Highlights of National History? Constitutional Memory in the Preambles of Post-Communist Constitutions

Our paper deals with post-communist constitutions and their preambles from a comparative perspective. We follow the view that constitutional memory (Miklóssy & Nyyssönen, 2018.), i.e. history through legislation, is a form of public and institutional memory, which is an object of various and intense manipulative pursuits. The central questions are how do particular countries use history in their preambles, and how these states represent themselves? Empirically the paper addresses and compares the 29 current preambles of the former Eastern Bloc states. We argue that excessive and exclusionary use of history in constitutions becomes a significant tool in identification and identity building, which can even compromise critical academic historiography. In the light of the preambles, the longer the national history, the better. Moreover, we claim that until the recent years, signs of the US post-1989 hegemony can be read even from several post-communist preambles. In general, the public histories of nation states are not composed of just a single imagination, but of a multitude of competing opinions. Therefore, a comprehensive historical perspective would be needed to build a broad and balanced narrative of the past, an issue not well suited for the introductory parts in constitutions.