Posted on 08/13/2019 11:37:22 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Soviet nostalgia in Russia has now become a major focus of scholarly research with researchers in many disciplines making contributions to its description and meaning. This research began in the West, but has engulfed many in the Russian Federation and the other post-Soviet states.
“Societies which experience historical traumas, need anesthesia and psychotherapy,” sociologist Roman Abramov days. Millions of people not surprisingly respond to turning to a past real and often imagined to provide them with reassurance.
That often takes the form of nostalgia for “the good old times,” which in the Russian case for many, but far from all, was the period of Brezhnev’s rule.
Of course, that period was not all of one piece. There was economic stagnation, the Afghan war, the campaign against dissidents and the third wave emigration. But “these events did not touch everyone and appear less traumatic” to society as a whole than more recent ones.
“Waves of nostalgia became a frequent phenomenon of the 20th century when major geopolitical cataclysms, world wars, revolutions, and sharp social and technological changes occurred...People attempted to find a peaceful and well-off past and then lose themselves in it, forgetting their present problems for a time.”
The nostalgic eco-system is...a symbiosis of emotions, recollections, practical actions, institutions, people and things. All of them transform reality, giving it a nostalgic tone and at the same time stimulates nostalgic consumption of goods from the past.
’The last Soviet generation’ using the words of Aleksey Yurchak, the author of This was Forever Until It ended, became the generator of popular museumification of the late ‘soviet’ world, which arrived in large measure in 2009-2012.” There are many museums now about Soviet life in the real and virtual worlds and set up by professionals and amateurs.
(Excerpt) Read more at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com ...
Yes, those good old days of “Little Gulag on the Tundra”! /s
Clever!
Yeah, Winston Smith really looks back with his experience in Room 101 with nostalgia.
Yeah, there’s nothing quite like the good old days, when the Soviet state could just murder tens of millions of its citizens... I’m sure that did promote national unity, since everyone was too afraid not to just shut up and obey.
Considering the Soviets killed more people than the Nazis, this really is no different than hearing about Germans pining for the Nazi era, but the level of outrage from academia is certainly different for the two scenarios.
I’m sure they miss those happy years when even a B-list political dissident could earn a suite at one of the lodges in the remote and beautiful Siberian landscape...
That’s nothing but a nostalgia of aging people for the days they were young and healthy. Has nothing to do with politics.
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