The EU Memory Framework and Memory Politics of the Baltic States: from Transitional to Transnational Memory Memory

Sammanfattning: The research investigates the role of the European Union in establishing a common European historical memory. It assumes the comparative dimension by taking the case of politics of memory in the Baltic states. By employing the concept of memory framework, it analyses the conceptual basis of the EU commemoration policy as well as presents the legal and infrastructural foundation of the Baltic states’ politics of memory. The research is dedicated to addressing the problem of East-West “memory gap”. The received empirical evidence sets the memory of the Holocaust in the centre of the value framework of the European Union. The analysis of memory politics in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia illustrates that though these countries have established and actively promote nation-centred memory narratives, the European standard of memory politics based on the memory of Holocaust is not yet embraced by the countries. Instead, the Baltic countries use the narrative of “Soviet genocide” as a foundational element of ideological justification for politics of memory. The exposed outcomes of the Baltic memory politics, therefore, complicate the formation of transnational European memory.