UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

Setting Sail
Reappropriations and reinterpretations of post-socialist past in the processes of cultural, social,
political and economic perturbations in DME demand a thorough analysis. The former socialist
countries underwent thorough treatment to set off (more or less) radical changes and were in the
process of ‗de-communistisation‘ substantially exposed to (Western and perhaps more often
obsessively self-imposed) demands to ‗sort out‘ their unbefitting and essentially indecently
corrupted socialist histories. Intriguingly coinciding with the upsurge of digital communications
technologies, much of the post-1989/91 debates and developments in Europe as a whole played
out through debates on memory and remembering of seminal events that marked the 20th century.
In a present which is rapidly moving into unpredictable direction(s), the possible past(s) refuse(s)
to retire but instead resiliently haunts and fundamentally defines the dimensions of media
dominated present(s).
The fascination with or contempt of the indecent past is to an important extent part and parcel of
the post-socialist quotidian. 106 The corollaries of the ‗unresolved affair‘ with the socialist past are
also apparent in daily politics. The unresolvedness often seems to be the fuel for ‗eternal postcommunist
catharsis‘ or ‗transitionalism,‘ where the finished catharsis, about to occur sometime in
the future, features as the postponed gratification. This, however, tends to prevent these societies
from developing a ‗solid‘ post-socialist ‗mythistory,‘ leading instead to wobbly state-foundations.
An important factor in this constellation is, along the often schizophrenic post-socialist
interpretations of WWII and post-war period, also the crumbling nation state and the rising grassroots,
vernacular memories and histories. What is indicative for the post-socialist cultural and
political realities in Eastern Europe is that the past is perceived as highly problematic. Problematic
in that the 1945—1991 period in new political and historiographical discourses is often interpreted
very much as a period of Soviet domination. 107 This interpretation may be valid for the Baltic
states and to some extent Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But applying this perspective to
Yugoslavia is at least devoid of wider historical contextualisation and distinct specificities of
106 This is not to say that western dealings with the past are any more ‗rational‘ or unburdened, if often they are
presented and perceived as such. On post-socialist dealing with the past and memory see for instance Charity
Scribner, Requiem for Communism, Cambridge, MIT, 2003; Daphne Berdahl, On the Social Life of Postsocialism,
Memory, Consumption, Germany, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010.
107 For instance, Article D of the Declaration on the Proclamation of the ―European Day of Remembrance for Victims
of Stalinism and Nazism‖ clearly states that: ―the influence and significance of the Soviet order and occupation on and
for citizens of the post-Communist States are little known in Europe.‖ This fails to consider any systemic specificities
while also limits ―all totalitarian regimes‖ to Stalinism and Nazism, failing to mention the crimes committed by the
Fascist regime; see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2008-
0439+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN.
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