Lavinia Stan
A journalist and University professor, Lavinia Stan took part in 2009 in a working committee who focused on "the burden of the memory of the crimes committed by totalitarian States in Member countries" on behalf of the European Commission. She also wrote several articles published in Romanian weekly Revista 22.
Updated: 24 August 2009
The 23rd August is "European Day of Rememberance for the Victims of Nazism and Stalinism", to condemn totalitarianism. A noble cause perhaps, but one which has provoked controversy in Russia, where Stalin is still a national hero. They point out that Russia in fact saved many lives threatened by Nazism. Yet the Russians remain cagey about their Soviet Union archives, a stumbling block for ex-Soviet states to really understand their totalitarian pasts.