Confronting the past in Eastern Europe

Political expert Cristian Pirvulescu comments on the "lustration law" - a Polish law that requires members of certain groups of the population to reveal former collaboration with the communist secret services - in the context of the efforts of other countries of the former Eastern Bloc to review their communist past. The law entered force a week ago. "Anti-communism is definitely on the political agenda in the countries of Eastern Europe, albeit to differing degrees. In those countries where governments have been formed on the basis of coalitions with former communist parties (Hungary and Bulgaria) the passion for 'lustration' is relatively weak, whereas in other countries you have the opposite situation (Poland and the Czech Republic). In Romania, enthusiasm for confronting the past has ebbed since the country joined the EU and the political crisis has finished it off: not a single moral reform or political project that had to do with lustration has been carried through. The president's condemnation of communism was just an exercise in rhetoric."

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