European memory beyond the state: Baltic,Russian and European memory interactions (1991–2009)

Memory figurations: a typology

In the context of the three relatively small states with powerful neighbours and inhabited by a strong Russian minority, the application of Norbert Elias’ concept of ‘figuration’ will allow scholars to clarify the intra- and international dynamics of memory transformations. With regard to the national context, some scholars used various concepts such as ‘counter-memory’ (Foucault, 1975) or ‘vernacular memory’ (Bodnar, 1993) as opposed to ‘official memory’. However, they do not insist on the figuration created by their relationship and the fact that they ‘co-exist’, meaning that their separate existence is reinforced by the presence of the other. Here, ‘memory figuration’ (Dunning and Hughes, 2013; Elias, 1978, 2006) is understood as the intersubjective relationship in which individual memories are co-constructed inside the society (Cyrulnik and Peschanski, 2012; Halbwachs, 1968, 1994; Olick and Robbins, 1998). Every individual is a member of countless memory communities (within the family, the workplace, the school, etc.) that grow or fade with time (Pollak and Bédarida, 1993). In this framework, every individual is unique because he or she holds a special place at the intersection of a certain combination of memory communities (Michel, 2010), that is, two different people cannot belong to the same combination of memory communities.

All these memory communities are embedded within the power structures of societies. Langenbacher (2003) demonstrated how several ‘memory regimes’ – defined as combinations of memory-related state institutions and memory policies developed by the ruling elites – are competing inside the German society, and how the personal memory of elites matter in this respect. He is right to point out that there is no monolithic acceptation of the elites’ memory discourses in the society.

The relationship between these various interpretations of history can be explained using the concept of memory figuration. This memory figuration is influenced by the memory regime, but conversely, the memory figuration also informs and influences the elites.

Onken (2010) used a framework with a three-level approach comprising internal, bilateral and European dimensions. She applied her model to explore Baltic perceptions of the 2005 Second World War celebrations in Moscow.

Based on the approaches of Langenbacher and Onken, this article provides a typology of various types of memory communities that resist or facilitate pressures to transform the memory regime. This typology adopts the terminological distinction between ‘established memory communities’ and ‘marginal’ ones as put forth in Elias (1978) and Elias and Scotson (1994). Established memory communities enjoy backing from the public authorities in the form of inscription in the national narrative (public holidays, national ceremonies) or through public funding and recognition; they are embedded in the memory regime. Marginalised memory communities, on the contrary, lack such support and recognition or may even be banned by state policies. Even the most totalitarian regime cannot erase all the individual memories that have the potential to contest the narrative as promoted by the state. Those who are at the intersections of the established and marginalised memory communities may utter approval or doubts over the legitimacy of the dominating memory regime to confirm or to contest its new position in society. However, totalitarian regimes drastically limit their access to the public space with the use of terror. This relationship between individual memories, memory communities and memory regime can be illustrated as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1.

Memory figuration. State level.

In this model, each black dot represents an individual at the intersection of various memory communities (family, school, work, friends, etc.). Most of these memory communities (depicted as circles) are unmobilised, which means that they do not intend to reach the public political space. Other memory communities, on the other hand, are mobilised, of which four types can be distinguished.

Mobilised repressed marginal memory communities. Despite significant internal activities, some memory communities cannot reach the public space either because they diverge too radically from the general consensus or because they are repressed (legally or not) by state institutions. For example, in the Soviet Union, assemblies of Nazi army veterans were forbidden by law. Many of these veterans were deported directly after the war (Denis, 2009). The USSR also demanded and achieved the expulsion from Sweden of 150 Estonian and Latvian veterans of the Nazi armies in 1945 and 1946. The Soviet authorities immediately deported them to Siberia (Matz, 2015). In accordance with Soviet legislation, their memories remained ‘mobilised repressed marginal memory communities’ (A-type): the memories were still present, but public expression was impossible. To cite another example, Valentīns Silamiķelis (1924–2005) fought in the Latvian SS legion and flew to Sweden at the end of the war. In 1946, the Swedish government led by the Social Democrats expelled him to the USSR. He spent some time in a ‘filtration camp’ in 1946 and 1951 and was sentenced to 25 years in a Gulag (Silamikelis, 2002). The Minister for Justice released him in 1955 and he returned to Latvia.

‘Mobilised marginal memory communities’ are able to reach the public space, which makes them part of the public debate, but they lack recognition from the state authorities (B-type). This is the case, for instance, with private commemorations. During the late Perestroika in the Soviet Union, several groups organised commemorations of national events from the pre-war era (e.g. the national days of the independent Baltic republics), of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 1939 and of the deportations of 1941 and 1949. On 14 June 1987, for example, the Helsinki 86 group organised a commemorative event of the deportations in 1949. Although such events were barely tolerated by the regime, they only resulted in a few arrests and expulsions (Lieven, 1994). In contemporary Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, commemorations of the Soviet Union victory of the Second World War are such B-type events, permitted but not approved by the respective governments.

