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Nostalgia for the Soviet Past in the Post-Soviet Countries
By Tatsiana Amosava
Introduction
Maurice Halbwachs made collective memory an object of sociological
research (1992). For the last half of a century it has become a prolific
field of study with collective trauma as a principal concern. However,
another modality of the collective memory has attracted a lot of
researchers’ attention: nostalgia which eliminates any pain related to the
past and presents it in harmonious, non-shady version.
Initially introduced in the end of the 17th century as a form of
psychological disorder (as a disease) found in Swiss mercenaries who
carried their services abroad, nostalgia was perceived differently by the
representatives of different epochs. It became a fashion in the 19th century,
and even now it is closely associated with fashion. Nowadays nostalgia is
seen as a psychological mecanism of maintaining the identity continuity
(Fred Davis) and a mechanism which helps sustaining the wholeness of
personality.
Nostalgia relates to life cycles. There are identifiable groups of
population who are inclined to nostalgia. There are certain age groups:
people in their late twenties are nostalgic of their late teen years, and the
group of middle-aged people who are around their forty (till recently it
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was possible to argue that it is an empty nest phase in the life cycle of
women). Also, very old persons show the acute signs of longing for the
past. In addition, there is a gender distinction: it is more typical of men to
experience nostalgia than of women. Fred Davis (1979) believes that it is
a result of more complicated life trajectories in men who worked in
different places, served in the army, migrated more actively than women,
while the surroundings of women were rather stable, non-changeable, and
women’s identities did not require a lot of adaptation to new
circumstances. Moreover, nostalgia is typical of immigrants. Thus,
nostalgia carries not only individual, but rather group, or collective
character.
Starting from the
middle 1940s due
to the
contribution
of
phenomenologists such as Alfred Schütz (1945) and later James Phillips
(1985) and E.B. Daniels (1985), a salient feature of nostalgia has become
evident: earlier, nostalgia was associated with the homesickness, namely,
- with space, however, now it is seen as a phenomenon related to time.
Alfred Schütz paid attention to the fact that nostalgia is a result of the lost
intimacy with the former surrounding which is very difficult to
re-establish (‘The Homecomer’, 1945).
Psychoanalytical tradition has made nostalgia its object of observation,
and many psychoanalysts understand nostalgia within the framework
suggested by Sigmund Freud in his paper “Mourning and Melancholy”
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(1999) as a reaction of psyche to the loss of the beloved object.
In general psychoanalysts point out at the utopian consciousness of
Russians, utopian disposition of their mind. This utopian stance is nutured
by the Russian folklore and literature. Utopia is something that did not
exist, does not exist and will never exist, which is very unanimous to the
emotion of nostalgia, because its main content is longing for the past
which is irreversible. There are a few works which discuss namely
irreversibility of the past and its understanding by an individual, because
some people disagree to believe in irreversibility of the past, and their
nostalgia takes “abnormal” shape. These themes are discussed in the
works of Elena Pourtova (2013), Vladimir Tsivinsky (2014) and Svetlana
Boym (2001).
Recently I have met a person from Zimbabwe who got his medical
education in Eastern Germany in 1980s. He expressed an acute longing
for the Soviet past in the German Democratic Republic. He maintains
expanded connections with the Eastern Germans who are unanimous in
their great disappontment with the new, non-socialist circumstances of
their lives. The nostalgia for the Soviet past in the former GDR is acute.
Germans have become pioneers in producing films on these dramatic
losses, for example, ‘Good bye, Lenin!’ (Barney, 2009) that features the
collapse of the the GDR and the unification of two Germanies. There is
an episode in the film showing how the main film character meets a taxi
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driver looking like the national GDR hero, the first astronaut Sigmund
Werner Paul Jähn. Although the taxi driver says that he is not an astronaut,
the audience understands that he is (in reality Sigmund Jähn did not work
as a taxi driver). Like many Eastern Germans this film character has
undergone a dramatic downshifting. This episode is a symbol of losses
experienced by citizens of the collapsed socialist societies of Europe.
My region of interest
I have chosen a specific geographical region as an object of my interest.
