Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

Preface
The Past Does Not Go Away
At the heart of the project of European integration there has always
been the idea to prevent wars and violent conflicts on our continent
by means of economic co-operation. Let the past be the past,
let us now – after 1945 – open a new chapter of our history, that
was the concept. After the demise of communism this project has
finally been extended to the whole of Europe.
The past, however, proved to be quite nasty. It did not go away as
easily as some of us might have expected. Ethnic or national
conflicts, civil wars of former days, allegations of various kinds, the
obvious burden all post-authoritarian societies have to bear – all
this is still very much alive in the Europe of our days.
And that is why, to my mind, this publication is so very important.
The only way to tackle the repeated intrusion of the past in the
political debate of today is to face it, to discuss it, to explain the
myths each and every nation in Europe has developed and to
confront them with the historical truth.
Take the case of my country, Austria, for example. In the course of
the 20 th century we had two periods of fascism. First, our very own
kind of Austro-Fascism in the years from 1933 to 1938, when the
conservative forces abolished democracy, banned the labour movement
and, in some respect, paved the way for the Nazi dictatorship
which immediately followed.
It took us, with a few notable exceptions, a number of decades until
we began to develop a more complex picture of Austria’s role during
the Third Reich – with Austrians being not just the victim of foreign
invaders, but also contributing in a substantial way to the atrocities
of Nazi terror.
After 1945, after the liberation from Nazism by the Allied Forces it
was, of course, important to re-build a democratic society. And it
was certainly a difficult task of our post-authoritarian nation how to
9 Karl Duffek is the Director of the Renner Institute in Vienna.
Karl Duffek