The Failure of Macedonian Post-communist Transitional Justice: Lustration, Between Cleansing and Parody

Abstract

The Macedonian law on lustration, adopted by the national parliament in 2008, has been denounced by many as coming too late. This chapter analyzes how the belated Macedonian lustration rapidly became an object of political manipulation and distrust, while focusing on the crucial role that civil society played not only in its promulgation, but also in its critique. By putting the individual efforts of engaged intellectuals and citizens against the instrumentalization of lustration at the center of my analysis, I outline the importance of civil society actors in negotiating and correcting transitional justice processes. I also consider the significant contribution of personal testimony, developed in the book Communist intimacy (2008) by theoretician and writer Jasna Koteska, to the field of Macedonian transitional justice, addressing the need for recognition of the victims of communism, while, at the same time, pointing out the dangers of the misuses of lustration. In this regard, at the end, I consider how Macedonian lustration, initially conceived as a response against the communist misdeeds and purges, and an attempt to overcome the totalitarian past, has, for the time being, failed to provide necessary transparency for the confrontation with the past. Furthermore, the process has unveiled that the same dangerous authoritarian logic of surveillance and cleansing still sustains post-communist Macedonia today.