For the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution conservative parties of the EU organised a whole series of events dealing with the heritage of communist regimes. The Estonian Presidency of the EU issued invitations to an August 2017 conference titled ‘The Legacy of the Crimes of Communist Regimes...
The challenge facing European political democracy is reflected in the fragmentation of its historical consciousness. With a new monetary system (1944), the Marshall Plan (1947), and NATO (1950) a solid supranational network was erected under US leadership that coexisted peacefully with the...
The revision of the history – European and worldwide – of what Hobsbawm called ‘The Short Twentieth Century’ (1914-1991) by means of equating Communism to Nazism has an impact on European integration in terms of fuelling nationalisms and the geostrategic conflict between the West – mainly the US –...
Germany’s special historical responsibility is repeatedly reaffirmed, but at the same time interpreted in a new way – specifically now in the context of the war in Ukraine. Among those who call for German leadership, many like former German President Gauck are reinterpreting history at the European level in terms of the totalitarianism thesis.
Erhard Crome on the current German politics of history and the foreign policy of the European Union – on the occasion of the 76th anniversary of the victory over the Nazi regime.
For four years a court battle has been waged against the editors of the magazine Brzask, the newsletter of the Communist Party of Poland and that party's website. The prosecutor's office accuses the editors of "publicly promoting a totalitarian state system". However, the course of the trial...
On 19 September of last year the European Parliament - with the votes of the conservatives, liberals, social democrats, and greens - passed a resolution in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were made equally responsible for the Second World War. Europe was, so the statement went, the victim of...
On 30 October the Madrid City Council approved the celebration on 23 August of the Day of European Remembrance of the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism to pay homage to the victims of the communist and National Socialist regimes and other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes’, following an initiative promoted by the ultra-right group Vox.
The board of transform! europe launches the following open letter regarding the resolution 'Europe must remember its past to build its future', adopted by the majority of the European Parliament – rejected by the GUE/NGL group.
On left silence and the foreign-policy motivation behind the revision of history contained in the European Parliament's resolution. Read Luciana Castellina's comment.
Last Thursday the European Parliament adopted by majority the resolution on the Importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe. Read the statement of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters Association of Anti-fascists on this "ideological relapse into the worst times of the cold war".