Negotiating History for Reconciliation: A Comparative Evaluation of the Baltic Presidential Commissions

This article discusses the presidential historical commissions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that were established in 1998 to research the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes and to overcome interpretive disputes that had begun to overshadow the new democracies' politics. Conceptually framed as a state tool of historical conflict resolution and reconciliation, the Baltic commissions' structure, operative work and results all reveal many of the pitfalls, but also the opportunities of such official bodies of historical truth-seeking. The article concludes that even though all three commissions had a clear reconciliatory aim, their operative processes and final output differed remarkably. Their contribution to actual reconciliation was also very limited.