Reimagining Spaces in Central and Eastern Europe or Memory Roulette: Legal, Political and Social Aspects

If one was to look for a single word to describe the historical experiences of Central and Eastern Europe (cee), roulette comes immediately to mind. Be that the fall of great empires of the region following World War i (wwi), the tragedy of World War ii (wwii), the Iron Curtain separating cee from the rest of the world, the fall of communism, the more recent illiberal ‘reckoning’ or the Russo-Ukrainian war, the region’s history is characterised by unpredictibility. Importantly, these moments of ground-breaking change affect not only the political sphere – although the regime shifts and border changes are often amongst the most noticeable – but also the national imaginaries, as the process of collective memory inversion takes place, and official narratives of the yesteryear are replaced by those currently in power. Law plays an important role in managing these modifications, in particular those most visible, relating to public spaces and cultural heritage. The purpose of this paper is to look holistically at the changes that took place in the public sphere in the region since the end of wwi, with a particular focus on the intersection of law, politics and social changes. In the first, theoretical part of the paper, the author explains the relationship between collective memory and public spaces, linking these concepts with the understanding of the field, violence, habitus, and crisis proposed by Bourdieu. The second part of the paper introduces the major moments of change in the recent cee history from the perspective of reimagination of public spaces, illustrating them on selected case studies: post-wwi fall of the empires and the destruction of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw, the wwii atrocities and the erasure of shtetl culture, the times of communism and the construction of the People’s Palace in Bucharest, the post-1989 decommunisation and the (not always) meticulous removal of the communist monuments from Estonia, the arrival of illiberalism and the reimagining of museums in Hungary, and, ultiamtely, the Russo-Ukrainian war and the ensuing derussification of Ukraine. In the third, conclusive part of the paper, the author looks at the big picture, linking the theoretical with the case studies more generally and proposing to draw lessons from Central and Eastern European roulette, which may also be applicable to other spaces in permanent flux.