The legacy of communism: difficult histories, emotions and contested narratives

Abstract

This paper considers contested and traumatic narratives, using a case study of the planned National Museum of Romanian Communism and the site of Jilava Penitentiary, a former communist prison, near Bucharest in Romania. It discusses what happened when representatives from different groups of former victims and perpetrators met together with facilitators and worked towards a shared understanding of the past to reach some consensus about how to deal with different and apparently conflicting narratives within a new museum of communism. It draws on notions of emotional communities in order to understand the role heritage plays in contested situations. It also considers the nature of transitional justice (‘Transitional justice is an approach to systematic or massive violations of human rights that both provides redress to victims and creates or enhances opportunities for the transformation of the political systems, conflicts, and other conditions that may have been at the root of the abuses’.) in this context.