Citizenship and Strengthening National Identity in Post-Soviet Democracies through Memory Laws

In the early 90s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine became independent nation-states. Following decades of contested, imposed Russian leadership, new elites in young democracies aimed at reinforcing distinct national identities, often to the detriment of Russian residents’ rights. Ethnic, linguistic, and cultural divisions were reinforced by citizenship laws, which for example in Estonia do not guarantee citizenship to ethnic Russians. Moreover, state-approved assessments of history, so-called historical memory laws, were introduced. Such laws openly condemn Soviet domination and repression, including WW2 war crimes, mass deportations of citizens from occupied territories to remote parts of the USSR, the Great Famine (1932-33) in Ukraine and other severe human rights violations. In Lithuania, denial of historical crimes committed by the Soviets on local populations is a criminal offence. There are many explicitly stated reasons behind adopting “memory laws”: coming to terms with difficult past, honoring the memory of the victims, articulating historical grievances, fighting with historical revisionism. However, memory laws’ function is also to strengthen certain national narratives and collective self-understanding. Through exclusionary memory laws state introduces divisions and establishes classifications. Therefore memory laws play an important role in the process of “Othering” Russian minorities in Post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe. The presentation showcases how selected memory laws from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine influence the process in shaping and performing national identity in those countries in opposition to Soviet or post-Soviet identities.