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Palimpsest Editorial Board Ewelina Ciaputa, Karol Haratyk, Justyna Struzik, Katarzyna Zielińska Palimpsest’s Reviewers Dr Małgorzata Bogunia-Borowska , dr Uilleam Blacker (Uniwersytet Cambridge) dr Daniel Brett (University College London), dr hab. Andrzej Bukowski, dr Szymon Czarnik, dr Agata Dziuban, dr Magdalena Góra, dr Barbara Jabłońska, dr Katarzyna Jasikowska, dr Hubert Kaszyński, dr hab. Beata Kowalska, dr Seweryn Krupnik, dr hab. Marek Kucia, prof. UJ, dr Grażyna Kubica-Heller, dr hab. Marian Niezgoda, prof. UJ, dr hab. Jacek Nowak, dr hab.Piotr Nowak, dr Samuel Nowak, dr Paulina Sekuła, dr Tomasz Słupik, dr Marta Smagacz-Poziemska, dr Maria Świątkiewicz-Mośny, mgr Natasza Styczyńska, dr Aleksandra Wagner, dr Marta Warat, dr Małgorzata Zawiła, dr Katarzyna Zielińska This issue received financial support from the Bratniak Students' and Graduates' of Jagiel- lonian University Foundation. Proofreading: Benjamin Koschalka Benefficient Table of content Manuela Marin Between Memory and Nostalgia: The Image of Communism in Romanian Popular Culture. A Case Study of Libertatea Newspaper ...........................4 Marta Brzezińska Youth, Communism and the Cinema – Ways of Depicting the Past in Se- lected German, Polish and Czech Films Produced after 1989……………17 Anna Tretiak Changing Direction: Post-Soviet Transformation of the Ukrainian Chil- dren's Book ……………………………………………………......................25 Olena Synytska Ideological Clichés in Ukrainian Literary Criticism of the 1990s …………..33 Marko Kovačić An Assessment of the Role of Civil Society in the Early Phase of Democrat- ic Consolidation: A Comparative Analysis of Glas 99 in Croatia and Otpor in Serbia………………………………………………………………………...43 Antonie Doležalová The Limitations of the Not-For-Profit Sector in the Czech Republic...........65 dynamic. The mainstream ideology can be treated as a common theme of Introduction almost all these texts. Anna Tretiak addresses the issue of ideological so- cialisation in examining the “post-Soviet transformation of the Ukrainian The current issue of Palimpsest presents texts based on the children’s book”. Marta Brzezińska and Manuela Marin analyse the place presentations and discussions which took place on 4-5 March 2011 in Kra- occupied by the communist past in the contemporary ideological and cul- th kow during the 10 International Postgraduate Conference on Central and tural landscape. Brzezińska searches for commonalities in presenting the Eastern Europe – “Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe: before, communist past in Czech, German and Polish cinema. Marin reconstructs after, in the process?”. International Postgraduate Conferences on Central the image of the communist past in Romania with the case of a popular and Eastern Europe take place periodically in different European cities. newspaper. Tretiak diagnoses deep ideological changes, while Marin and Their initiator, inspiration and patron is University College London School of Brzezińska analyse the phenomenon of nostalgia for the elements of the th Slavonic and East European Studies. The 10 Conference was organised past, the desire to preserve rather than to reject the past. Olena Synytska by two student academic unions of the Jagiellonian University: those of presents the surprising persistence of elements of the past with the case of students of sociology and of European studies. literary criticism in Ukraine in the 1990s. Almost 100 researchers from different European countries dis- Marko Kovačić and Antonie Doležalová focus on civil society. De- cussed intra-regional commonalities and differences and regional spite this common issue, their perspectives can be contrasted. While peculiarities. The term “transformation” was chosen as the key concept for Kovačić examine the role of civil society in fulfilling the transformation in these discussions. Two decades after the fall of communism in the region, Croatia and Serbia, Doležalová asks how the communist past still influ- we decided to ask the question, whether the so-called transformation has ences civil society in the Czech Republic. In the context of the question been fulfilled, and whether it can ever be fulfilled. It may be that the effects asked in the title of the conference, her thesis is particularly interesting. of the transformation to date made only more obvious the need for another, She claims that the (poor) condition of civil society in the Czech Republic deeper transformation, as has been expressed around the world by such cannot be explained with references to the communist past, instead per- contemporary movements as the Indignados, the Occupy Movement and ceiving such “historical” explanations as a rationalisation of “why the other alter-globalist movements. current