Determinants of Post-Communist Transitional Justice: An Overview Lavinia Stan Department of Political Science St. Francis Xavier University, Canada lstan@stfx.ca Paper prepared for the Global Challenges Conference “Justice and Imagination: Building Peace in Post-Conflict Societies,” Mount Holyoke College, February 28-March 1, 2014 Abstract: Twenty-five years after the collapse of the communist regimes, there is a wide diversity among countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union when it comes to the methods they have adopted to confront their communist past, the timing of their transitional justice policies, as well as the progress they have registered to date. Some countries have adopted radical lustration programs banning numerous communist officials and secret agents from post- communist politics, while others have failed to publicly identify former secret informers from among post-communist politicians. Some countries have opened a wide range of secret archival collections, while others have kept most of the files hidden from the public eye. Some countries have convicted communist-era decision-makers and their willing executioners, while others brought very few communist-era human rights abusers to trial. This presentation discusses the main determinants proposed to date in an effort to explain the differences among transitional justice programs enacted in post-communist countries.