Memory Laws in Poland and Hungary: Report by the Research Consortium 'The Challenges of Populist Memory Politics and Militant Memory Laws (MEMOCRACY)'

Legal governance of history and memory aiming to legitimise a socio-political order has been a part of modern history. Its presence is global, with varying thematic, geo-political and ideological settings.1 One such setting is the area of constitutionalism, understood as a coherent system of limitations of governmental powers, where the authority and legitimacy of the government are recognised only if such limitations are respected.2 Placed in this context, mnemonic constitutionalism can be broadly defined as a process of embedding specific historical paradigms in the structures and framework of European law, national constitutional law, memory laws (understood as provisions of the law shaping, imposing or even sanctioning the collective understandings of historical events), as well as judicial assessments of the attitude to the past, ranging from the evaluation of the constitutionality of specific provisions of the law by the courts to judicial reasoning dictated by ideological and political pressure, such as the April 2022 judicial decision ordering the dissolution of Memorial, Russia’s oldest and most prominent non-governmental organisation, fearlessly revealing the crimes of Soviet regime and defending historical truth.3