Baltic Socialism Remembered

Author : Ene Kõresaar
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135136197X
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Baltic Socialism Remembered written by Ene Kõresaar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to tell a life story? How is one’s memory of communism shaped by family, profession, generation and religion? Do post-communist Baltic states embrace similar memories? The Baltic states represent not only a geographical but also a mnemonic region. The mental maps of people who live on this territory are shaped by memories of Soviet socialism. Baltic Socialism Remembered captures the workings of the memory of diverse groups of people who inhabit the region: teachers, officials, young people, women, believers. It comes as no surprise that their memories do not overlap, but often contradict to other groups and to official narratives. Baltic Socialism Remembered is a rare attempt to engage with the mnemonic worlds of social groups and individuals rather than with memory politics and monumental history. The contributors try to chart unpredictable ways in which public and national memory affect individual memory, and vice versa. Understanding complexity and diversity of memory workings in such compact region as the Baltic states will enable a more nuanced policy-making. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Baltic Studies.

Author : Melanie Ilic
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317390458
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present written by Melanie Ilic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsistent or illogical narratives. Oral history, therefore, presents the researcher with a number of methodological and ethical dilemmas, including the interpretation of "silence" in biographical accounts. This collection links the discussion of oral history ethics with that of memory studies. Memories are shaped by factors that may be, simultaneously, both consecutive and disrupted. In written accounts and responses to interview questions, respondents sometimes display nostalgia for the Soviet past, or, conversely, may seek to de-mythologize the realities of Soviet rule. Case studies explore what to do when interview subjects and memoirists consciously, sub-consciously or unconsciously "forget" aspects of their own past, or themselves seek to take control of the research process.

Author : Violeta Davoliūtė
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633861845
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Narratives of Exile and Identity written by Violeta Davoliūtė and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an innovative effort to situate Baltic testimonies to the Gulag in the broader international context of research on displacement and memory, scholars from the Baltic States, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States seek answers to the following questions: Do different groups of deportees experience deportation differently? How do the accounts of women, children and men differ in their representation? Do various ethnic groups remember the past differently: how do they use historical and cultural paradigms to structure their experience in unique ways? The scholars researched the archives, read testimonies, interviewed former deportees, and examined artifacts of memory produced since the late 1980s, applying crossdisciplinary approaches used at the study of the Holocaust testimonies; the testimonies of women have received a particular emphasis. The essays in the book also examine the issues of transmittance, commemoration and public uses of the memory of deportations in contemporary social, cultural and political contexts of Baltic societies, including the reflection of Gulag legacy in literature, the cinema and museums.

Author : Stephen M. Norris
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253050316
Total Pages : 443 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Museums of Communism written by Stephen M. Norris and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M. Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of separating memory and myth.

Author : Jukka Gronow
Publisher : Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN 13 : 9522227528
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fashion Meets Socialism written by Jukka Gronow and published by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This book was released on 2015-08-19 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents, above all, a study of the establishment and development of the Soviet organization and system of fashion industry and design as it gradually evolved in the years after the Second World War in the Soviet Union, which was, in the understanding of its leaders, reaching the mature or last stage of socialism when the country was firmly set on the straight trajectory to its final goal, Communism. What was typical of this complex and extensive system of fashion was that it was always loyally subservient to the principles of the planned socialist economy. This did not by any means indicate that everything the designers and other fashion professionals did was dictated entirely from above by the central planning agencies. Neither did it mean that their professional judgment would have been only secondary to ideological and political standards set by the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, as our study shows, the Soviet fashion professionals had a lot of autonomy. They were eager and willing to exercise their own judgment in matters of taste and to set the agenda of beauty and style for Soviet citizens. The present book is the first comprehensive and systematic history of the development of fashion and fashion institutions in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Our study makes use of rich empirical and historical material that has been made available for the first time for scientific analysis and discussion. The main sources for our study came from the state, party and departmental archives of the former Soviet Union. We also make extensive use of oral history and the writings published in Soviet popular and professional press.

Author : Constantin Iordachi
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350103721
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Occupation and Communism in Eastern European Museums written by Constantin Iordachi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers fresh perspectives on the representation of the recent past in museums of the Second World War and of communism in post-communist Eastern Europe. It does so against the background of recent European-wide debates on history, memory and politics. The contributors from across Europe focus comparatively on a wide variety of case studies, pointing out similarities and differences, and accounting for transnational patterns of remembrance at regional and European level. Occupation and Communism in Eastern European Museums argues that museums have a huge influence on the image of the communist past in Eastern Europe. It shows how they use a vast array of media tools, visual tactics and commercial strategies in order to substantiate ideological approaches to the past and to shape the attitude of public opinion.

Author : Oksana Sarkisova
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 6155211434
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Past for the Eyes written by Oksana Sarkisova and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do museums and cinema shape the image of the Communist past in today’s Central and Eastern Europe? This volume is the first systematic analysis of how visual techniques are used to understand and put into context the former regimes. After history “ended” in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, museums and other memorials mushroomed all over the region. These efforts tried both to explain the meaning of this lost history, as well as to shape public opinion on their society’s shared post-war heritage. Museums and films made political use of recollections of the recent past, and employed selected museum, memorial, and media tools and tactics to make its political intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from scholars around the region take a fresh look at the subject as they address the strategies of fashioning popular perceptions of the recent past.

Author : Maria Todorova
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 0857456431
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Post-communist Nostalgia written by Maria Todorova and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Maria N. Todorova
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633860326
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Remembering Communism written by Maria N. Todorova and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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”.

Author : Friederike Kind-Kovács
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 0857455869
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond written by Friederike Kind-Kovács and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many ways what is identified today as “cultural globalization” in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat (“do-it-yourself” underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.