Address on the occasion of "Memory Days 2018"

Dr. Jonila GODOLE, Executive Director of IDMC

Transitional justice for communism and its challenges

Everyone who deals with transitional justice has at the foundation of his work the will and the desire that the past never be repeated. When we organized "MEMORY DAYS" three years ago, we aimed to introduce to the wider public not only civil-society actors and institutions that work in the field of memory, but also to motivate the opening of a society-wide dialogue on the importance of confronting the communist regime in Albania. In the last three decades, the process of transitional justice in our country has been problematic in comparison with other Eastern European countries, where, after the fall of the communist regime, there was a serious effort on the part of governments to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In the case of Albania, this did not happen. In the name of justice, since the beginning of the 1990s until today, commissions and initiatives have frequently been established, but have ended in selective battles, and above all, in a rhetorical war between political actors. There was an absence of legal trials against the functionaries of the time (the heads of the Central Committee, the party administration, the State Security, etc.), in order for them to be indicted for crimes against humanity. Or, even when they took place, as was the case in the trials of politburo members, they ended with laughable indictments for abuse of funds. A completely insulting process for the real victims of the communist regime, who expected justice.

The efforts for transitional justice in Albania also became more difficult due to the systemic dynamic how the bureaucracy of the communist rulers had been organized, with a strong hierarchy, where every member answered to a higher position, ending with the party leadership. Everything was at its service: the army, the State Security, all the way to the neighborhood councils. Albanian communists even "perfected" the strategy of totalitarian dictatorships, of turning a considerable part of the population into accomplices ("Mittäter"). This dynamic makes it very difficult, almost impossible, to distinguish those responsible from zealous "soldiers" who "only did their jobs." Unfortunately, this justification has been embraced by broad segments of the population and by the intellectual elite.

Who would have thought that a small country like Albania had so many supporters and collaborators with such a repressive regime?! A part of the collaborators, understandably, served the regime in exchange for financial and career favors, but the rest might have collaborated due to fear for themselves and their families, or might have been under other pressures. The State Security's strategy was to forcibly recruit those with "bad biographies," which especially complicates transitional justice in Albania. Therefore, our duty to clearly differentiate between those who served the dictatorship completely willingly and those who were its victims comes up even more immediately today, when citizens have access (albeit conditional) to State Security files and other documents that testify to their persecution.

George Orwell, in his book "1984," said that "Whoever controls the past controls the future, and whoever controls the present controls the past!" After the fall of communism, we have continuously seen the control and manipulation of historical records in the efforts of all governments in order to achieve their political goals on the back of transitional justice. We have not obstructed yesterday's functionaries from being a part of today's politics, just as we have not discredited yesterday's intellectual elite that served the dictatorial rulers and, without a mea culpa, continued their mission without interruption.

The power of the old elites was on clear display during the debate over the internment camp of Tepelena in the spring of this year, in which public opinion was confronted with two positions: an "Albanian Auschwitz" or a "necessary punishment camp for enemies of the regime"?! The zeal to embrace and to spread the second position showed that in post- communist Albania even the most minimal and basic step has not been taken: ensuring the dignity of the victims! In the process of transitional justice, there can be differences of opinion and debates, but communism's victims must always be treated with respect, something that was completely missing in the debate over the camp of Tepelena.

Efforts to manipulate the past or to devalue it, on the part of the "rulers who today control the present," can be noticed everywhere, from the commercialization of communist symbols to the selective invocation of events of the anti-fascist war, or the exploitation of our collective memory as tourist attractions whose only aim is profit. Also worrying are efforts in recent years to find new ways and a new aesthetic for telling a "selective" variant of history. This variant materializes in installations or museums that evoke more nostalgia than critical reflection; in noisy celebrations of dubitable historical events from the "heroic" communist calendar, or in façades decorated with scenes from propaganda films produced before the 1990s. These are symbolic gestures that seek especially to attract the attention (and the votes) of the youth, who suffer from a lack of knowledge about the communist period.

Former victims of persecution should not be demoralized by this state of affairs, but they and other actors in this field can be sure that every effort to tell the truth about that time is a step in the right direction. The truth must come out as it is, because the Albanian communist regime was not led for 45 years by aliens, but by accountable people, some of whom are still alive, just like witnesses who suffered injustices. We must do something for the latter, even though we are aware that transitional justice will perhaps not be fully achieved—there will always be unpunished perpetrators and false victims.

Transitional justice is a multi-dimensional process, and it must proceed simultaneously in all directions. Above all, it must include the entire society in a broad debate about the communist past, in which we can come to an agreement amongst ourselves on which version of history we will call "the truth." Until now, this process has been initiated and supported by outside actors, mainly by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation or the German Embassy, which have emphasized the importance of remembrance, awareness-raising, and responsibility for the past. They might have done this as a part of their role in supporting the enlargement of the European Union in the Western Balkan countries, but also as a country that has experienced, in a dramatic way, the confrontation of a difficult historical period. Despite their valued efforts, they cannot substitute for the work of civil society and of independent domestic actors in finding adequate mechanisms for our confrontation with the past. The more all actors work in their respective fields, the faster the fruits of their labor will come.

Memory is the core of our identity, the way in which we are formed by stories told from day to day, by national holidays that we have celebrated, and memorials where we leave flowers—all of these are values that we have embedded beyond our individual memory. Therefore, it remains our duty to care for the values that we will pass on to the next generation, because educating the youth in historical awareness is the key to making sure that the past is not repeated tomorrow. This is the mission of "MEMORY DAYS" which we have been organizing for a number of years, and which we will continue to do in the future.