Postcommunist Nostalgia

This article discusses the construction of Slovenian national identity in relation to remembering the period of Socialist Yugoslavia and its dissolution in the context of contemporary Slovenian cinematography (1991-2021). The dynamic of forgetting and remembering Socialism and Yugoslav identity is presented with the help of an in-depth analysis representations, reception and contexts of production of select representative cases: Outsider (1997), the most popular Slovenian feature film of the 1990s, the mockumentary Houston, We Have a Problem! (2016) and the co-production Parada (2011). The article demonstrates that films are repositories and re-examiners of national and regional policies, trauma, and reinterpretations of history and identities. As such, they are important objects for analyzing processes of remembering and transformations of the attitudes towards Slovenian recent past.

This article explores perspectives among Bulgarian immigrants in the United States in remembering everyday life during the socialist and post-socialist periods and compares their reflections upon these periods with the views expressed by those who remained in Bulgaria. Our research uses extensive ethnographic data, including interviews with Bulgarians who did not emigrate, and with those whose personalities were shaped under socialism and remained in Bulgaria long enough to experience the post-socialist transition before emigrating. We analyze how and to what extent the experience of immigration renders more complex and nuanced migrants' perspectives toward the socialist and post-socialist periods, and the role that nostalgia, alienation, broadened cultural experience and anxiety play in evolving those perspectives. We compare how the alternative notions of nostalgia and rejection of the socialist past life are articulated in the memories of those who "remain" in Bulgaria, and in the memories of ones who "left".

This chapter explores how various Estonian generations and their post-Soviet memory culture(s) have influenced the meaning and interpretations of late socialism. The analysis follows the “dynamics of memory” approach while focusing on question of differences and similarities of meanings the various generational cohorts have attributed to the late socialist era since the post-communist turn. A diverse selection of sources is used to juxtapose individual, social, political, and cultural formats of memory: autobiographical accounts from the Estonian Cultural History Archives, thematic interviews, written memoirs, museum exhibitions, novels, and theatre plays. As a result, this chapter argues that despite the persistence of the post-1989 memory culture, which labelled the late socialist experience of the 1960s-1980s as unsuitable for the future of independent Estonia, that time period had become a key referent of memories by the turn of millennium. Furthermore, it was followed by the diversification of mnemonic discourses, going from metaphors of ‘rupture’ and distress, to complex attitudes involving reference to ‘good old Soviet times’. The chapter also demonstrates that shifts in the meaning making and interpretations of the late socialist period in Estonia are related to different generational agents entering the field of public memory work.

Many scholars have turned their attention to a certain boom in memory studies, which in Western Europe became evident during the 80s of the last century, by identifying as causes of this phenomenon above all postmodernism and loosening, if not the general fall, of existing up-to-date paradigms, theories and research concepts. A similar process did take and is taking place also in many countries of Central, Eastern and SouthEastern Europe after the fall of the communist regimes, i.e. after 1989/1991. Nowadays, almost in every renowned scientific journal from the fields of sociology, anthropology or history one can easily find an article or a publication, which is dealing with at least one dimension of memory: social, collective, cultural, historical etc. Other scholars in a more moderated way have pointed out another area, which became the impulse for the booming of research on memory, namely the growing presence and role of commemorative practices in the social and political life. Numerous studies have shown that both accentuated presence of memory in social and political life, as well as reflection on this process are nothing new in the human history, and, hence, postmodernism should not be seen as the only accountable for the memory boom. Yet, the scale of the process is entirely new. From here it's easy to pinpoint a number of reasons for such a strong presence of memory in social life: the general democratization of social life, a multiplicity of actors and social dimensions of their activities, the impact of the audiovisual media of mass communication, and – from already few years now – the dynamic development of social media. When discussing about post-communist Europe another crucial reason has to be taken into account. Namely, one of the main postulates and slogans guiding the post-communist transformation processes was to clean the historical memory from the falsifications imbued in it by the former communist regimes. Aiming to reveal the historical truth was and still remains one of the basic components in the process of building and materializing of transitional justice. For that reason studying the memory of/on communism goes far beyond the frames of " normal " social research, touching upon a larger spectrum of important political, social and cultural problems that the post-communist societies are dealing with.