Expanding Europe through Memory: The Shifting Content of the Ever-Salient Past
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829814550325 |
| Author | Peter J. Verovšek |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2015, Vol. 43(2) 531 –550
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829814550325
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
Expanding Europe through
Memory: The Shifting
Content of the Ever-Salient
Past
Peter J. Verovšek
Harvard University, USA
Abstract
Collective memories of war and suffering have been crucial to the development of European
integration since 1945. My basic thesis is that remembrance has also played an important role
in the accession of new states to the organization that has come to be known as the European
Union (EU). As the EU has expanded into new regions of Europe, particularly the post-dictatorial
south and the post-communist east, continental institutions and existing member-states have
been confronted by conflicting understandings of the past. Although the past has continued to
push states towards membership in the EU, the nature of these remembered experiences has
changed through the various rounds of expansion. In addition to tracing the role that memory
has played in the widening of Europe, I argue that these confrontations have sparked important
debates about the meaning of the past for Europe today.
Keywords
collective memory, European Union expansion, post-communism
Introduction
Memories of war and suffering have played an important role in ‘imagining Europe’
ever since it was first institutionalised as the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) in 1951. While the specific events and the meanings attached to them have
varied over time, it is clear that ‘the Second World War [w]as the trigger for European
Corresponding author:
Peter J. Verovšek, Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University, 59 Shepard Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Email: verovsek@fas.harvard.edu
550325MIL0010.1177/0305829814550325Millennium: Journal of International StudiesVerovšek
research-article2014
Article
532 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(2)
1. Chiara Bottici and Benoît Challand, Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, and Identity (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Marcus J. Prutsch, European Historical Memory:
Policy Challenges and Perspectives (Brussels: Directorate-General for Internal Policies:
Culture and Education, 2013), 6.
2. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), 803.
3. For more on the concept of rupture, c.f. Peter J. Verovšek, ‘Unexpected Support for European
Integration: Memory, Rupture and Totalitarianism in Arendt’s Political Theory’, The Review
of Politics 76, no. 3 (2014), 389–413.
4. Konrad H. Jarausch, ‘Zeitgeschichte zwischen Nation und Europa. Eine transnationale
Herausforderung’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 54, B39 (2004), 3, translation mine.
integration’.1 In addition to helping leaders create the first supranational European insti-
tutions, memory has also been a resource for the subsequent enlargements of the
European Communities. While the immediate post-war atmosphere was characterised
by a silent acknowledgment of past crimes, by the first expansion of the European pro-
ject in the 1970s the Holocaust had become ‘the European entry ticket’.2
The citizens of Western Europe have largely accepted the narrative of integration as a
response to the crimes of nationalism epitomised by the ashes of the death chambers at
Auschwitz. However, as the European project expanded to the south and east, new mem-
ber states with different historical experiences have questioned what I call ‘the classical
narrative of integration’. The new post-authoritarian and post-communist member states
have brought new memories into the European narrative space, forcing continental insti-
tutions and existing members of the European Union (EU) to negotiate the past.
Since their foundation by ‘the Six’ (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg
and Belgium), the European Communities have experienced four major phases of expansion:
north into Denmark, Great Britain and Ireland (1973); south into Greece and the Iberian pen-
insula (1981 and 1986); west with the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden (1995); and
east to the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Malta (2004), followed by Romania, Bulgaria (2007) and Croatia (2013). My
basic thesis is that memories of ruptures that broke the continuity of existing historical narra-
tives played an important role in all of these expansions. I argue that the move towards Europe
was driven not only by prosperity and security, but also by a desire to change the dynamics of
political life as a result of traumatic experiences in the recent past.3
My argument shows that the foundation of the European project and its expansions to
the north and west were fuelled by the events of Europe’s age of total war (1914–45). The
classic narrative of integration is defined by the rupture of 1945, which represented a
turn away from nationalism and the wars it started. Subsequent expansions have disputed
this narrative. Whereas the memory cultures of the states of the European south were
defined by the collapse of their authoritarian regimes, remembrance in the post-commu-
nist states of the east focused on the fall of communism. While the post-authoritarian
states started to question the Holocaust’s status as ‘Europe’s entry ticket’, I argue that it
was the accession of East-Central Europe, which sought to place communist crimes on
par with Nazi atrocities, that fundamentally challenged the ‘legitimation of Europe
though the creation of a common conception of history’.4
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