In this Book
- Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: Central European University Press
- Series: Leipzig Studies on the History and Culture of East-Central Europe
Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past.
The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, and the perception of “the system”.
Table of Contents
- List of figures
- pp. ix-x
- Acknowledgements
- pp. xi-xii
- Part I. The State of the Art of Eastern European Remembrance
- 5. The Memory of Communism in Poland
- pp. 97-118
- Part II. Thinking Through Things: Popular Culture and the Everyday
- 7. Communism Reloaded
- pp. 155-174
- Part III. Memories of Socialist Childhood
- Part IV. What was Socialist Labor?
- Part V. The Unfading Problem of the Secret Police
- Part VI. The "Cultural Front" Then and Now
- Part VII. Remembering Extraordinary Events and the "System"
- List of Contributors
- pp. 615-616