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The EU and member state building – European foreign policy in the Western Balkans

57). In a similar vein, David Art’s chapter on Germany underlines how the Nazi past tends to crowd out other episodes in history from “the field of memory in contemporary Germany” (196). He also highlights the complications of the calendar. 9th November is not just the anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, but also the birth of the Weimar Republic, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch and Kristallnacht. No wonder Germans tend not to have an unambiguous view of that date. Twenty Years After Communism stresses the salience of memory politics in shaping the battlefields, ammunition and uniforms of post-communist political contestation. Nonetheless, the book provokes two questions. Firstly, Bernhard and Kubik’s edited volume shines a spotlight on the twentieth anniversaries, but how will, for instance, the events be remembered at the thirtieth or fortieth anniversaries? Will the passing of time lead to the fading of memories or the growing of resentments? Secondly, Bernhard and Kubik make a strong and cogent case that memory politics matters. Memory politics can create and reinforce political divisions and contribute to electoral volatility and undermine democratic structures, but clearly it cannot explain everything. So where do the boundaries of memory politics lie? At times Bernhard and Kubik push the importance of memory politics too far. The success of the forces of the centre-right may have won the 2010 elections in Slovakia, for instance, but this owed little to their “warrior strategy” of memory politics linked to 1989 (265) andmore to memories of more recent corruption scandals and the mechanics of the electorate system. Nonetheless, minor quibbles aside, Bernhard, Kubik and their contributors have produced a major contribution to the study of memory politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Twenty Years After Communism: the Politics of Memory and Commemoration deserves not only to be remembered in two decades’ time, but should be on the shelves of all scholars of the region who need to incorporate an understanding of the role of the past into their analysis of the present that is, all of us.