Соцносталгията и краят на прехода
Socialist Nostalgia and the End of the Transition

Author(s): Daniela Koleva
Subject(s): History, Anthropology, Recent History (1900 till today), Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: Софийски университет »Св. Климент Охридски«
Keywords: nostalgia; transition; biographical memory; popular culture
Summary/Abstract: The paper examines post-socialist nostalgia as a feature of the biographical memory of people whose active life coincided with the period of the communist regime, and as an aspect of the popular culture of post-communist countries over the past two decades. The main argument is that nostalgia is a natural reaction to rapid and radical changes in society. The key to its understanding is in the present, rather than in the past. Assembling an idealized picture of the past from selected fragments, nostalgists express dissatisfaction with the present. This is the cultural-critical potential of nostalgia. As an element of popular culture, nostalgia is a playful, eclectic and superficial, sometimes ironic representation of the past, one often used as a marketing strategy. Whether critical or commodified, nostalgia is a way of integrating the past into the present when that past no longer poses a threat. In this sense, the emergence of pop-cultural nostalgia marks the end of post-communist transition.

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