‘Mobilised established community’. The main difference between the marginal and established communities is their recognition by the public authorities: these commemorations or the publications that are issued on this topic will benefit from official support (C-type). This is typically the case of the European commemorations of 9 May. The ‘Europe Day’ is mainly commemorated by EU institutions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) all over Europe, and these commemorations receive state support in most cases, even if they are not part of the national official calendar.

‘Mobilised established elite memory community’ is the core part of the memory regime (D-type). This community enjoys strong compatibility between its collective memory and the memory narrative defended by the state. Soviet leaders and veterans of the Red Army knew that they could benefit from this compatibility after 1945. Public celebrations and holidays constantly celebrated their contribution to the victory over fascism. For example, Vasily Kononov joined the Red Army partisans and was parachuted into Latvia in 1943. After the war, the he was decorated by the Red Army and he worked for the Latvian police force until he reached the rank of colonel. Every year, on 9 May, he took part in official demonstrations to commemorate the victory of the Red Army and the liberation of Latvia (Vasiliev, 2010).

This ‘installed elite memory’ is diffused through the memory regime (E) with instruments such as official commemorations, education policies or monuments.

The dynamic nature of memory figurations

It is important to note that memory figurations are in perpetual evolution. In certain periods of history, the denouncement of the Baltic deportations by the Soviet Union in the 1940s (mainly 1941 and 1949) and of the Soviet occupation could have severe consequences. Potential penalties included the Gulag in the 1950s (Kukk, 1993), the psychiatric hospital or jail in the 1960s and 1970s (Vardys, 1979) and forced exiles in the 1970s and the 1980s; ¹ it was still considered to be dangerous, but tolerated during the late Perestroika. Denunciations of Soviet misdeeds eventually became a core part of the new memory regimes after independence in the 1990s and subject to national commemorations. ² The biography of Tunne Kelam, ³ an Estonian Member of the European Parliament (MEP), exemplifies this transformation. Tunne Kelam, born in 1936 in Estonia, has personal memories of the arrival of Soviet troops in Estonia in 1945 (Kelam, 2010). Under the influence of his mother who was deeply attached to the Estonian independence movement, he later became an historian. In 1972, the KGB suspected him (with good reasons) of being one of the initiators of a letter directed against Soviet occupation that was smuggled outside the Soviet Union to the United Nations (Kelam, 2012). The KGB found no evidence against him, but he was stripped of his job at the Estonian Encyclopaedia and moved to the countryside, where he was employed as a night-shift worker on a state poultry farm. ⁴ During the Perestroika, he co-founded the Estonian National Independence Party and participated in many public events that commemorated the independence of the country. In 1991, he was elected Member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he became an MEP. His parliamentary activities included memory debates in which he tried to influence the European institutions to condemn Communist crimes. Throughout his life, he has been part of three distinct memory groups: his childhood memories made him part of a repressed memory community (type-A), later of a marginal memory community (type-B) and now of an installed elite community (type-D).

Influences from across the border

Other than the dynamic flux (rather than a static immobility) of memory figurations, Tunne Kelam’s biography illustrates a further important point, namely, that the theoretical scheme has to take into account international influences in order to be exhaustive. The application of Elias’ concept is particularly seminal here since it relies on the notion that ‘chains of interdependence’, a key concept in Elias’ sociology, run across borders. The Baltic case perfectly illustrates the relationship between memory and power, not only inside the national boundaries but also across them. ⁵ The modern state does not only impose its monopoly over taxes and physical violence but also tries to regulate public memory. If possible, leaders from repressed memory communities will seek support across borders, whether be it from neighbouring states or at the European level.

The Soviet Baltic memory figurations and the marginalised Baltic memory communities

Many scholars have pointed out that the Baltic experience of the Second World War and the Cold War differed from the general West European experience (Davies, 2007; Snyder, 2010), essentially laying the foundation for a marginal memory at the European level (Mälksoo, 2010). Indeed, the Baltic states and Poland were the only European states occupied by the USSR in 1940. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania witnessed the invasion of Soviet troops in 1940 (Buttar, 2013; Kasekamp, 2010). The first occupation, despite the rhetoric presented by the Soviet authorities of a voluntary accession to the USSR, ⁶ was characterised by a particularly brutal and systematic Sovietization (Kasekamp, 2010), which included spoliations and mass deportations (Kukk, 1993). After Germany’s offensive against the USSR in 1941, young men from the Baltic states were drafted into the Red Army based on their birth year (Hiio et al., 2006). The following year witnessed German military successes, and Nazi troops were greeted as liberators in the Baltic capitals (Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993).

Thousands of testimonies like those collected in Estonia in the 1990s (Kirss and Hinrikus, 2009) demonstrate that the picture of war is made up of not only countries attacking each other but also millions of personal experiences and memories. Some Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians benefited, at first, from the German invasion, some willingly collaborated with the Nazis, while others were forcefully drafted into the army. The active complicity of local groups (Browning, 2013: 44) including the infamous ‘Arajs commandos’ (Buttar, 2013) in Latvia partially contributed to the extermination of the Baltic Jews. Around 80,000 Latvian Jews were exterminated on Latvian soil (Zisere, 2005). In Lithuania and Estonia, local paramilitary groups and police forces helped the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust (Snyder, 2010). The Nazi authorities also recruited thousands of Estonians and Latvians by will or by force. Yet, far from achieving the restoration of their sovereignty, the Baltic people remained victims, and sometimes accomplices, of the Nazi occupation and the ‘Final Solution’ (Hilberg, 1986).

