Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe(1 Leipzig Studies on the History and Culture of East-Central Europe - CEU Press)

About the Book

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:
Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Similar Trajectories, Different Memories PART I. THE STATE OF THE ART OF EASTERN EUROPEAN REMEMBRANCE 2. Experts with a Cause: A Future for GDR History beyond Memory Governance and Ostalgie in Unified Germany Thomas Lindenberger 3. The Canon of Remembering Romanian Communism: From Autobiographical Recollections to Collective Representations 4. How Is Communism Remembered in Bulgaria? Research, Literature, Projects 5. The Memory of Communism in Poland 6. Remembering Dictatorship: Eastern and Southern Europe Compared PART II. THINKING THROUGH THINGS: POPULAR CULTURE AND THE EVERYDAY 7. Communism Reloaded 8. Daily Life and Constraints in Communist Romania in the Late 1980s: From the Semiotics of Food to the Semiotics of Power 9. “Forbidden Images”? Visual Memories of Romanian Communism Before and After 1989 10. Remembering the Private Display of Decorative Things under Communism PART III. MEMORIES OF SOCIALIST CHILDHOOD 11. “Loan Memory”: Communism and the Youngest Generation 12. Talking Memories of the Socialist Age: School, Childhood, Regime 13. Within (and Without) the “Stem Cell” of Socialist Society PART IV. WHAT WAS SOCIALIST LABOR? 14. Remembering Communism: Field Studies in Pernik, 1960–1964 15. “Remembering the Old City, Building a New One”: The Plural Memories of a Multiethnic City 16. Workers in the Workers’ State: Industrialization, Labor, and Everyday Life in the Industrial City of Rovinari 17. “We Build for Our Country!” Visual Memories about the Brigadier Movement PART V. THE UNFADING PROBLEM OF THE SECRET POLICE 18. How Post-1989 Bulgarian Society Perceives the Role of the State Security Service 19. The Afterlife of the Securitate: On Moral Correctness in Post-communist Romania 20. Daily Life And Surveillance in the 1970s and 1980s PART VI. THE “CULTURAL FRONT” THEN AND NOW 21. From Memory to Canon. How Do Bulgarian Historians Remember Communism? 22. Theater Artists and the Bulgarian Authorities in the 1960s: Memories of Conflicts, Conflict of Memories 23. Bulgarian Intellectuals Remember Communist Culture 24. “By Their Memoirs You Shall Know Them”: Ivan and Petko Venedikov about Themselves and about Communism 25. Cum Ira et Studio: Visualizing the Recent Past PART VII. REMEMBERING EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS AND THE “SYSTEM” 26. The Revolution of 1989 and the Rashomon Effect: Recollections of the Collapse of Communism in Romania 27. Remembrance of Communism on the Former Day of Socialist Victory: The 9th of September in Ritual Ceremonies of Post-1989 Bulgaria 28. Remembering the “Revival Process” in Post-1989 Bulgaria 29. Websites of Memory: In Search of the Forgotten Past List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Augusta Dimou specializes in the Modern History of East and Southeast Europe from a comparative, transnational perspective. She is Privatdozentin at the Institute for the Study of Culture of the University of Leipzig and has held academic positions at the University of Ioannina, Humboldt University in Berlin, IOS-Regensburg and GWZO in Leipzig. She has been a fellow at Maison des Sciences de l’ Homme (Paris), IWM (Vienna), FRIAS (Freiburg), CAS (Sofia) and New Europe College (NEC) in Bucharest. Maria Todorova is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor Emerita of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Stefan Troebst is Historian and Slavist. He is Professor of East European Cultural History, Leipzig University.

Review :
"A powerful reminder of the continuing relevance of the Communist past and the complicated nature of its negotiation in public and private processes of remembering. Remembering Communism succeeds in drawing attention to the need to investigate areas of overlap between the two, especially since the memory of Communism continues to be highly politicized. Even more so, the volume draws attention to some of the most important loose ends in post-Communist studies: class memories, transmission of memory and historical knowledge, generationality and the impact of new media on the production and consumption of memories" "Dieser umfangreiche Sammelband erforscht die Erinnerung and den Kommunismus, indem er zwei Zugänge bzw. Zwei Gruppen von Theorien – einerseits über Erinnerung, andererseits über Kommunismus – verbindet. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Bulgarien und Rumänien, weil sie bisher im Vergleich zu anderen ehemals sozialistichen Staaten Europas wenig erforscht sind. Gemeinsam ist den Forschungsarbeiten, dass sie in die Perspektive aus der Gegenwart betonen. Die Aktualität und Prozesshaftigkeit der Erinnerung an den Kommunismus stehen somit im Zentrum." "As someone based in the United States, where the word 'communism' is automatically and uncritically associated with the worst crimes of Stalinism, edited volumes like this one do much to make it safer for younger researchers to explore controversial topics and challenge the ideological status quo. The deep irony of studying the communist past is that democracy promised freedom of conscience and freedom of inquiry. Many institutions of higher learning laud the principle of academic freedom and resist political attempts to meddle in or direct scholarly pursuits. But in the case of the twentieth-century communist past, inquiry is hardly free, and, as Todorova points out in her introduction, the majority of scholarship produced has been funded by foundations and institutions charged with investigating the crimes of communism. For pushing back against this almost exclusive focus on the negative, Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe is a most welcome and necessary addition to the literature."