After the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, new democratic governments had to confront the issue of what to do with the perpetrators of repression and human rights violations, and to what extent and how to compensate the victims. Among the various instruments of post-Communist transitional justice implemented in the countries of the region, we can distinguish between retributive and reparatory measures. Decommunization and lustration were meant to exclude certain categories of functionaries of the Communist regime from holding important positions in the democratic state, and thus named the perpetrators. Other instruments, such as the rehabilitation of political prisoners and restitution of nationalized property, were meant to redress injustices committed by the Communist regime, and named its victims. These legal and administrative measures have taken a different shape in each country of the region, reflecting different historical legacies brought into the democratic transformation by each society.

The demise of Communism created something of an ideological vacuum and the values fundamental for the organization of every society were redefined in the processes of political and economic transformation. The historical narratives promoted by Communist propaganda and official historiography suddenly lost their legitimacy. In the context of the adoption of the policies of transitional justice, the recent past of East Central European societies has become a subject of contentious and emotional debates. These debates involved many of the historical issues that had been previously censored or effaced and could not be publicly discussed. In these processes of coming to terms with the Communist past, a very important role was played by the law, which, on the one hand, served the state as a powerful instrument for (re)shaping collective memories, and on the other hand, has become a battleground for different visions of the past promoted by various individuals, groups, and institutions of the nascent civic society. These different functions of law in post-Communist societies are clearly visible in the issue of property restitution.

The problem of property restitution was a direct result of the large-scale nationalizations and confiscations of property of various social and ethnic groups carried out by the Communist regimes.