The Soviet counter-attack was fierce after 1944. Thousands of Baltic citizens participated in the Red Army to pursue the liberation of the Baltic states by the USSR (Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993), fighting their own compatriots in one of the most disputed areas of Europe (Davies, 2007). In many respects, the Second World War in the Baltic states had the features of a civil war involving local people fighting for the cause of the Soviets and the Nazis.

A second wave of Soviet repression decimated opponents who retreated into the forests (Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993). The Baltic countries were reincorporated into the USSR, which was accepted without debate at the Yalta conference.

Beyond exercising a tight control over the republic through the KGB (Wolff and Moullec, 2005), the regime encouraged the settlement of thousands of Russian-speaking families beginning in the 1960s, especially to Estonia and Latvia. The official Soviet narrative – shared by most Russian–Baltic immigrant families – praised what they deemed as a voluntary unification with the USSR in 1940, and it celebrated the heroic struggle of the Soviet people for the liberation of the Baltic nations (Overy, 1999). Their position as immigrants, separated from their original memory communities in a country largely destroyed by war (suffering more than 23 million victims), explains why the Soviet propaganda was strongly accepted by these immigrants. The Soviet authorities imposed the new narrative through public events like the Victory Day (9 May) and by the use of national museums like the Latvijas PSR Centrālais Valsts vēstures muzejs (Central Museum of Latvian SSR) opened directly after their return to power in 1945. The Soviet regime also erected many new monuments, which destroyed the remains of the previous national narrative (Kattago, 2008; Kruk, 2009). As a result, Soviet immigrants had no links with the pre-war Baltic countries and no opportunity to be integrated into the pre-war Baltic narratives, which were now repressed in the public space by the new regime. The Soviet ‘national narrative’ conflicted with the memories of thousands of Baltic families (Davoliute, 2013; Skultans, 2002). Their repressed memories were kept silent by the heavy use of State propaganda injected via schooling policies and via systematic harassment, jailing and deportation of those who dared to challenge the new memory regime. In private, many Baltic families retained their memories passed down through generations, recalling the golden age of independence, but also their own private memories of the occupation, resistance and deportation (Davoliute and Balkelis, 2012; Kirss and Hinrikus, 2009). Early discussions of the traditional Soviet narrative of the Second World War remained very rare, though the movie ‘I remember everything’ by Rolands Kalnins in 1966 poses a particular exception (Tcherneva and Denis, 2011). The repressed Baltic memory communities remained largely marginal communities in the three republics that were then part of the Soviet Union and dominated by Russian-speaking elite, whose memories were in line with the official discourse and policies (Taam, 2008).

This contradiction between the official Soviet memory regime and the widespread but marginalised memory communities was one of the main aspects that was utilised by the nationalist elites in the 1980s, alongside ethnic and environmental issues (Kasekamp, 2010; Muiznieks, 1995; Taagepera, 1993). More and more groups of individuals, sharing the same repressed memories, dared to express themselves in public, for instance, at commemorative anniversaries (Lieven, 1994; Smidchens, 2007; Taagepera, 1986). They faced less state repression during the Perestroika and succeeded in mobilising large parts of the population in favour of independence. Some groups of the Russian-speaking population also supported independence during the referenda in Latvia in March 1991. Thanks to the international context, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gained their independence in August 1991 and the leaders of the repressed memory community made their way to power.

After the Soviet and Nazi occupations of the Second World War, the experience of widespread politically marginalised memory communities in the three Baltic states became the ferment of anti-Soviet rebellions. On the other hand, the domination of the Russian-speaking memory communities came to an end with the fall of the USSR, creating the political space of contestations by the new democratic regimes.

The independence and the shift in Baltic memory figurations: marginalised memories and cross-border influences

When analysing the evolution of the relationship of the memory figuration and memory regime, one has to look at two aspects: how the new memory regime impacted the hierarchy of memory communities inside the state and faced resistance and how memory figurations spread across borders.

At the national level and as a result of independence, once marginalised memory communities became State-backed memory communities, while marginalised Russian Soviet-backed memory communities tended to rely on Moscow.

After 1991, the Baltic governments wanted to ensure the restoration of their sovereignty, which included the introduction of a new memory regime. In these new national narratives, occupation and deportation played a central role, and the Baltic people were perceived primarily as victims of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Museums (Bayou, 2005) and public discourses emphasised the suffering caused by the Soviet occupation, while the liquidation of the Jews by Nazi Germany in the Baltic states, sometimes assisted by local auxiliaries, did not carry the same weight as it did in the collective consciousness of the West (Kattago, 2009; Weiss-Wendt, 2008, 2009). The Jewish community, sizeable before the war in Lithuania and Latvia, disappeared from the public debate because of the war and could not reclaim a place in the renewed narrative from the inside (Schreiner and Donskis, 2004; Zisere, 2005). With independence, the typology (A, B, C, D) of the figuration changed accordingly to the new memory regime.

Most memory communities remained unmobilised by memory entrepreneurs; they continued to be unrelated to politics (blue circles). Some of them, the ‘repressed memory communities’, are mobilised marginal memories that cannot find their way to the public space, either because they cannot find societal support or because the law represses them. ‘Marginalised memory communities’ are mobilised in the public space but they do not have official recognition from the authorities. This was the case of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in the late 1980s, which was widely used by the independence movement, drawing on the personal memories of thousands of individuals (Skapars, 2005). It was only in late 1989 that marginalised Baltic memory communities were able to commemorate this event without fear of police harassment due to the official recognition of the Pact by the Iakovlev Commission (Beschloss and Talbott, 1993). Some individuals in these movements even became ‘an established elite memory community’ after independence in 1991. Indeed, the political elites imposed a narrative over society through memory policies that strengthened their legitimacy after 1991. These radical transformations of the national discourse do not fit all memory communities. Total state control of public memory did not happen in the Soviet authoritarian system and was even less prevalent after 1991 in a political system that was in the process of democratisation (Onken, 2010). Some memories are partly repressed, including Soviet nostalgia (Klumbytė, 2010; Matonyte, 2013) or the denial of Soviet deportations, because they do not find traction in society. Other ‘marginal memory communities’ are mobilised by Russian-speaking memory entrepreneurs, especially on commemoration days such as 9 May (Procevska et al., 2011). On that day, they pay tribute to the Red Army veterans of Second World War and bring their marginalised memory community to the forefront. Finally, some established memory community entrepreneurs are in direct contact with decision makers, for example, many historians (Wulf and Grönholm, 2010) influence the new national narrative through public policies, but are also in a position to make major foreign policy decisions. They participate with the elite memory community (type-D).

It is important to note that both memory regimes and the position of key individuals within the memory figurations evolve over time (Langenbacher, 2003). This can be illustrated by prominent examples of individuals who belonged to repressed memory communities during the Soviet period, after which they occupied prominent positions within the elite memory communities that shaped the post-independence memory regimes.

The first example is that of Lennart Meri (1929–2006), who was the son of an Estonian diplomat from the first period of independence. Educated in France, he was deported to Siberia with his family in 1941. He graduated from Tartu University in Soviet Estonia with a degree in history in 1953 and began a career as a filmmaker and writer. The memory of independence was powerful in his family, but it was impossible to say so publicly in the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, he became involved in the movement that fought for independence, then became Minister for Foreign affairs in 1990 and President in 1992. As President, he took an interest in the development of new history books and the commemoration policies of the new regime.

Sandra Kalniete followed a similar path in Latvia. Born in 1952 in Siberia to parents who were deported there, she was only able to move to Latvia in 1959. Her parents tried to keep her away from politics and did not teach her the Latvian national anthem, despite their nostalgia for the pre-war independence period (Kalniete, 2013). In the late 1980s, she became a prominent figure in the Latvian Popular Front and was appointed ambassador of Latvia to France and the United Nations after independence. Since then, she assumed several positions, including as an EU Commissioner, Member of the Latvian Parliament and an MEP, in which she chairs the informal group ‘Reconciliation of European Histories’ together with Tunne Kelam.

Vytautas Landsbergis was born in 1932 in Lithuania to a family of prominent intellectuals during the first era of independence. A music teacher by profession, he was instrumental in the creation of the Lithuanian national movement Sajudis in 1988 and became the Chairman of the Supreme Council in 1990, which was the equivalent of the President. After 2004, he was elected to the European Parliament for two consecutive terms.

All three of them experienced the passage from a repressed memory community to an elite established memory community and had positions related both to national and international affairs. Such illustrations reinforce the implication that one should avoid looking at the national situation alone. The Baltic memory figurations extend far beyond the national borders in the post-Soviet period.

At the transnational level, the former dominant, but now marginal memory communities kept a strong link with the memory regime of the former hegemon, Russia. In fact, the Russian-speaking communities in Estonia and Latvia ⁷ are connected to the Russian media sphere (Sulmane, 2006), and the Russian government proactively reaches out to influence them. Polls show that Russian national TV stations are very popular in the Baltic states (with an audience of up to 29% in Latvia) (Malikevicius, 2015). At the same time, one should note that these Russian TV channels are popular because they have bigger budgets than the Latvian channels and offer better entertainment (more films and TV game shows) for the Russian-speaking audience. Alongside entertainment programmes, they also broadcast news that is sometimes adapted to the region (e.g. for the First Baltic Channel). The Russian media’s presentation of historical events often differs in comparison of their channels to the national Baltic ones: Conflicts regarding this issue led to Lithuania’s recent attempts to ban the Russian channels (Kropaite, 2015). Russian television helps the former memory regime to stay alive in the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian societies and to resist the new memory regimes imposed by the nationalising states.

Russian memory influence is also palpable outside the media. For example, in Latvia, the Russian embassy is responsible for the upkeep of the numerous Soviet graveyards across the country. These cemeteries and monuments were set up during the Soviet period as tributes to the millions of Soviet soldiers who died in the fight against Nazism. They also served as propaganda tools, as many groups from schools or factories in the local communities had to take care of them during the Soviet era. Today, they still are core parts of the Russian-speaking minority’s memory communities.

A faction of the marginal memory communities (symbolised by B-types in Figure 1) is thus mobilised by Russian-speaking politicians and backed by the Kremlin and the Russian mass media to condemn what they consider to be a symbol of violence against them in the national media (Golubeva, 2010; Taam, 2008). The imposition of new memory regimes is at the heart of many conflicts with Russia, as illustrated by the riots after the displacement of the ‘Bronze Soldier’ in Tallinn in April and May 2007. During his re-election campaign, the Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip promised that his government would remove the statue of the Soviet liberator from the city centre (Mike, 2007). Russian-speaking leaders and associations called for demonstrations to which 1500 people assembled. Riots took place, leading to the death of one participant (Reuters, 2007). The Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs called on Estonia not to remove the monument several times (Harding, 2007). Violent demonstrations also took place in Moscow in front of the Estonian embassy, and Estonia became the target of simultaneous high-scale cyber attacks (Myers, 2007). Figure 2 encapsulates the external support which the Russian-speaking marginalised minority received from the Russian Federation. It illustrates how memory struggles in one state can have strong repercussions on interstate relations.

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Figure 2.

Memory figuration. Interstate level.

With the regime change in 1991, new borders and a new memory regime were promoted by the new elites, in line with the interpretation of their history as embraced by the majority of the Baltic people. However, the former memory regime is still defended by large groups of the population. As a counter-reaction, the new elites cross traditional state borders to bolster their memory regime against the former hegemon by reaching out to the European memory regime in an attempt to influence it from within the EU institutions, which then loops back to reinforce the elites’ position in the national figuration.

This escalation, by far the most noteworthy in the last 20 years, is the climax of tensions related to smaller commemorative events like the 9 May celebrations. Therefore, it is clear that the international situation plays a pivotal role in explaining the transformation of memory figurations. This is even more the case because the new Baltic memory policies after 1991 barely matched the European consensus on this matter.

Baltic memory figuration and EU accession: EU pressure and contestations

The new Baltic memory regimes were confronted with the EU enlargement negotiations, which started in the late 1990s. The interpretation of the history of the Second World War – highly contentious in the Baltic states – remained a subject of controversy in the context of EU integration.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the European institutions remained rather silent on the topic of the Second World War and favoured a future-oriented narrative (Sierp, 2014). This positioning is clear in the declaration on the European identity of Copenhagen in 1973, negotiated between the heads of states and governments (European Heads of States and Governments, 1973): there is no explicit mention of the war. ⁸ Naturally, the debate about the responsibilities of the crimes committed before and during the war by the Nazis and the Soviets still continued to domestically agitate many European countries like Germany and Austria (Jaspers, 2000; Nolte, 2000; Olick, 2003; Wüstenberg and Art, 2008), Italy (Sierp, 2014), Greece (Mazower, 1995) and France (Blanchard et al., 2014; Rousso, 1990) since the 1970s.

Nevertheless, it was only after the fall of the Berlin wall that the European institutions, in particular, the European Parliament, confronted the history of the war, primarily the Holocaust (Sierp, 2014; Waehrens, 2011). In the same period, the situation in Bosnia and its international press coverage reinforced this reappraisal of the Holocaust. Lady Thatcher even declared, ‘I never thought I’d see another holocaust in my life’ (Darnton, 1993). ⁹ The transnationalisation of the debate about the Holocaust (Levy and Sznaider, 2002) resulted in several resolutions proposed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 1996) and the European Parliament (European Parliament, 1993, 1995, 1996). During the 1990s, the Holocaust became a crucial part of the ‘acquis communautaire mémoriel’ (Droit, 2007), even the ‘entry ticket to the EU’ (Judt, 2010). In some European countries, France for example, a renewed debate about the Soviet crimes also took place (Courtois et al., 1997) and post-communist countries brought the matter to the Council of Europe, which then explicitly condemned communist crimes (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 1996). The fact that first the Council of Europe and then the European Union addressing the Stalinist crimes is indicative of the fact that the former communist countries’ concerns created a new debate on history. In the case of the European Union, the Baltic states first had to prove that they fit into the EU’s narrative of the Second World War. The dissonance between the Baltic narrative centred on Soviet crimes, and the European Union’s narrative revolving around the Holocaust created several difficulties for the Baltic elites.

The independent Baltic governments initially gave the impression that the Holocaust was a peripheral element of their memory (Weiss-Wendt, 2008, 2009), an issue less important than the occupation and the Soviet deportations.

