In Europe, memory is not just history. Memory is power, politics, and a struggle for legitimacy between liberal and illiberal, often populist, forces. How countries choose to institutionalise and curate the past reflects this complex dynamic. Across Europe, museums (alongside monuments, rituals, traditions, and remembrance days) are powerful vehicles for materialising memory, and symbolising historical narratives.

East meets West in European remembrance

In Western Europe, which is the main driver of Europe’s memory culture since World War II, the horrors of Nazism are still particularly acute. In this region, the curatorial narratives tend to cast Europe’s twentieth-century tragedy largely in terms of the Holocaust and fascism.

The 'one museum, one history' approach has attracted criticism for downplaying Eastern Europe’s twentieth-century traumas

Brussels' House of European History, for example, presents Europe’s past as a shared and universal experience. Its official aim is to foster unity. But this 'one museum, one history' approach has attracted criticism for downplaying Eastern Europe’s twentieth-century traumas. The room about Stalinism and National Socialism, for example, draws comparisons between the two regimes, yet fails to fully recognise the suffering inflicted by communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

This uneven portrayal has met with disapproval in Eastern European countries. For many, the communist legacy is still raw, and historical wounds remain unhealed. The Eastern experience of dual occupations has fostered a distinct memory culture. Often, this culture focuses on national victimhood under both fascist and communist regimes.

A narrative of resilience?

Estonia's Museum of Occupations and Freedom and Budapest’s House of Terror, for example, present this 'double occupation' narrative. The museums compare and discuss Nazi and Soviet crimes in ways that often diverge from the Western European memory narrative. Such museums may be problematic, telling victim-oriented stories, but they also serve as spaces of counter-memory, asserting a narrative of resilience against foreign oppression.

The House of Terror in Budapest is a space of counter-memory, asserting a narrative of resilience against foreign oppression

This East European narrative challenges Western Europe’s focus on the Holocaust as the cornerstone of European memory. You could argue that this relativises Nazi crimes. Yet many in the East may consider it a necessary correction to a Western-centric memory framework that sidelines their historical experiences.

The museums' curatorial strategies use memory to assert legitimacy in mutually exclusive ways. This perpetuates a cycle in which each region’s narrative is legitimised at the expense of the other.

No past is the 'right' past

The issue here is not 'who is right and who is wrong'. Nor should we dismiss Eastern European narratives as populist and Western ones as neocolonial. We should focus instead on where and why this contestation became institutionalised, and on the effects of those institutionalised narratives upon democracies across Europe.

This focus becomes ever more significant as Western European exceptionalism strengthens illiberal forces: Eastern European politicians are reaching out to those who feel excluded, manipulating memory to serve nationalist and extremist agendas.

The so-called memory divide is thus continuously reinforced, reflecting different, often conflicting, political agendas. Western left-wing politicians and Eastern right-wing politicians often clash over historical narratives. We see this in debates over the EU’s role in shaping memory policy. EU attempts to establish a more inclusive European memory — one that fully acknowledges fascist and communist crimes — have often met resistance. In 2006, for example, after opposition from left-leaning parties, the Council of Europe watered down a resolution condemning communist totalitarian crimes.

Memory: a tool of legitimacy and exclusion

Memory is dynamic, transnational, and ubiquitous. Multiple Eastern European states joined the EU in 2004. At that time, Western Europe still focused on the Holocaust as its moral foundation for EU values of democracy and human rights. Eastern European countries initially adopted this official EU narrative. Later, they began to see it as a form of Western cultural dominance.

At first, the EU was reluctant to fully integrate Eastern historical perspectives into its collective identity. Right-wing populists took advantage, popularising narratives of dual victimhood in which they emphasised national sovereignty and self-determination when representing the past. As with the museum's curatorial strategies, this mutual exclusivity fuelled a cycle of exclusion. Each region’s narrative was and is legitimised at the expense of the other.

Leaders such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán have used memory politics to bolster nationalist sentiments

The recent rise of populist movements in Eastern Europe has intensified this dynamic. Leaders such as Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán use memory politics to bolster nationalist sentiments. They often cast Western Europe as dismissive of Eastern Europe’s suffering under both fascism and communism. This resonates with those who feel marginalised by EU memory culture, which they believe prioritises Western narratives over Eastern ones.

Are memory narratives hindering democracy?

In a world riven with questions about identity and alterity, Western Europe’s tendencies towards universalisation, and Eastern Europe’s self-perception as the subaltern, have propagated and institutionalised narratives that hinder democracy. Ultimately, Europe’s fixation on conflicting historical narratives risks unintentionally strengthening illiberal tendencies across the continent, as politicians manipulate memory to serve nationalist agendas.

However, a simplistic 'liberal West' versus 'illiberal East' dichotomy fails to capture the complexity of Europe’s memory landscape. Both regions are locked in a mutually constitutive relationship, each shaping its identity through historical narratives that respond to the other, from legislation to museums.

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