Twenty Years After Communism

"Remembering the past, especially as collectivity, is a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration is an integral part of the establishment of new political regimes, new identities, and new principles of political legitimacy. This volume is about the explosion of the politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, particularly about the politics of its commemoration twenty years later. It offers seventeen in-depth case studies, an original theoretical framework, and a comparative study of memory regime types and their origins. Four different kinds of mnemonic actors are identified: mnemonic warriors, mnemonic pluralists, mnemonic abnegators, and mnemonic prospectives. Their combinations render three different types of memory regimes: fractured, pillarized, and unified. Disciplined comparative analysis shows how several different configurations of factors affect the emergence of mnemonic actors and different varieties of memory regimes. There are three groups of causal factors that influence the political form of the memory regime: the range of structural constraints the actors face (e.g., the type of regime transformation), cultural constraints linked to past political conflict (e.g., salient ethnic orreligious cleavages), and cultural and strategic choices actors make (e.g. framing post-communist political identities)"--

About the author

Michael Bernhard is Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Chair of Political Science at the University of Florida. Jan Kubik is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Rutgers University.

Summary

Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not commemorated) by major political actors across the region.

Additional text

provides in-depth expertise on the politics of memory and commemoration in 17 countries

Product details

• Authors: Michael Bernhard, Michael H. Kubik Bernhard
• Assisted by: Michael Bernhard (Editor), Jan Kubik (Editor), Kubik Jan (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 14.08.2014
• EAN: 9780199375134
• ISBN: 978-0-19-937513-4
• No. of pages: 384
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; memory, Sociology, PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, Philosophy of Mind, HISTORY / Europe / Eastern, PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / European, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Social and cultural anthropology, Far-left political ideologies and movements, Cognition and cognitive psychology, c 1990 to c 1999, Marxism & Communism