An Impossible Reconciliation
Résumé
After 1989, Czechoslovakia, then the Czech Republic, favored a punitive approach at the expense of national reconciliation in order to deal with its communist past. The legal apparatus and normative framework neglected to consider individual and collective mitigating circumstances when evaluating the complex life trajectories of a number of its citizens. This approach has divided Czech society and brought little justice. On the other hand, it has permitted the emergence of a new class of history entrepreneurs, who have gained political and professional capital from their endeavor to transform anticommunist ideology into national memory.