Dr. Uladzislau Belavusau, Senior Researcher in EU law at the T.M.C. Asser institute and head of the Dutch team of the MEMOCRACY project, authored a blog post on Verfassungsblog regarding the history and state of memory laws in Belarus since 1991. He walks through the history of Belarusian memory laws and mnemonic constitutionalism by illustrating four different periods of memory law development, how these changes eventually culminated in the ‘year of historical memory’ in Belarus – within which the state’s propaganda machine vis-à-vis historical memory was turned into overdrive, and how Łukašenka’s grip on power has been indispensable in reaching the dire point that Belarus currently finds itself in – where its view and policies of history now essentially align with that of Putin’s Russia.

Click here to read the first newsletter from the MEMOCRACY Research Consortium.

Maria Mälksoo, Who’s afraid of memory laws? Introducing ‘militant memocracy’ in International Relations, British International Studies Association, 13 April 2021.

Maria Mälksoo discusses her new article in BISA journal Review of International Studies (RIS), available on FirstViewnow. The article investigates status-seeking through memory laws on the example of Russia, Poland and Ukraine’s governance of historical memory.

Read more at https://www.bisa.ac.uk/articles/whos-afraid-memory-laws-introducing-militant-memocracy-international-relations.

MEMOCRACY post-doctoral researchers Dr. Dovilė Sagatienė (Copenhagen University), Dr. Anna Wójcik (Polish Academy of Sciences) and Dr. Paula Rhein-Fischer (University of Cologne) jointly authored a blog post on reaction mechanisms in Lithuania, Germany, and Poland to Putin’s Russia war symbols.

Dr. Paula Fischer, a post-doctoral researcher in the MEMOCRACY team at the University of Cologne, has published a blog post at Verfassungsblog, discussing legal grounds for prohibiting public use of symbols demonstrating support for Putin’s Russia’s war in Ukraine. She situates her argument against a broader discussion on militant democracy provisions and freedom of expression.

Dr. Anna Wójcik, a post-doctoral researcher in the MEMOCRACY team at the Polish Academy of Sciences, has published a blog post in Verfassungsblog, analyzing the Court of Justice of the EU judgment of 29 March 2022 in case C-132/20, originating from a preliminary reference submitted by a one-person panel of the Polish Supreme Court. Dr. Wójcik situated the judgment against the context of the rule of law crisis in Poland and the decommunization of judiciary debate and concluded that:

From the standpoint of EU law, the Court argued, what matters is judicial compliance with the EU accession criteria and individualized assessment, based on sound evidence, of today’s pressures on specific judges that could raise legitimate doubts in individuals over the court’s impartiality and independence. The CJEU drew a thick line between the present of Polish EU membership and the past before Poland joined the EU, and chose to look at the future.