development of civil society is so unsatisfactory in so many ways”. We intended to compare different aspects of regional transformation. Thus, As a consequence, this inspires us to ask if we should still use the notion of th the main topics of the 10 Conference were the following: transformation and what the ideology of transformation means today. Civil) society in the face of transformation Transformation in the context of the structural and institutional aspects Karol Haratyk Gender – transformation Co-coordinator of the conference Culture in the face of transformation The effects of transformation on the economy. The presented texts focus on the persistence of the elements of the past in a changing context and on the peculiarities which result from this 3 www.palimpsest.socjologia.uj.edu.pl no. 5, December 2013 observers, this emergence of post-communist nostalgia is considered to be Manuela Marin the result of the economic failure of the policies of former communist coun- tries and also a sign of their questionable attachment to democracy and Western values. Between Memory and Nostalgia: The Image of Com- Following the presentation of several introductory concepts de- munism in Romanian Popular Culture. A Case Study signed to establish and define the theoretical framework of our approach, my analysis of the image of communism proposed by the Romanian news- 1 of Libertatea Newspaper paper Libertatea (Liberty) will demonstrate that people’s feelings toward the communist past are in fact contradictory. In addition, the paper will also point out that the emergence of post-communist nostalgia is related both to ABSTRACT the impact of economic, political and social changes generated by the post- This paper examines the contradictory perceptions of part of the Romanian communist transition and to the dimension of personal life experience un- population of the communist past and looks at a case study centring on articles der communism. published in a national newspaper, Libertatea (Liberty). The analysis will consider both the articles published in this newspaper and also readers’ commentaries on two major topics: Romanians’ everyday life in communist Romania and Nicolae Definition of nostalgia Ceauşescu’s popular representations. The nostalgic scheme of remembering communism proposed by Libertatea and its readers is analysed within the broader Nostalgia is usually defined as a feeling of longing for past times, context of the economic, social and political changes brought about by the post- people, objects, feelings, events, or a relationship that no longer exists communist transition and of individual perceptions regarding them. (Boym 2001: xiii-xix, Velikonja 2008: 27-28, 30). According to Svetlana Boym (2001: xiii, xvi), nostalgia is “a sense of loss and displacement” which KEY WORDS is based on an obvious contrast between a romanticised version of the past post-communism, nostalgia, mass culture, Romania, Ceauşescu and a present considered inferior nowadays. Thus, this nostalgia is not as much about the past but especially about the present and its relationship with the future. In this respect, Fred Davis (1979:9) stated that the object of Introduction nostalgia is not the past in itself but a past with special features, whose signifi- cance must be deciphered in relation with the realities of the present. In Almost 20 years after the collapse of the communist regimes in Eu- addition to this, the present-future relationship as part of the nostalgic feel- rope, the nostalgia for the communist recent past continues to spread in ing is explicable from the perspective that the contemporary developments the former countries of the Soviet bloc. From the perspective of external that have caused such a nostalgic approach to the past reflect similar con- cerns for the near future. 1 Acknowledgment: Research for this paper was supported by CNCS-UEFISCSU, PN-II-RU- Several authors also notice the emergence of what is called sec- TE-2012-3-0077. ondary or vicarious nostalgia. This type of nostalgia is the result of the 4 www.palimpsest.socjologia.uj.edu.pl no. 5, December 2013 Manuela Marin, Between Memory and Nostalgia development of a “memory industry” which provides through “its produc- their youth due to the difficulties and major changes which they have to tion” (such as building monuments, yearly holiday cycles, media products, face as adults. While their nostalgia has an episodic character meant to memoirs/testimonials) an image of the past that is idealised but convincing help them face problematic situations, for part of the elderly population, it is through its distorted realism (Velikonja 2008: 25, Goulding 2001: 584-585). an integral part of an ongoing process of remembering and re-evaluating Starting from here, a natural question