The meaning of “late socialism”: analyzing Estonians’ post-communist memory culture

Abstract

The aim of this article is to elaborate one aspect of post-socialist memory culture in one Baltic state, namely, which meaning is given to the late socialist period in Estonians' personal narratives. Reminiscing about events of twentieth century has a meaningful place in the integration of the Baltic Sea region in the twenty-first century. The tensions between memory politics and personal experiences expressed in biographical accounts will also be explored. In the 1990s, late socialism was understood in Estonians' cultural memory as part of a discontinuity discourse. In the early twenty-first century, the same period is understood more along the lines of a paradigm of everyday life.

The autobiographical archive in post-communist Romania: “True” heroes and collective victimization

“…The politics of memory is a set of strategies employed by political actors “to make others remember in certain, specific ways and the effects of such mnemonic manipulations” (Kubik and Bernhard, 2014: 7). Different discourses of memory, which form part of the politics of memory and function as a top-down performance of the collective memory, were adopted in the East Central European post-communist countries, ranging from the denial of the communist past to the moderate preservation of continuity with the communist past, or even to a consolidation of the national identity based on it (Jõesalu, 2020; Kosmos, 2020). In some countries, the researchers observed the absence of “a shared public narrative about the socialist past” (Koleva, 2016), while the rejection and condemnation of the communist past (Reifová, 2018: 589), which forms part of the official memory discourse, was perceived as being in contradiction with the autobiographical accounts of the past, including the nostalgic views (Marin, 2016; Mihelj, 2017).…”

Rejecting, re-shaping, rearranging: Ways of negotiating the past in family narratives

“…This version was devalued and rewritten in the newly re-established republic (1991), which used history as a source for legalizing its political agenda of independence. The era of pre-war independence was depicted as the “golden age” disrupted by the Soviet occupation referred to as the “long night” (Jõesalu, 2010). This discourse constructs the nation via “martyrdom” and underlines the stubborn nature of the nation, which survived despite the tough times (Tamm, 2013).…”