Volume 71, Issue 2

Using an approach situated at the intersection of cultural memory studies and (critical) heritage studies, with a focus on the ambivalent socialist heritage of socialist statues and monuments and their changing role in postsocialist public spaces, this article engages with the postcommunist strategies of reckoning with the past in Romania and Bulgaria in the period 1990–2020. Comparing the kinds of monumental memory of communism that were established in these countries, the author discusses how each dealt with their ambivalent socialist heritage through a public memory policy comprising three combined strategies: removal; preservation; and the replacement of communist heroes with anticommunist counter-monuments. The author concludes that stances toward the socialist heritage manifest various tensions in terms of the types of statues that were removed or, alternately, allowed to remain; of the opposition between local and national decisions as well as between the official approach and citizens’ perspectives; and, finally, of aesthetic versus political criteria.

The author gives an inventory of Simon Wiesenthal’s advocacy for Bosnia during the 1992–1995 war. Though Wiesenthal played an active role in speaking up for Bosnia, his activism has been largely neglected in the existing literature. Based on primary sources at the Simon Wiesenthal Archive in Vienna, this article pieces together the story of how the famed Nazi hunter supported Bosnia-Herzegovina. Wiesenthal acted by speaking up about the atrocities in Bosnia, writing letters to influential decision-makers, and keeping Bosnia on the agenda. He supported a greater and more assertive American involvement to end the war and was a strong advocate of a UN war crimes tribunal, which materialized as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). By lending his voice and moral stature, Wiesenthal helped shape public opinion in favour of a more assertive international reaction to the war.

This article has an empirical and a conceptual aim. The first aim is to provide additional historical depth to recent analyses of the “Balkan Route” through Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with a reconstruction of the making of a border/mobility assemblage during the first two and a half decades of that state’s existence. These processes occurred under direct foreign supervision and were framed in terms of the conditionality of the “Road into Europe” specific to the European semiperiphery. The second aim concerns a prominent feature in recent studies of borders and mobility: the use of assemblage theory. I use my historical analysis to reflect on the implications of that theory’s programmatic call to foreground heterogeneity and provisionality. Specifically, in tracing patterns and tensions in the bordering of BiH I call attention to the importance of actors’ encounters with already-assembled hierarchical configurations, provisional but effective at the time of the encounter.

This article analyses the mechanisms that contributed to the 30-year predominance of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) in Montenegro . The authors pay particular attention to the DPS’ programmatic flexibility, use of co-optation, repression and control, as well as clientelism, examining their role in shaping state–society relations and party competition over time. In doing so, the article also seeks to explain the DPS’ setback in the 2020 elections and the ongoing transition from a dominant party system towards a more competitive multiparty system.

This essay explores the advantages of a qualitative approach based on a preliminary analysis of a collection of street interviews broadcast from March 2022 to March 2023 in the Republic of Moldova via 34 radio programmes. While the results of the opinion polls reflect a clear division of opinion on the war in Ukraine within Moldovan society along pre-existing geopolitical lines, the interviews highlight the possibility of consensus among respondents voicing opposing views on the causes of the war. Regardless of ideological positions however, when asked, most respondents said they wished for peace. The author reflects on the potential inherent in that common response for a type of community based on inclusion and cohabitation.