For example, many monuments dedicated to the deportations of Lithuanians only commemorate deportations from 1940 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1956. In the Petrašiūnai cemetery in Kaunas, the commemorative monument does not mention the Lithuanian Jews killed or deported during the Nazi period. The Holocaust in Lithuania is subject to other specific commemorations. The German and American embassies were actively putting pressure on the Lithuanian political establishment to recognise the importance of the Holocaust, as well as to better integrate the Holocaust into the national memory policies. ¹⁰ In addition, the use of the term ‘genocide’ to describe the atrocities committed by the Red Army was viewed in Western Europe and the United States as an indictment of the unique characteristic of the Holocaust. ¹¹ The pressure from European embassies was strong regarding memory policies as well as on minority policies. They sometimes operated as a network, ¹² calling the key Latvian players one after the other. Local groups contested these new narratives through the organisation of demonstrations, which were sometimes supported by Russian officials, as the case of the 9 May celebrations of the Soviet Victory in the Second World War shows. Others developed training projects around the memory of the Holocaust in the Baltic states, with the help of international funding (EU, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance).

In general, two main elements made the memory policies of the Baltic states come into conflict with the narrative developed by the European institutions. The first element was the Baltic states’ emphasis on Soviet responsibility at the outbreak of the Second World War (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), rather than the Soviet contribution to the victory over Nazism. The non-participation of the Estonian and Lithuanian presidents in the Russian commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the end the Second World War in Moscow on 9 May 2005 illustrated this difference (Onken, 2007a). The Latvian president eventually decided to participate, but only after she expressed her own vision of the war in a letter that was sent to all her colleagues (Vike-Freiberga, 2005).

The second one was the idea that Estonians and Latvians who served in the Waffen-SS divisions were supposed to act primarily out of patriotism. After accession to the EU, a Latvian MEP was publicly attacked by another MEP for sending a group mail to all his colleagues to defend the special status of the Latvian SS legions and deny its participation in the Holocaust (European Parliament, 2008c). Indeed, the annual march of SS veterans in Riga on 16 March embodies the conflicting memories between some of the Latvian elites, on one hand, and France (Libération, 1998), Britain (Traynor, 2010) and Russia (Sputnik, 2015), on the other hand. During the war, thousands of Latvian men were drafted into the German army, until the Nazi high command created two Latvian SS divisions in 1944 (Plakans, 1995). Some of the legionnaires collaborated in the first years of the war with the Nazis and took part in the Holocaust, but the vast majority did not and the organisation was not labelled as criminal during the Nuremberg trial (Spiegel, 2009). Nevertheless, they wore the SS uniform and Moscow labelled them as traitors and Nazis (Denis, 2009). During the Soviet period, any mention of the Latvian SS divisions was met with censorship. After independence, their meetings were nonetheless permitted, and their annual rally, which started in 1993, gained more and more support from the elite (Muiznieks and Zelce, 2011). This event was gradually recognised by the state, with many nationalist politicians taking part; it was even made an official day in 1998 (Botcher, 2000). On this date, even current high-ranking Latvian military officers participated, leading the demise of the commander-in-chief, as he was present in uniform (Huang, 1999). The event lost its official status in 2000 due to European pressure, but it nonetheless continues up to today (Muiznieks and Zelce, 2011). The evolving status of this commemoration shows how the European accession of the Baltic states led to a renewed debate over the new memory policies.

In fact, after 1998 and due to European pressure, the Holocaust and collaboration were debated more frequently, and ‘commissions of historians’ were created in the three countries in 1998 (Onken, 2007b). An important indicator of the role played by international (and European) pressure in the creation of these commissions is that much of their work is published in English (Hiio et al., 2006, 2009; Nollendorfs et al., 2005). International historians also participated in these commissions. At the same time, a part of their work apparently targets only international audiences, as it is not translated into Estonian and therefore of limited use for local history teachers. Thus, national narratives produced by official memory entrepreneurs are partly co-constructed internationally following the pressure and interaction with the EU member states.

The ambiguity of establishing new memory narratives can be illustrated by the fact that Latvia put veterans who colluded with the Red Army on trial in 1998 – Vasilijs Kononov for one (Meckl and Bonnard, 2007) – to act accordingly with the new memory policies. Kononov, who lived a peaceful life in Latvia after the war as a famous veteran and policeman, was found guilty by Latvian judges and brought his case to the European Court of Human Rights, where he was the first Soviet soldier convicted of crimes against humanity in 2010 (European Court of Human Rights, 2010). At the same time, the Ministry of Justice prosecuted Latvians such as Konrad Kalejs who took part in the Holocaust (Barkham, 2001) in order to demonstrate its accommodation to the European narrative. In 2003, European pressure prevented the presence of Estonian government officials at the inauguration of a monument dedicated to Estonian Legion soldiers in SS uniform. Public authorities dismantled the monument some weeks after its dedication (Kolb, 2005). As in the Latvian case, this example illustrates how European pressure can modify the established memory policies.

Consequently, it appears that the accession process to the EU transformed the marginal Baltic memory. Mainstream political parties largely accepted the new established memory, but it continued to be contested by the radical right and left as well as by Russian parties in Estonia and Latvia. The latter took advantage of the European forum to contest the new national narratives through Europe.

