Suchergebnisse

This study addresses the changing strategies of social inclusion, which the Hungarian elites in Romania pursued after WWII. The establishment of communist rule in Romania involved the members of the Hungarian ethnic minority in very different ways. As early as 1946, inner tensions and debates occurred inside this community, while groups from its elite organized manifestations of resistance against the new rulers. After 1947, the communist leadership of Romania dramatically changed its policies with regard to the ethnic Hungarians, and this caused a great disillusion to those who believed that the collective rights of minorities would be guaranteed in the new political framework. The events of 1956 reshaped the way the cultural elites of that ethnic group related to the communist regime. Later, the manifest nationalistic propaganda of late communism in Romania generated political dissent among the members of a new generation of Hungarian intellectuals. It is in that period that the post-1989 political strategies of this community originate. When the cultural elite of the Hungarian minority had to assume the role of building a representative political structure in the transition to democracy, its representatives continued to a great extent to act like in late communism.

Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past. The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, and the perception of "the system"