This specific region has a common historical destiny, the histories of its
peoples have been interwoven for one thousand years. This region
includes Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, the European part of Russia and
Ukraine, however, technically it would be difficult for me to study the
situation within Ukraine. I mention Ukraine because I must be
historically truthful.
Starting from the 13th century the terriotories of modern Lithuania,
Belarus and Ukraine made up a political unity called the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania. In 1386 the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania were united through the marriage of monarchs and existed as a
largest European state till the end of the 18th century.
Due to its political weakening it was divided between Prussia,
Austro-Hungary and the Russian Empire in the end of the 18th century. In
the Russian Empire this region was known as the Pale of Settlement
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where Jews were allowed to settle while in Russia itself their presence
was prohibited.
Poland and Lithuania existed as independent countries only between 1917
and 1939.
In the mid-20th century Poles and Lithuanians became victims of the
Soviet regime atrocities such as mass shooting of the Polish elite in Katyn
in 1940 and crushing of Vorkuta labour camp revolt in 1953 where the
majority of political prisoners were Lithuanians and Ukrainians (David
Satter, 2014).
Taking into account these tragic events, it is obvious that such countries
as Poland and Lithuania experience high rates of Russophobia. Also, they
were among the most active strugglers against the Soviet regime.
However, for the last quarter of a century being independent Catholic
countries they experience depopulation, degradation of living standards
and extremely high rates of suicides. Following the theoretical thought of
Durhkeim these countries are in a situation of anomie. In such a situation
people turn to the past and begin to idealize it.
The previous studies on the topic
Two Polish sociologists Wieliczko and Zuk in 2003 discovered strong
symptoms of nostalgia among middle-class, middle-aged Poles, “the
social group which is commonly thought to be a chief beneficiary of the
process of market transition”. All opinion surveys report vast majorities
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of respondents with positive attitudes towards socialism, but since these
are scorned in the public discourse and the media, they are subject to
self-censorship (Post-Communist Nostalgia, Introduction: 5).
The editors of the Post-Communist Nostalgia volume point out regarding
Poland that “what people remember about socialism is a pride in
production and in their labour and also a sense of being a part of a project
that was modern and directed towards the general good. When people
speak angrily about Poland being turned into a “Third World” country,
their anger is about economic decline, about what they see as a two-sided
coin of the dependency and exploitation, and about being transformed not
into the (even more modern) capitalist future but back into a pre-socialist
past” (Introduction: 5). This “trauma of deindustrialization” has brought
about alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness and the feminization of
poverty. According to Frances Pine (2002:111), “[s]ocial memory is
selective and contextual. When people evoked a ‘good’ socialist past,
they were not denying the corruption, the shortages, the queues, and the
endless intrusion and infringements of the state; rather they were
choosing to emphasize other aspects: economic security, full employemnt,
universal healthcare and education” (Introduction: 5).
Izabella Main describes trends of understanding the Communist past by
the modern Polish society. According to her, one of the most important
sociological studies on the memory of Communism in Poland was
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undertaken by Piotr Kwiatkowski. Having conducted and analyzed focus
group discussions in several cities, Kwiatkowski concludes that there is a
nostalgia for the past (and not just for one’s youth) for at least five
reasons: (1) financial stability; (2) better prospects for self-realization; (3)
the system of social welfare; (4) old forms of sociability contrasting with
the high intensity and interpersonal competition after the changes; and (5)
order, lower criminality, fewer scandals, a feeling of security at home and
on the streets, as well as a positive image of the world in the mass media
(even if false) (Main, 2014: 99).
According to Irmina Matonyte (2013), Lithuania remains the most
conservative in its attitudes to the Soviet past. Lithuanian elites maintain
the discourse of anti-nostalgia for the USSR. The studies of the public
opinion on this topic in Lithuania are not multiple.
In understanding the situations in Poland and in Lithuania I also rely on
the work of James Mark who has written The Unfinished Revolution:
Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (2010)
in which he concentrates his attention on official policies of the
post-Soviet countries aimed at reconciliation with their Soviet past.
