Remembering Communism : Genres of Representation

Three main fields have shaped current scholarship on Eastern Europe'scommunist past: institutional, especially debates concerning the characteristics ofthe regime; questions on resistance and opposition; and social, cultural, andeveryday history. There is a particular urgency in approaching the social andcultural aspects of everyday life under the formula of "remembering communism."Remembering exemplifies a dynamic process that continually reassesses the communistexperience. By favoring the term "remembering" over "memory," this book chooses alived experience that is inflected by the exigencies of the presentmoment.Dedicated to mediums of remembering (or genres ofrepresentation), this collection makes explicit the complex nature of the process.The first section traces different explanatory modes and models following thecollapse of "real socialism." The second section on oral history relies on extensivefieldwork at different sites and among diverse groups, including factory workers,village inhabitants, and political émigrés. Subsequent sections provide a concreteglimpse into reassessments of the period, turning to archives, memoirs, andtextbooks. The final section handles visual material: fashion magazines, cinema, andmonuments. Drawing on examples from Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania,Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine, Remembering Communismresponds to, or rather apprehends the peculiarities of transforming an "objective"reality into a subjective one.

Michael Kennedy, Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University
Maria Todorova is Gutgsell Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author, most recently, of Bones of Contention.