Robert Austin

Senior Fellow in the cluster Cultural memory and cultural heritage in Europe in the context of digital transformation

What Narrative, Where and Why? Europeanization and the Legacy of Violent Histories.

In November 2012, in keeping with a top down and largely haphazard approach to reckoning with past abuses by the communist government (1944-1991), Albania’s then centre-right government welcomed home the mortal remains of King Zog I from France. 

In 2006, then Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili opened the Museum of Soviet Occupation in Tbilisi. The odd collection of exhibits certainly adhered to a nationalist narrative by ensuring that people left knowing that no good came out of Georgia’s seven decades in the USSR. 

In 2015, the Kosovo Assembly adopted a law establishing a unique court (Kosovo Specialist Chambers-KSC) based in The Hague to try crimes against humanity and war crimes committed between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2000. The KSC, set up after enormous pressure from the European Union (EU) and the United States, asked the majority Albanian community of Kosovo to re-think some of their assumptions about the liberation war. 

Three state or top-down driven narratives adopted without public engagement that are deeply controversial. This research examines how these narratives hold up to scrutiny and how other actors find space to offer alternative viewpoints.