Since the very collapse of the USSR in 1991 an independent Russian
sociological
agency
with
well-established
reputation
called
Levada-Centre has been conducting monitoring of nostalgia for the USSR
in Russia. In 2000 President Putin summarized the results of their studies
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for many years in one phrase. Being interviewed by the newspaper
Komsomolskaya Pravda he was asked about his attitudes to the Soviet
Regime. During the rule of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin the attitudes to
the Soviet regime were acutely negative. To the surprise of many, Putin
said: “Anyone who does not regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no
heart”. He then added that anyone who wanted it restored “has no brains”
(David Satter, 2014: 208).
On April 25, 2005, in his address to the Federal Assembly, Putin
described the fall of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest geopolitical
catastrophe of the twentieth century”. With this remark the era of
anti-Soviet revulsion in Russia came to an end (David Satter, 2014: 209).
For a quarter of a centure Levada-Centre has been posing two questions
to Russian people: Do they regret the collapse of the USSR and if they
want its restoration.
The representative polls of Levada-Centre (see electronic link 1 & 2)
show that at present (December 2014) 54% of the Russian population
regret the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, much less percent of
the population would like its restoration within the same borders. Taking
into account that for the last 8 years Russia invaded two former republics
of the USSR (Georgia and Ukraine) and significantly spoilt the relations
with her neighbors, the project of restoration looks irrealistic.
Among significant findings of the Levada-Centre we can mention
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noticable Stalinization of the Russian population. Stalin re-gained his
status as a national hero. However, Russian sociologists point out, that
nostalgia for the Soviet past is typical mostly of people with low level of
education who are older than 45.
In reality, nostalgia exists not only among those who experienced the
Soviet past
The Age of Modernity witnesses commodification of everything: time,
future, risks, expectations, memories are commodified. They are the
objects of merchandazing. Consumption shapes the mode of life and the
horizons of the future.
Arjun Appadurai in his book Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimentions of
Globalization (1996) discovers the nature of “armchair nostalgia” or
nostalgia “divorced from memory”. He argues that in the society of
consumption and consumerism two mechanisms are used for the purposes
of merchandazing: fashion and nostalgia. Moreover, there are special
techniques which help in shaping nostalgia for the present. People are
taught to miss those things which they never lost. This cultivation of
nostalgia for the present shapes the mood of ephemerality of everything,
and consumption society tried to replace duration with ephemerality. The
main slogan of the Modernity: “Buy it now, because tomorrow not the
product will be out-dated, but the period itself will be out-dated. You
won’t be able to say that you belonged to that time. You won’t be able to
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share this identity.”
This “armchair” nostalgia, or ersatz-nostalgia is a good solution for those
who consider themselved freed from any kind of tradition, who do not
want to be enslaved by tradition. Svetlana Boym in her book The Future
of Nostalgia (2001) mentions that the Americans do not want to be bound
with any tradition, especially with the British one, because this will
destroy their state legitimacy. However, they experience a psychological
need for longing for the past. They are nostalgic of dinosaurs, because
dinosaurs do not belong to anybody. It is nobody’s tradition. This is how
Svetlana Boym explains obsession of Americans with such films as
“Jurassic Park”.
Although I was cautioned by my colleagues that it is not always
reasonable to extrapolate theories created in the consumption society to
other regions of the world, ersatz-nostalgia for the Soviet past (such
nostalgia which does not presume experience of living in the USSR or in
another former Soviet country) is wide-spread among the young
generations of Russians, Belarusians and other nationalities. There are
numerous psychoanalytical works on this topic, and I see its examples on
the regular basis on the Internet. Here is the comment left by the Youtube
user “The girl who believes in Love” four months ago. It is about the
singer Marina Kapuro who was popular in the USSR :
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Due to the “Voice” project the modern generation can familiarize itself
with such a talanted and wonderful singer!!! I have not lived in the USSR,
but from a distant point of view that time seems to me a kind of idyll!
There were so many harmonious whole personalities! People worked
honestly, were simple and sincere... Enormous thanks to Marina for her
singing!
