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

about the tense and ambivalent relationship between historians and
politicians by letting historians analyse the difficulties we encounter
when translating history into the present.
We are fully aware of our own subjectivity, being politicians with an
agenda, but since we cannot walk away from the issue, we better
try to tackle it. The editors are not professional historians and therefore
we do not pretend that this book is an accurate or scholarly
representation of the current debate. But so be it.
This publication discusses basically four issues. Firstly, we ask the
question: What is history and can it be objectively presented? The
second theme deals with the politics of the past and the role of historians
and politicians. Thirdly, we address the ‘totalitarian’ past of
Europe. And finally, we try to define the role played by democratic
socialists and social democrats in the twentieth century history of
Europe.
The articles in this book are an illustration of the variety of topics that
are part of the present debate about the politics of the past. They
are the result of seminars, interviews and individual contributions of
historians and politicians. We included a number of articles that
deal with actual controversies related to history within and between
countries: In the Western Balkans, in Latvia and between Slovakia
and Hungary. Some of us wrote their own memories to illustrate
how different backgrounds and historical experiences influence our
personal views on recent history.
The history working group of the PSE Parliamentary Group was the
meeting point where we discussed the concept of this book. It consisted
of Helmut Kuhne (Germany), Miguel Angel Martinez (Spain),
Justas Paleckis (Lithuania), Józef Pinior (Poland), Hannes Swoboda
(Austria) and Jan Marinus Wiersma (The Netherlands). As always,
we could count on the support of the Renner Institute in Vienna.
We would like to thank the members of our staff who did a complicated
job very well: Herwig Kaiser, Rosario Moles, Agnieszka
Gregorczyk, Kerry Postlewhite, Matthias Verhelst, Dimitri Culot and
Kati Piri, who was responsible for the production of this publication.
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