An Unfinished Business
Transitional Justice and Democratization in Post-Soviet Russia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12915002 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kora Andrieu (Sorbonne Université, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 198-220 |
| Publication date | 2011-06-23 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Transitional Justice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1752-7716 • E-ISSN: 1752-7724 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ijtj/ijr011 |
| OpenAlex | W2317645590 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Despite evidence of massive human rights violations during the Soviet era, little has been done to come to terms with this violent past in Russia: no one has been prosecuted, no one has officially apologized, only a few victims have been acknowledged and a small amount in reparations has been paid. Worse still, this period of mass violence is now being officially rewritten, and the horrors of the past are being justified as a necessary step in the building of a great nation. The recent release of a teachers’ handbook that makes no mention of past crimes and President Medvedev’s decision to create a ‘Historical Truth Commission’ to rewrite history to the country’s advantage have underlined Russia’s difficulties in effectively confronting its legacy. The author attempts to answer this question by looking into the specificities of the Russian transition, analyzing the limited transitional justice mechanisms that have been implemented and why they failed, allowing the past to be rewritten. The article looks specifically at the role civil society organizations have played in dealing with the past – without, and often against, the state. The Russian case verifies transitional justice actors’ assumptions about the importance of new democracies confronting their legacies of human rights abuses and the potentialities, as well as the limits, of Russian initiatives that are emerging from below and operating in a hostile environment
Civil society · Commission · Consolidation (business · Democracy · Democratization · Economic Justice · Economics · Human rights · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Transitional justice · European and International Law Studies · Political Conflict and Governance · Russia and Soviet political economy · Law
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2023 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |