National Memory Institutes

National Memory Institutes (NMIs) are key actors in the institutionalization of post-communist memory regimes, and yet they remain relatively under-conceptualized. Broadly described in the literature as organizations responsible for collecting, studying, and/or analyzing the archives of the communist secret police for purposes of scholarly research and public education on the communist past, NMIs have also been criticized for their politicization and illiberal memory politics. Rather than gauging the extent of illiberalism in NMI historical narratives, this entry seeks to analyze the potentially illiberal power dynamics they co-produce. This is done by focusing on the social space NMIs occupy and by unearthing the obfuscating legitimation mechanisms produced by virtue of this social location.