National memory struggles in a European context

The enlargement of the EU created a new political space for memory competitions (Littoz-Monnet, 2012). A unique facet of the EU political system is its relatively weak executive power, while the creation of the memory policies in nation states mainly comes from the governments (Langenbacher and Shain, 2010; Michel, 2010).

Nevertheless, Littoz-Monnet (2012) demonstrated that the European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU Council are very different venues for negotiations over the interpretation of the past. By their nature, the European Commission and the Council of the EU are more permeable to the influence from the Member States.

This implies that their views would more reflect the position of the ‘mobilised established elite memory communities’ of each Member State, while the European Parliament offers a venue to more pluralistic approaches and is therefore more open to the representation of both established and marginal memory communities at the national level. In the European system, the European Commission and the Member States work together to shape historical memory policies (Littoz-Monnet, 2012, 2013), but few studies bring the European Parliament into focus (Littoz-Monnet, 2013; Neumayer, 2015; Perchoc, 2014, 2016).

The 2004 EU enlargement triggered a number of debates about historical memory in the European Parliament. ¹³ Overall, the Baltic MEPs were successful in attracting the attention of the house to the Eastern European memory heritage as defended by the new independent governments (Figure 3).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Memory figuration. Interstate and European level.

Two reasons explain this activism on the part of the Baltic states. The first reason is the status of the Baltic historical memory as a marginal memory in Europe. Some MEPs tried to influence the building of a pan-European historical memory once they joined the European institutions, with a view to embedding the Baltic narratives of victimhood that suffered under two equal – and allied – totalitarian regimes. Their activity in the field of memory debates was a way to confirm both their new status as EU Member States and to support the new memory regimes established in their countries after 1991. The speeches of Tunne Kelam (EE – EPP) are a good illustration of this. He remembered the occupation of his country as a child (Kelam, 2010) and was later repressed as an historian, because he called into question the official narrative over the liberation of Estonia by the Red Army (Kelam, 2012). In 2008 (European Parliament, 2008c) he argued, ‘in just the same way as the Baltic Sea became an internal EU sea in 2004, so the historical experiences of the 10 new Member States that suffered under the totalitarian rule of communism have become an all-European problem’. In another debate in 2008 about the Holodomor (European Parliament, 2008a), he stated,

All victims of the crimes against humanity deserve the same status. There cannot be first-class Nazi victims or second-class victims of Communism just because Europe still lacks an integrated approach to all totalitarian regimes and has hesitated to take a concrete stand on crimes that took place in the eastern part of the continent.

In many speeches, Baltic MEPs pointed out that while the Holocaust is a European tragedy, the specific history of their countries should also be taken into account (European Parliament, 2005b, 2005d, 2008a, 2008c). Baltic MEPs also tried to influence other MEPs through internal lobbying in the European Parliament. The founding of the ‘Reconciliation of European Histories’ group is a clear sign. It presents itself as an informal group of Members of the European Parliament, whose objective is described in the following way: ‘Reunification of Europe requires reconciliation of the dominant historical narratives in different parts of the continent. Following the enlargement we face the challenge of including the experience of the post-communist nations into common narrative of the European History’. ¹⁴ Thirty-nine MEPs are members of the group; nine are from the Baltic states. They organised many meetings, conferences, film screenings and exhibitions inside the European Parliament to influence their colleagues. Furthermore, they opened a ‘Baltic Way Corridor’ inside the European Parliament in 2013 (Zile, 2013), commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Baltic demonstration against the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1989 that was attended by 2 million people (Lieven, 1994). In their endeavour to get support for their memory community by the other European MEPs, the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian MEPs were successful, in coalition with MEPs from other former-communist EU member states. First of all, several resolutions from the European Parliament acknowledge the Soviet crimes (European Parliament, 2005c, 2009). In addition to that, the European Parliament established a ‘European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ (European Parliament, 2008b). This shows that the Baltic elites succeeded in getting European support in favour of their national narrative. Their national established community partly became a European established memory community, falling short of the possibility to condemn communist crimes in a judicial way just as the Nazis crimes were (Mink and Neumayer, 2013; Neumayer, 2015).

A second reason why Baltic MEPs are active in these debates is related to the attempt by different memory communities to get European support. Insofar as memory is a divisive issue in Latvian national politics, it is also an issue at the European Parliament. This is especially due to the election of MEPs representing established memory communities, like Girts Valdis Kristovskis (LV – UEN), Sandra Kalniete (LV – EPP) or Tunne Kelam (EE – EPP). ¹⁵ On the other side of the political spectrum, Tatjana Zdanoka (LV – Greens) represents a marginal community both at Latvian and European level. She was elected as an MEP in 2004, but the Latvian judiciary system opposed her election because she was involved in anti-national (pro-Soviet) activities before independence and was convicted for it. Therefore, she remained excluded from any national election. She viewed the European elections as an opportunity to determine a political position, and the European Court for Human Rights ruled the case against the Latvian government (Case Zdanoka v. Latvia, 2006). After 2004, she used the European Parliament as a means to contest the established memory regime in Latvia from a European viewpoint. She combined her personal family memories with political events to challenge both the Latvian established memory and its legal aspects (European Parliament 2005a). ¹⁶

