Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory

Lavinia Stan

Cambridge University Press, Jul 10, 2014 - Law - 312 pages

A close examination of an understudied European Union member state such as Romania reveals that, since 1989, post-communist state and non-state actors have adopted a wide range of methods, processes, and practices of working through the communist past. Both the timing and the sequencing of these transitional justice methods prove to be significant in determining the efficacy of addressing and redressing the crimes of 1945 to 1989. In addition, there is evidence that some of these methods have directly facilitated the democratization process, while the absence of other methods has undermined the rule of law. This is the first volume to overview the complex Romanian transitional justice effort, by accessing secret archives and investigating court trials of former communist perpetrators, lustration, compensation and rehabilitation, property restitution, the truth commission, the rewriting of history books, and unofficial truth projects. It details the political negotiations that have led to the adoption of relevant legislation and assesses these processes in terms of their timing, sequencing, and impact on democratization.

About the author

Lavinia Stan is an Associate Professor of Political Science at St Francis Xavier University, Canada. She is regional editor for Europe for the peer-reviewed Women's Studies International Forum and a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of Romanian Exile, the Social Science Adjudicating Commission of the Romanian Ministry of Education and the editorial boards of eleven scholarly journals in North America and Europe. Her books include Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe and Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania (both co-authored with Lucian Turcescu), Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past, 1989-2009: Incredibila aventura a democratiei dupa comunism (co-edited with Lucian Turcescu), Leaders and Laggards: Governance, Civicness and Ethnicity in Post-Communist Romania, Romania in Transition and the Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (co-edited with Nadya Nedelsky).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory
• Author: Lavinia Stan
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014
• ISBN: 1107429250, 9781107429253
• Length: 312 pages
• Subjects: Law / Criminal Law / General; Law / General