Volume 45, Number 3 · February 19, 1998
The Truth About Dictatorship
By Timothy Garton Ash
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE
Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes Studies, 780 pp.; Volume III: Laws, Rulings, and Reports, 834 pp.,
Volume I: General Considerations, 604 pp.; Volume II: Country, edited by Neil J. Kritz
United States Institute of Peace Press, $135.00 (paper)
Politik und Schuld: Die zerstörerische Macht des Schweigens [Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Power of Staying Silent]
by Gesine Schwan
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 283 pp., DM 19.90 (paper)
Die Enquete-Kommission 'Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland' im Deutschen Bundestag [Inquiry Commission in the German Bundestag (for the) 'Treatment of the Past and Consequences of the SED-Dictatorship in Germany']
Nomos/Suhrkamp, 18 volumes, 15,378 pp., DM 198.00 (paper)
Spór o PRL [The Controversy about the Polish People's Republic]
Kraków: Znak, 192 pp., Zt 11.90
The question of what nations should do about a difficult past is one of the great subjects of our time. Countries across the world have faced this problem: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador, Spain after Franco, Greece after the Colonels, Ethiopia, Cambodia, all the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. There is already a vast literature, mostly written by political scientists, lawyers, and human rights activists, rather than historians, and mainly viewing the past as an element in 'transitions' from dictatorship to—it is hoped—consolidated democracy. Three invaluable, thick volumes, too narrowly entitled Transitional Justice, document the way the past has been dealt with in different parts of the world up to 1995. The material for a fourth volume is even now being prepared in South Africa, Rwanda, Bosnia, and The Hague.
Review, 8057 words
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