Moda czy nostalgia? O tym, jak PRL funkcjonuje w wyobraźni społecznej współczesnych Polaków
Fashion or nostalgia? How does PRL exist in the social imagination of the contemporary Poles.

Summary/Abstract: Twenty-five years after the system transformation in Poland, the times of the Polish People‘s Republic (PRL) are still vivid in the social imagination of Poles. Despite all the problems of inefficiency and repression, most people from the older generation still consider these times to have been a kind of “golden age”. Another phenomenon is the fascination with and the fashionable presence of communism (not in the political sense but that of lifestyle) among Poland’s young generation, which obviously cannot be rooted in nostalgia in the case of people who cannot remember those times. The author analyses the causes, mechanisms and to some extent also the consequences of these two phenomena: the popularity of and nostalgia towards the PRL. The theoretical analysis indicates that nostalgia and fashion both have their sources in the post-modern social condition, but each of these phenomena has not only different recipients but also varying backgrounds and is based on separate mechanisms. For the older generation the cultural artefacts create a sense of the generational community and identity, while the young Poles consider communism and everything related to it as a synonym of nonsense and the grotesque. PRL’s pop culture and vintage style is their own, specific cultural heritage. Within 25 years, the culture of inefficiency has become very original “export product”, something they can be proud of.

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