In the case of Valdis Kristovskis, an Estonian dissident turned national and European politician, the repressed memory of the 1970s became a marginal but not illegal memory in the late 1980s and then a recognised and public memory in the 1990s. As an MEP, he devoted much effort to ensuring that the Baltic memory regime was recognised by the European Parliament. In the case of Tatjana Zdanoka, her Soviet memory in the 1980s became a marginal memory in the 1990s, and it was impossible to defend it in the public space as a politician. That is why she ran for (and won) a seat in the European Parliament in order to contest the Latvian established historical memory and to fight for the recognition of her collective memory.

Thus, it seems clear that after 2004 the European Parliament provided a new arena for renegotiation of established and marginal memory communities in the Baltic states. The Baltic MEPs very often took part in debates that centred around crafting a renewed European narrative. They participated in many debates about the Holocaust (European Parliament, 2008c), communist crimes (European Parliament, 2008a, 2008c) or the interpretation of the Second World War (European Parliament, 2005b). They were instrumental in the designation of the 23rd of August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (European Parliament, 2008b). They also made declarations about the commemoration of the various anti-Soviet uprisings in Central Europe during the Cold War (European Parliament, 2005a, 2006). These debates created a very strong controversy on the possible equation of Nazism and Stalinism. In the European Parliament, a combination of German and leftist MEPs contested this attempt (Neumayer, 2015; Perchoc, 2015). Outside the Parliament, the European press raised debate on what was seen as the rehabilitation of former pro-German groups during the war (Ria Novosti, 2012; Spiegel, 2009).

During the Bronze Soldier crisis in Estonia in 2007, MEPs from the Baltic states also attracted support against external Russian aggression. The position of the European Parliament and the European Commission were crystal clear about the Baltic states being European member states like the others (European Parliament, 2007). The support given by the European institutions also appeared to be a form of recognition of the established elite memory communities in Estonia with regard to their symbolic struggle with parts of the marginal Russian communities in the country and with Russia (Lehti et al., 2008; Taam, 2008).

Alongside the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union acted as a new venue for debates between Baltic and European elites. In this case, the representation by the Ministers for Foreign Affairs diminishes the possibility of debate between established and marginalised memory communities, because ministers represent the official view of their governments. In this forum, the Baltic states were less successful mainly due to procedural reasons: they are small new member states that joined in 2004 and still have to master the rules of procedure and influence in the European system (Littoz-Monnet, 2013). Nevertheless, the Latvian government was hesitant about the ‘European framework decision combatting certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law’ (Council of the European Union, 2008) because it did not include any mention of Stalinist crimes. The Commissioner responsible for this area, Jacques Barrot, ¹⁷ proposed to organise a debate on this subject at the European Parliament (European Parliament, 2008c) as a gesture. The Slovenian Presidency of the EU also organised several workshops and published a study on the subject of totalitarian crimes (Jambrek, 2008). Both the debates at the European Parliament and at the Council of the European Union demonstrate that post-independence national memories in the Baltic states are contested from the inside by leaders of different marginal communities, and from outside by the European Union and Russia. At the same time, after their accession to the EU in 2004, politicians representing both the established and marginal memory groups in their national memory figurations tried to influence the European Union.

This is again an element of contribution to the thesis that regime and border changes can modify the national memory figurations, which simultaneously have to face resistance in a transnational context, either at the European level or in the relations with neighbouring countries.

This article first outlined a theoretical framework of memory figurations, presented a model and applied it on the Baltic struggles of various memory communities in the past decades. The findings suggest that the regime change in the Baltic states after 1991 altered the memory configuration at three different levels: On the national, transnational and the European dimension.

The complex interaction between individual and collective memories embedded in the memory configuration explains why some memories are propelled to the core discourse of the memory regimes to be transformed into the established memory that is recognised and supported by the regime, whereas competing memories become marginalised or repressed. To understand the full picture of the relationship between the established and marginal memory communities, the academic community needs to take a firm transnational stand: memory communities do not always follow international borders. In the case of the Baltic states, the cross-border connection with Russia is evident for the Russian-speaking community – in Moscow the Soviet narrative about the Second World War remains state sponsored and hence powerfully vivid. Baltic memory communities, repressed during the Soviet Union, established themselves again at the time of independence, pushing the former dominant communities to a marginalised position in the society. The context being different, the Baltic narratives had to take European influences into consideration, while the Russian-speaking memories became gradually unrepressed following the democratisation process in the three countries.

On a broader scale, one cannot put aside the effects of European integration on the memory figuration. The enlargement of the European Union created a new space for contestation of the established memory communities at the national level. These conclusions can be useful when considering the situation of other European regions. Elias’ insistence on transnational figurations could provide insights into the situation of Germans in Czechoslovakia or in Poland during the interwar period, as well as in contemporary post-Soviet countries like Ukraine.