Title: Disciplining Post-Communist Remembrance
Description: I examine the origins of the anti-totalitarian collective memory pervading Central and Eastern Europe by tracking the genesis and development of the region’s ubiquitous and state-sponsored memory institutes. I deploy field analysis, prosopography and in-depth interviews to reveal how these hybrid institutes generate a potent anti-communist symbolic repertoire by overseeing alliances and exchanges across political, historiographic and Eurocratic fields. Memory institutes ensure this hegemony fundamentally via two mechanisms: The scientific validation of their activities by way of scholarly co-optation, and its regional legitimation through incursions into European arenas. I conclude that memory institutes are ultimately a key element of post-communist political competition, responsible for creating a durable symbolic advantage for the right’s conservative identity politics.