The Open Political Science Journal

2009, 2 : 1-13
Published online 2009 January 9. DOI: 10.2174/1874949600902010001
Publisher ID: TOPOLISJ-2-1

Truth Commissions in Post-Communism: The Overlooked Solution?

Lavinia Stan
Department of Political Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, B2G 2W5, Canada

ABSTRACT

Despite their increased popularity in Latin America, Africa and Asia, truth commissions have remained an overlooked solution to coming to terms with the recent human rights abuses perpetrated in communist Europe. Since the start of the democratization process in the early 1990s, only Germany, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Romania have employed truth commissions as methods to reckon with communist crimes. These five commissions share important similarities and differences in terms of their organizational structure, goals, activity, and efficacy. The scarcity of truth commissions in post-communist Europe is explained by the nature of communist repression, the legitimacy of the communist regime as a home-grown versus an externally-imposed political set of institutions and practices, and the use of lustration and access to secret files as methods to obtain truth, justice and reconciliation in posttotalitarian times.

Keywords:

Truth commissions, transitional justice, de-communization, post-communist democratization.