Revolution and counter-revolution; or why it is difficult to have a heritage of communism and what can we do about it

Revolutions have powerful effects on the way the past is presented and perceived. In former communist states of Eastern Europe, following the revolutions establishing the regimes, a further sudden inversion has been regularly experienced in the aftermath of the fall of the Eastern Bloc. In this paper, I will comparatively discuss these changes through the lens of Albania. The discussion will highlight how the first communist revolution of the 1940s changed the way the Albanian state looked at its heritage and how this perspective was again completely transformed in the aftermath of the 1991. In both cases the perception of the periods immediately preceding the revolutionary events were those mostly affected. In particular, as regards the second revolution, in Albania, as in many other cases, after a long silence, the perspective adopted by the main stakeholders in the new democratic order was to characterise the heritage of communism in terms of trauma and terror. While these aspects undoubtedly encapsulate key features, there is more to processes of memory and heritage making related to this period. Private memories can sometimes produce rather different narratives of the same recent past, creating a clash with the representation put forward by the state.This research is based on the project C.H.O.D.I.A. (Cultural Heritage of Dictatorship in Albania) based at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. The project is supported by the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [grant number 701285]