Remembering communism: genres of representation

"Remembering Communism responds to, or rather apprehends, the transformation of an "objective" reality into a subjective one. Concentrating on genres of representation in Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine, the collection traces explanatory modes and models following the collapse of "real socialism." Oral histories are taken at different sites and among diverse groups, including factory workers, village inhabitants, and political emigres. Subsequent sections reassess the period through archives, memoirs, cinema, and monuments." ""Remembering Communism suggests a different kind of living memory, one that contrasts everyday life with ideological purpose, and recognizes how ideology functioned differently back then, and functions differently in memory today. By directly and explicitly focusing on how different genres of memory reflect different subjectivities, power relations, and contests, then and now, Remembering Communism provides an invaluable contribution to contemporary historical and sociological understanding.""--BOOK JACKET.

Rethinking communism : social approaches for reconstructing "that society" in postcommunist Bulgaria / Petia Kabakchieva -- Bulgarian transition and the memory of the socialist past / Iskra Baeva, Evgenia Kalinova -- The west as intellectual utopia / Miglena Nikolchina -- "When we were Europe" : socialist workers in Serbia and their nostalgic narratives : the case of the cable factory workers in Jagodina / Tanja Petrovii︠a︡ -- From "janissaries" to "hooligans" : refugee children in communist Hungary / Riki Van Boeschoten -- Socialism and modernization reflected in life stories of Ukrainian Bulgarians / Tanya Boneva -- Past for the present : the social memory of female and male textile workers in Slovenia / Nina Vodopivec -- Rememberng communism in modern Russia : archives, memoirs, and lived experience / Frederick Corney -- Recollections as alternative history / Iliyana Marcheva -- In pursuit of preserved memory : the popular memory project in Sofia / Galia Misheva -- Changing certainties? socialism in German history textbooks / Augusta Dimou -- Textbook memori(ali)zing : literature textbooks in Bulgaria / Albena Hranova -- Communism and communist history in Slovene and Croatian his…