Communist Nostalgia, “State Promotion” through nostalgia and “Ostalgie”.
That Mikhail Gorbachev is less popular in polls than Stalin or Lenin indicates a cultural mood swing in the former- U.S.S.R. The fall of the Berlin Wall awakened many of the ghosts kept silent during the decades after WW2 - anti-Semitism, among other issues. The unhappiness and disappointment that arose after Perestroika and Glasnost has produced a collective nostalgic longing for the stability of the Soviet system. Although it seems absurd, these feelings extend to Stalin – a fact that hasn’t escaped the current power structure.
Aleksandr Cherkasov, a leading expert at the Memorial human rights group, says Putin in his own way is tapping into Stalin nostalgia in hopes of consolidating his own power. "In the 1990s, nostalgia for Soviet times arose as a way to reject post-Soviet reality," Cherkasov said. "Nowadays, it is the authorities who are in charge of history. In the past, Putin declared that the future of Russia is its great past. He is rationalizing this nostalgia for the past and trying to place it at the base of his political program."
VDNKh and “Stalin World”
Caption: The gift shop featuring Soviet-era knick-knacks. “The park also contains playgrounds, a mini-zoo and cafes, all containing relics of the Soviet era. On special occasions actors stage re-enactments of various Soviet-sponsored festivals. (Wikipedia)”
On the northwest outskirts of Moscow, a 578-acre park is home to collection of monuments and pavilions celebrating the achievements of the USSR. Called VDNKh, it used to be a destination Soviet showcase – the stuff of decades of school class visits and tour bus stops. Now, it’s a mecca for shoppers – an ad-hoc outlet mall.
It’s more than just a cynical re-brand; VDNKh also functions as a mecca for nostalgics. If VDNKh wasn’t enough, those struck with Communist nostalgia can satisfy their yearnings in Stalin World. Although it seems like an article in the satirical Onion, this leisure park begun by a millionaire really exists just a few hours car ride from Vilnius, Lithuania in Grutas Park.
The exposition section of Grutas Park’s Stalin World consists of 86 statues of totalitarian leaders by 46 different sculptors. Other features include re-creations of Soviet Gulag prison camps: wooden paths, guard towers, and barbed-wire fences. It boggles the mind to imagine a culture rewarding the misdeeds of a totalitarian dictator - with an extermination record exceeding Hitler’s - in a leisure park. The German government would never allow “Hitler World”…although a mild strain of nostalgia ripples through the unified Germany for the old days when the Berlin Wall kept the country segregated.
A revival of DDR imagery is evident in many souvenir stands.
“Ostalgie” – East Germans nostalgic for the GDR revival
"We really need to be careful that the GDR does not achieve cult status," said Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit as he attended an event commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall.
For many in Eastern Germany (as well as former-Eastern Bloc countries like Poland), the reality of re-unification after 1989 replaced old problems with new ones. Members of the population that benefited from the socialist system were disenfranchised, of course; but, culturally the Eastern Germans often felt unaccepted by the West Germans. The term Ostalgie refers to nostalgia for the socialist system. Another term, “Soviet chic” is sometimes used and many businesses in Germany have taken advantage of the rising interest in all thing DDR. Now available are formerly defunct brands of East German foodstuffs, old state television programs on video and DVD, and the previously widespread Wartburg and Trabant cars.
Mao Nostalgia
Posing like Cultural revolution-era portraits is a new trend in current-day marriage photos.
In May of 2009 the China Times breathlessly reported: “A new wave of nostalgia for the late chairman is sweeping the nation ahead of the 60th birthday of People's Republic of China (PRC) and amid the global financial crisis…Although Chinese people may generally live a better life today, they feel much less secure and safe than under Mao's rule”. The most characteristic of this manifestation is Cultural Revolution nostalgia – a fashion that takes the uniforms and Red Star insignias as a retro 60’s look. The uniform of the Red Guard might disturb someone old enough to remember the Revolution itself – an era in Chinese history (1966-76) that amounted to a factional purge of anti-socialists in universities and communities – some sources estimate upwards of a million deaths on the hands of the Red Guard brigades that enforced Mao’s brutal policies.
Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution in China started popping up in TV ads around 2002. As Leslie Chang in the China Times writes:
“Some companies are launching ad campaigns that invest with or tinge with nostalgia the turbulent decade of the Cultural Revolution.” The wave for all-things-Red Guard is now a trend in younger Chinese with couples choosing to dress up like Red Guard soldiers during the Cultural Revolution for their wedding portraits (full photo shoots are available in costume and on-board a vintage Cultural Revolution-era train). Chinese twenty-somethings are heating up the marketing of this area and the entertainment business has officially caught on; current TV series offerings include many “red-themed” programs.
Another interesting indicator on the high-end of finance is the art auction market. 60’s and 70’s era propaganda paintings are through the roof: In 2007, the painting "Eulogy of the Yellow River" by Chen Yifei was auctioned for over 40 million yuan (close to 6 million US Dollars). It was reportedly a record in the “mainland oil painting auction market.” It’s hard to imagine more expensive nostalgic kitsch by the inch.
