Negotiating History in Post-Conflict Situations: Bilateral Historical Commissions and Peace-Keeping

History and the emotions linked to the past have been a source of conflicts. In particular, the different interpretations of events – or the impossibility to talk about these “white spots” – bring tensions between groups within society, but also among various countries. Indeed, the past leaves traces on politics. It can also be selected as a tool for legitimising action (cf. Lavabre, 1992 and her distinction between the weight and the choice of the past). In International Relations, the past can be used for various goals (cf. Rosoux, 2001). Memory can also be misused (Lavabre, 2000) or abused (Todorov, 1995). How do states address these uses of the past in bilateral relations and how do they try to limit these actions? To tackle this politicisation of the past, historical commissions have been created – already in the interwar period, but mostly as from the 1950’s and especially the 1970’s – in order to create a dialogue on history, and to appease bilateral relations. This contribution is based on two case-studies: the Polish-German Schoolbook Commission, established in 1972 and the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Matters, created in 2002 and reactivated in 2008. The corpus, collected within the framework of my PhD, is composed of 54 interviews, archives, as well as additional sources such as participant observations, discourses, the press and opinion polls on reconciliation in Poland. Historical commissions are created in the aim of rapprochement, if not reconciliation. They constitute one tool of conflict transformation on the long run, whose study proves to be essential in order to better understand the pillars of a consolidated security. In this paper I want to precise the scope and limits of these commissions and insist on the variables explaining their (non-) continuity and (non-) success on overcoming traumatic historical experiences.