Post-peasant Memories

Populist or Communist Nostalgia

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12149116
AutoresJ Buzalka (0000-0002-6449-122X, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume32
Fascículo4
Páginas988-1006
Data de publicação2018-06-25
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEast European Politics and Societies and Cultures (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0888-3254 • E-ISSN: 1533-8371
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0888325417736806
OpenAlexW2811068256
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas6

This article is part of the special cluster titled Social practices of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, guest edited by Malgorzata Glowacka-Grajper In this article, I argue against the primary perception of communist nostalgia as either longing for social security or the “dark ages” of anti-communist narratives. I suggest we look deeper into people’s everyday economic practices and ideas under communism, and their transmission and/or re-invention by contemporary populism, to understand the present-day role of nostalgia. Using material gathered mostly in Slovakia, I argue for a fuller understanding of the ambivalent role that communist modernization played in developing the specific model of livelihood strategies, ideas, and practices I call post-peasant. This people’s economy is widely remembered as an unintended consequence of communist modernization, not as an integral product of it. This economic model is further mobilized by skilled populist politicians. It is not the memory of socialism, but an understanding of a “people’s economy” and politics developed under socialism and transmitted across regimes, one I characterize as “post-peasant,” that people are actually nostalgic about

Aesthetics · Communism · Modernization theory · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Socialism · Sociology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition