How to Deal with the Past?

Abstract

Abstract The conclusion first discusses the ways in which dealing with an authoritarian or totalitarian past is relevant to present concerns. It then analyses different approaches: honest reckoning and repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness, drawing a line between past and present, and forgetting the past or forging a new narrative about it. The importance of historical distance is analysed, followed by the problems of identifying who are perpetrators, accomplices, bystanders and victims. The next sections treat transitional justice, and the role and character of different national narratives, which sometimes creates a new myth of victimhood. ‘Collective memory’ and ‘selective memory’ are treated, concluding with a discussion of the limits of retribution and its role in successful democratisation.