Post-Communist Nostalgia [Hardcover]

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 peoples 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.

Maria Todorovais Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her publications includeBones of Contention: The Living Archive of Vasil Levski and the Making of Bulgarias National Hero(2006),Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory(2004),Imagining the Balkans(1997),Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern: Demographic Developments in Ottoman Bulgaria(1993).

Zsuzsa Gilleis Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author ofFrom the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Post-Socialist Hungary(2007), and co-author ofGlobal Ethnography: Forces, Connections anlÃ"