I see one of my main tasks in understanding the nature of this
ersatz-nostalgia for the Soviet past taking into account that it does not
seem to be a tool of effective merchandizing. I agree with Svetlana Boym
who suggests that this form of nostalgia is the result of the break with
tradition, but its relation to consumption in the post-Soviet countries is
not obvious; the mechanism of its emergence and existence does not
seem to be a product of time commodification.
It is possible to suggest that there are other mechanisms of forming such a
nostalgia, similar to those described by Vamik Volkan and his colleagues
in their book The Third Reich in the Unconscious (2002) where they talk
about unconscious transmission of collective trauma from one generation
to another. Perhaps, there are identical mechanisms of transmission of the
“collective satisfaction”. To my mind the most natural way is the family
oral tradition when representatives of different generations share their
ideas about life - the past and the present, and share their visions of the
future.
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Nostalgia plays a key role in the formation of the project of the collective
future. Nowadays in the Russian-language cultural space two discourses
are competing: one elevates the Soviet past, and the second one
denigrates it and presents the Soviet past as Gulag for everybody. The
youth have to restore or formulate their own vision of the past from
different dissociated fragments of information in order to take it to the
future.
It is essential for me to realize who is involved in the production and
promotion of these two contesting visions of the past. I have some
preliminary ideas about the group who is responsible for the production
of denigrating project of the Soviet past. This is a group of intelligentsia,
who lacked the feeling of freedom under the Soviet regime. The most
militant intellectuals who openly juxtaposed themselves to the Soviet
regime formed the dissident circles. The most intriguing feature of those
circles is the majority of their representatives were Jewish. It is rather
ironic, because Jews are blamed for imposing Bolshevism on Russia, and
they are blamed for the collapse of the USSR. Any liberal Russian
politician is called a Jew in a pejorative way.
The famous Russian sociologist Alexander Zinoviev was a dissident
himself. He openly spoke out about his dissatisfaction with the Soviet
regime, and was forced to leave the USSR and to settle in the West
Germany. In his famous book Homo Soveticus (1983) he witnesses that
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he was the only ethnical Russian in the camp of dissidents from the
USSR in Munich in the early 1980s.
In spite of that fact that he was a dissident, Alexander Zinoviev became
the first alternative ideologist of the greatness of the Soviet regime.
Zinoviev realized the greatness of the Soviet regime, when he saw the
Western reality and realized that the methods of restriction of freedom in
the West were even worse than in the Soviet Union. Particularly, he was
struck by the lack of freedom of speech. This author is a landmark for
those who are involved in the creation of both discourses (elevating and
denigrating).
Having analyzed the materials in the library of the University of Ottawa
on Homo Sovetius I have understood that the majority of authors use this
expression coined by Zinoviev in a pejorative sense. This term is actively
used by those producing the denigrating discourse on the Soviet past.
In reality, Zinoviev described the new identity of individuals formed in
the USSR: according to him, Soviet people were characterized as highly
intellectual, creative, cynical, critical, insensitive and skeptical in relation
to any type of ideology, and able to survive under most severe conditions.
In fact, he described a new formation of people, introduced by Nietzsche
in his concept of Superman.
Thus, the only tension between Zinoviev’s vision of Homo Soveticus and
the popular positive vision of the Soviet people which can be found on
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the Internet today is cynicism of the former versa high morality of the
latter.
If to turn to the ideas of psychoanalysis at this point it would be
productive to examine the image of this idealazed Soviet individual
(Homo Soveticus which is now used mostly in pejorative sense by those
authors who definitely have not read Zinoviev’s book) as a lost object. In
this framework, nostalgia for the Soviet past is seen as longing for the
idealized image of Self, which constitutes the lost object.
Bibliography
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Ihde and Hugh J. Silverman, 1985, pp. 76-90.
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10. Matonyte, Irmina. 2013. ‘Political Reconsideration of the Soviet Past: Attitudes
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Electronic sources:
1. http://www.levada.ru/24-12-2007/lasedov-nostalgiya-po-sssr (Nostalgia for the
USSR - in Russian, access: April 16, 2015);
2. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2102515 (Comparison of the polls on the nostalgia
for the USSR conducted by VCIOM and Levada-Centre in 2013 - in Russian,
accessed: April 16, 2015).