This paper discusses the way in which a post-conflict European Union (EU) member immediately after accession both shapes and adapts to EU memory politics as a part of its Europeanization process. I will analyze how the country responds to the top-down pressures of Europeanization in the domestic politics of memory by making proactive attempts at exporting its own politics of memory (discourses, policies, and practices) to the EU level. Drawing evidence from Croatian EU accession, I will consider how Croatian members of the European Parliament “upload” domestic memory politics to the EU level, particularly to the European Parliament. Based on the analysis of elite interviews, discourses, parliamentary duties, agenda-setting, and decision-making of Croatian MEPs from 2013 to 2016, I argue that the parliament serves both as a locus for confirmation of European identity through promotion of countries’ EU memory credentials and as a new forum for affirmation of national identity. The preservation of the “Homeland War” narrative (1991–1995) and of the “sacredness” of Vukovar as a European lieu de mémoire clearly influences the decision-making of Croatian MEPs, motivating inter-group support for policy building and remembrance practices that bridge domestic political differences.

The processes of peace-building and democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were instituted on 14 December 1995 by the Dayton Accords, which brought an end to the Bosnian War. While claiming their objectives to be reconciliation, democracy, and ethnic pluralism, the accords inscribed in law the ethnic partition between Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims by granting rights to “people” based on their identification as “ethnic collectivities.” This powerful tension at the heart of “democratization” efforts has been central to what has transpired over the past 16 years. My account uses ethnographic methods and anthropological analysis to document how the ethnic emphasis of the local nationalist projects and international integration policies is working in practice to flatten the multilayered discourses of nationhood in BiH. As a result of these processes, long-standing notions of trans-ethnic nationhood in BiH lost their political visibility and potency. In this article I explore how trans-ethnic narod or nation(hood) — as a space of popular politics, cultural interconnectedness, morality, political critique, and economic victimhood — still lingers in the memories and practices of ordinary Bosnians and Herzegovinians, thus powerfully informing their political subjectivities.

The big news is no news. I mean the new constitution that, presumably, is going to define the official relationship between the federal structure and the republic structure. It is being drafted by a constitutional drafting committee consisting of some very distinguished persons. But so far they have not been able to produce a draft, at least not a draft that has been published for the rest of the world to see. They probably have one in their own office.

During the late 1980s the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia, like many other regions within the former USSR, entered into a period of political turmoil. As the grip of the Communist Party weakened, increasingly serious conflict broke out between the Romanian-speaking majority and minority activists. Separatist forces quickly established themselves in two of the republic's regions, Transnistria on the east bank of the Dnestr river and the Gagauz districts in the south. Both claimed sovereignty and forcibly resisted the authority of the central government. By 1992 severe fighting was underway, especially in Transnistria, and Moldova appeared to be on the verge of a spiral into unrestrained civil conflict. Yet, by 1995, nationalist forces in Moldova had declined, and one of the two separatist conflicts, that in the Gagauz region, had been resolved by the peaceful reintegration of the Gagauz into Moldova. The second conflict, in Transnistria, was at least partially defused, and escalation was avoided.

Last year's conference ended with a general sense that national minority movements, still somewhat embryonic at the time, were seizing the initiative. This session opens with the consensus that these embryonic movements are far more mature, have aggressively taken center stage, and, in various degrees, have mounted a direct challenge to the center.

Turkmenistan remains the least studied and understood republic to have achieved independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The autocratic and dictatorial rule of Saparmurat Niyazov (also known as “Turkmenbashi,” or “Leader of the Turkmen”) has so restricted information about this resource-rich but economically desperate republic that any new work about Turkmenistan and the Turkmen is always a welcome addition. Shokhrat Kadyrov is a well-known Turkmen historian whose opposition to the Niyazov regime resulted in his exile to Norway, where he compiled what will be the first of two encyclopedia-like volumes devoted to Turkmen history, culture, and society. In addition, the author has added a historical foreword, chronology, and epilogue, which fill in various gaps that both Soviet and current scholarship in Turkmenistan avoided. As with Soviet interpretations of Turkmen history and culture, present-day Turkmen scholars must conform their work to the wishes of Niyazov's whims and fancies. Moreover, most works now published in Turkmenistan must include praise to Turkmenbashi for his guidance, wisdom, and enlightened vision for Turkmenistan. The most ostentatious demonstration of this reverence is the Rukhnama, Niyazov's quasi-religious history of the Turkmen, which is required reading in schools and necessary to know if one wants employment.

The debate about the Roma's fate throughout the Second World War has taken on a controversial character in recent years. The focal point of this controversy is whether the Roma's persecution was racially motivated or not. Reflecting upon the Roma's treatment throughout the war period, various scholars regard social-political factors such as the wandering way of life and especially the ascription of criminality as the main reasons for discrimination against and persecution of Roma. Ultimately, the authority most responsible for the crimes against Roma in the “Old Reich” was the Criminal Office. An extreme stance is the thesis of G. Lewy, who denies not only the planned character of the persecution but also its racial/racist intention. Lewy also refutes the comparability of the Roma's fate with that of the Jews.

The fall of communist regimes and the breakup of the multinational Soviet and Yugoslav states produced a remarkable experiment in regime change. Twenty-eight old, new and revived states emerged. While most adopted democratic institutions, many others evolved new variants of authoritarian rule. Some new democracies maintained much higher standards in upholding formal democratic rules and complementary freedoms of the press and political organization. How is this variation in initial democratization to be explained? Among countries that initially adopted democracy, how is variation in the survival and development of democratic freedoms to be explained?