Comunismul în postcomunism. Nostalgii și nostalgici
The Communism in Post-communism. Nostalgias and nostalgics

Summary/Abstract: 30 years after the fall of the communist regime, Romanian society has towards its past an ambivalent and contradictory attitude: on the one hand it brings a constant effort to manage social memory, whilst on the other hand it is „haunted“ by nostalgia for communism. In the Romanian case, the relationship to the communist past and arguments over its legacy have been problematic and created numerous controversies since December 1989. The years of transition, political instability but mainly the failure of the educational policies fed the nostalgia for communism. However, the substratum of such a phenomenon must not be interpreted only from the perspective of the political and economic disappointments which Romanian society has experienced in the last 30 years, but also as a failure of the educational policies of memorialising the communist past and shaping an adequate historical consciousness. ”Before it was better” is a part of a selective memory which suggests nostalgia for an economic and social stability without ideological connotations. For many Romanians ”communism was a good idea” because it had positively influenced their existence, while now the much-desired freedom was associated with chaos and instability.

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