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This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of recuperative memory is not only to facilitate the process of coming to terms with the past, but also to offer the material necessary to sustain a viable politics of memory. This entails providing a platform for the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge for those who did not live under the Communist regime, filling in this way the intergenerational gap, despite the lack of political class engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As Maria Mälksoo and Bahar Rumelili's contributions in this Forum show, the concept of liminality has either been ignored or understudied in International Relations (IR) theory. To a certain extent, liminality suffers from the same ills as the condition it refers to, since liminal actors, by finding themselves simultaneously inside and outside structures, puzzle and challenge them. It has been shown that through the lens of liminality it is possible to read deeper into the social construction of identities on the international scene, into the question of ontological security, and into actors’ capacities of consolidating or subverting structural arrangements. When considering liminality for a particular case, its position as a concept within IR theory must be kept in mind. It challenges the linearity and neatness of many IR categories, and also, questions certain tendencies in IR theory that make it a rather self-referential system of concepts with the worrying capacity of developing a world entirely divorced from field realities; it is equally important to look at liminality as a way of seeing things which is inspired and informed by the fluctuating facts of social dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the dynamic relationship between the two major dimensions of memory and justice in the context of post-communist countries: truth-telling and retroactive justice. This interdependent and uneasy relationship is illustrated by recent attempts at constructing a new historical narrative of the communist past in Romania in the wake of the de-secretization of the files of both the Communist Party and the communist secret police (Securitate). A systematic analysis of the activity of institutions that have been directly involved in research and public education about the recent past - the National Archives, the National Council for the Study of Securitate's Archives, and the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism - is undertaken. The work of these three institutional actors shows a direct relationship between truth-telling in its various forms (access to archives, opening the files and exhumations) and any subsequent retroactive justice and restitution. The main argument of the paper is that while deep-seated dichotomies between former communist and anti-communists in addressing the past still persist, a more nuanced way of seeing the regime that explores the ambiguous line that divides outright repression from cooptation is emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]