspects are discussed in their mutual interaction from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Two research questions guide the project: How representative is the seemingly dominant anti-communist narrative of society's attitude towards the communist past? And if justice was the goal of the post-communist project, why was the category of “crime against humanity” not used in the effort to bring justice concerning the crimes of the past dictatorial regime?

The corpus of sources to be analyzed comprises primary sources (political, legal and archival documents, oral interviews, policy papers from non-state actors such as NGOs) and secondary sources (academic literature, newspaper articles, feature and documentary films, novels and testimonies). This literature requires theoretical knowledge in history, sociology, political science, anthropology, gender studies, and transitional justice studies. The aim of this project is to bring these disciplines in interaction in order to create a more comprehensive picture.