Guilt or Guilty? Decommunization and Retroactive Justice as a Post-Transitional Phenomena in Post-Communist Romania.

While considerable attention has been given to comparative studies of lustration laws across Central Europe (mostly focused on Poland and the Czech Republic), fewer however have looked at reasons behind accepting different forms of lustration. This paper uses a case study approach by focusing upon post-communist Romania where calls for decommunisation were motivated both by the nature of Romanian communism and doubts over the genuine character of the 1989 (r)evolution. They were mainly championed by civil society and opposition circles to challenge the legitimacy of the post-communist establishment dominated by former communists. My argument is that while verdicts of "guilty" by nominating individuals responsible are resisted and opposed, impersonal distribution of "guilt" to be shared by the whole society is more acceptable. Moreover, there seems to be an intrinsic difficulty to transpose the discourse of decommunisation into law due to their different points of departure. Retroactive justice bases its legitimacy upon moral and ethical arguments and starts somewhat from a presumption of guilt, whereas the legal process relies upon rules and procedures aimed at protecting the individual and starts from a presumption of innocence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]