Search

The phenomenon of transitional justice appears when authoritarian regimes transform into democracies—a topic that has been studied for many years. One main focus has been the question of the responsibility of the former ruling elite and their subordinates, and in particular, criminal responsibility. After the collapse of communism in Europe, secret police informers were perceived as sharing responsibility, alongside the regime's functionaries. The first steps toward bringing them to justice were taken in March 1990 in Czechoslovakia. The process was called "lustration," harking back to an ancient tradition of cleansing newborns of evil. In the jargon of the Czechoslovak security apparatus, "lustrace" meant checking an individual's secret police records. The best known example of lustration took place in Germany, but the basic idea was carried out in all post-communist Central European countries. This kind of transitional justice was not associated with criminal responsibility, and—except in Poland—the courts were not involved in lustration, which was conceived of as a purely administrative procedure. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, only the Baltic states adopted lustration legislation; in other post-Soviet states, such initiatives failed. A similar situation emerged when Yugoslavia disintegrated, where the ethnic wars overshadowed society's memories of communist wrongdoing. Lustration was unique to post-communist states and was not seen in any other transitional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article belongs to the special cluster, "Politics and Current Demographic Challenges in Central and Eastern Europe," guest-edited by Tsveta Petrova and Tomasz Inglot. We explore housing finance and policy in East Central Europe to understand the connection between housing, in particular independent household formation, and the demographic crisis. The combination of high debt-free homeownership rates with illiquid housing finance and limited rental markets produces conditions where housing restricts independent household formation and likely has a restrictive effect on fertility. We first assess the housing regime type in East Central Europe and demonstrate that it closely corresponds to the "difficult housing regime" in Southern Europe, which has well-established negative effects on independent household formation and fertility. Then we present a detailed case study of Hungary, which is a country with very low fertility rates and substantial changes in housing finance and policy over time. In particular, the issue was recently politicized through housing policies centered on household formation to counter the demographic crisis. We present a detailed analysis of policies related to access to housing for young adults through increased access to markets or state housing support schemes. These policies attempted to reduce dependence on families, but after the crisis, we find that these policies reinforce, rather than challenge, dependence on families for housing solutions, thereby limiting independent household formation. While these policies may serve a rhetorical role demonstrating a state response to the demographic crisis, we claim that their impact on fertility can be at most minimal because of stringent restrictions in access that concentrates on upper-middle-income households and limited financial commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of the special section titled The Genealogies of Memory, guest edited by Ferenc Laczó and Joanna WawrzyniakThis introduction to the special section on memories of 1989 calls for a closer analysis of various ways in which narratives of the democratic breakthrough in East Central Europe develop at the transnational, national, and vernacular levels. The four case studies in this section show that the liberal view of 1989 has been neither institutionalized nor internalized as its most common understanding. Instead, we observe a divergence of interpretations, the replacement of 1989 with other symbolic dates, its non-existence in the “working memory” of Western Europeans, as well as disappointments, frustrations, or nostalgia for socialism in East Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]