Bridges across the Atlantic? Intertwined anti-communist mobilisations in Europe and the United States after the Cold War

This article focuses on transatlantic interrelationships between advocacy groups calling for historical recognition, legal accountability and collective remembrance of communist-era crimes. A case study of three partly overlapping anti-communist networks established during and after the Cold War, in the United States and Europe, shows that the exchange of ideas across the Atlantic is not underpinned by a tightly institutionalised network but by cross-references between organisations with slightly diverging audiences, claims and future-oriented agendas. The article identifies two factors that account for the persisting fragmentation of this memory activism in the post-Cold War period: the distinct organisational and ideological roots of anti-communist networks and the idiosyncrasies of the political and institutional contexts in which they operate.