Post-communist Nostalgia / / ed. by Zsuzsa Gille, Maria Todorova.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Berdahl, Daphne,; Boyer, Dominic,; Buchanan, Donna A.,; Burić, Fedja,; Creed, Gerald W.,; Georgescu, Diana,; Gille, Zsuzsa,; Murav, Harriet,; Nadkarni, Maya,; Petrović, Tanja,; Pilbrow, Tim,; Pinkert, Anke,; Popescu-Sandu, Oana,; Scarboro, Cristofer,; Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie,; Szemere, Anna,; Todorova, Maria,
• HerausgeberIn: Gille, Zsuzsa,; Todorova, Maria,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (310 p.)

Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people’s lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FIGURES -- Introduction FROM UTOPIA TO PROPAGANDA AND BACK -- PART I RUPTURE AND THE ECONOMIES OF NOSTALGIA -- 1 FROM ALGOS TO AUTONOMOS Nostalgic Eastern Europe as Postimperial Mania -- 2 STRANGE BEDFELLOWS Socialist Nostalgia and Neoliberalism in Bulgaria -- 3 TODAY’S UNSEEN ENTHUSIASM Communist Nostalgia for Communism in the Socialist Humanist Brigadier Movement -- 4 NOSTALGIA FOR THE JNA? Remembering the Army in the Former Yugoslavia -- 5 DIGNITY IN TRANSITION History, Teachers, and the Nation-State in Post-1989 Bulgaria -- 6 INVISIBLE—INAUDIBLE Albanian Memories of Socialism after the War in Kosovo -- 7 “LET’S ALL FREEZE UP UNTIL 2100 OR SO” Nostalgic Directions in Post-Communist Romania -- PART II NOSTALGIC REALMS IN WORD, SOUND, AND SCREEN -- 8 SONIC NOSTALGIA Music, Memory, and Mythology in Bulgaria, 1990–2005 -- 9 “CEAUS¸ESCU HASN’T DIED” Irony as Countermemory in Post-Socialist Romania -- 10 GOOD BYE, LENIN! AUFWIEDERSEHEN GDR On the Social Life of Socialism -- 11 “BUT IT’S OURS” Nostalgia and the Politics of Authenticity in Post-Socialist Hungary -- 12 LOOKING BACK TO THE BRIGHT FUTURE Aleksandr Melikhov’s Red Zion -- 13 DWELLING ON THE RUINS OF SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA Being Bosnian by Remembering Tito -- 14 THE VELVET PRISON IN HINDSIGHT Artistic Discourse in Hungary in the 1990s -- 15 VACANT HISTORY, EMPTY SCREENS Post-Communist German Films of the 1990s -- POSTSCRIPT -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX