THE POLICY OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN EUROPE TO OVERCOME THE NAZI TOTALITARIAN PAST: FORMATION AND LEGAL SECURITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/cuj-2024-2-1Keywords:
public policy, international policy, legal provision, institutionalization, regulatory act, collective memory, national memory, Nazism, totalitarianism, World War II, Europe.Abstract
The article is devoted to the problems of formation and legal support of the policy of collective memory in Europe regarding the Nazi totalitarian regime and overcoming its past. An analysis of international legal acts regulating the perception of the Nazi totalitarian regime, the conviction of war criminals and crimes against humanity, the commemoration of the victims of Nazism, the attitude to related memorial sites, the understanding of the events of the Second World War and the commemoration of victory over Nazism in Europe, prevention of the spread and opposition to Nazi and other totalitarian ideologies in Europe and the world is carried out, etc. The basis of the legal framework for the policy of collective memory in Europe to overcome the Nazi totalitarian regime was the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. The article provides a historical review of the legal support of the policy of collective memory to overcome the Nazi totalitarian past in Europe, starting with the negotiation processes for the punishment of war criminals in World War II and the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Attention is also paid to the normalization of European collective memory policy regarding the equal perception of the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes as a component of integration into the pan-European memory space of the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Based on the analysis of international legal acts, a conclusion was made about the formation of modern mechanisms and conceptual foundations of European collective memory policy in the mid-1980s – early 1990s and about the acquisition of European-wide features by memory policy in the 2000s.
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