SELF-EXCULPATORY OR SELF-INCULPATORY APPROACHES TO THE MEMORY LAWS IN HUNGARY

Katalin Izsák-Somogyi, LLM
Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary

After 1989/1990, with the downfall of the communist regime, the opportunity for the historical memory of the trauma of the 20th century had changed in Hungary as well. In 2004, with other Central and East European countries, Hungary became a member state of the European Union; there was another sweeping change in the Hungarian politics of the memory. Hungary’s remembrance had to be fitted in the European „Holocaust-focused” memory-politics, with its two-folded, „Holocaust- and communism-focused” past. This situation resulted a rival victim-narrative, which effected a huge change in the structure of the Hungarian memory laws. After the downfall of the communist regime, the state approach was rather self-exculpatory, due to Hungary regarding itself just as a victim of the dictatorships of the 20th century. The Hungarian politics of memory does not want to confront the self-inculpatory narrative, despite the fact that no dictatorships could function without Hungarian „perpetrators”. The paper seeks for the reason behind the change between the self-exculpatory and the self-inculpatory approaches of the Hungarian legal governance in the last three decades.

Keywords: memory law, self-exculpatory or self-inculpatory approach, historical memory.

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