Memorial Regimes and Memory Updates in Post-communist Romania

Abstract

In post-communist Romania, the “cultural memory” is a work-in-progress influenced, on the one hand, by “memorial regimes” and, on the other, by various collective memories, some of them marginal, others dominant. The representations of the recent past promoted by each memory group have created a competitive memory space in which it became possible for victimization to coexist with the paradigm of common guilt, as well as with various forms of public amnesia, denial of persecutions (of Jews but also of political prisoners) and/or nostalgia.