I Lost My Past (2017)
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I Lost My Past (2017)
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Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#2> Thus I came to realize that all these other memories from Eastern Europe and Communism that pop-up on today’s screens and “populate” the literature, have almost nothing in common with me. And yet I lived under such a regime for thirty years!
There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a very oblivious normal life without knowing all the darks secrets of a system.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#3I have extended family that grew up in a communist country. And I got to know quite a few of their friends and relatives.
Of course not everyone was thrown into prison, or stood in breadlines. Experiences depended on your relative social standing under the old regime and how that social standing was viewed under the new regime. The revolution for the laborers, but the most successful labors? Blood enemies of the people.
Plenty of people were born into relative privilege under the communist system. Children who quietly got to go to foreign universities, while their parents talked about the need for the lower classes to sacrifice their children for the revolution. Those same children who now run very successful businesses thanks to their family connections.
And there was the flip side, which the author doesn’t like the focus on. The ones who were successful businessmen or even farmers but after the revolution thrown into prison as “dangerous counter revolutionaries”. Or the families of that person who had to pay penance for their bloodlines sins - their children denied an education. Of course the assets stripped from the family were given to the “people”, the the most generous portion reserved for those most loyal to the revolution.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#4> Thus I came to realize that all these other memories from Eastern Europe and Communism that pop-up on today’s screens and “populate” the literature, have almost nothing in common with me. And yet I lived under such a regime for thirty years! There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a…
Yes, but he's not denying the other things happened, but pointing out pretty much exactly what you say: there's no singular canonical experience. But often we are presented a narrative of such a singular experience.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#5Tito's model for Yugoslavia was rather different to the Soviet one. The Illyrian model employed cooperativism and market socialism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Fed...
He still arrested opponents and operated a secret police force who dealt with dissident voices though, so hey.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#6I have extended family that grew up in a communist country. And I got to know quite a few of their friends and relatives. Of course not everyone was thrown into prison, or stood in breadlines. Experiences depended on your relative social standing under the old regime and how that social standing was viewed under the new regime. The revolution for the laborers, but the most successful labors? Blood enemies of the peop…
> Children who quietly got to go to foreign universities, while their parents talked about the need for the lower classes to sacrifice their children for the revolution. Those same children who now run very successful businesses thanks to their family connections.
You just described the situation everywhere, Communist or Capitalist or Whateverist system.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#7> Thus I came to realize that all these other memories from Eastern Europe and Communism that pop-up on today’s screens and “populate” the literature, have almost nothing in common with me. And yet I lived under such a regime for thirty years! There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a…
>There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed.
You just read a blog post of a personal anecdote. What were you expecting? A dissertation?
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#8(2017)
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#9No post body was provided.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#10I have extended family that grew up in a communist country. And I got to know quite a few of their friends and relatives. Of course not everyone was thrown into prison, or stood in breadlines. Experiences depended on your relative social standing under the old regime and how that social standing was viewed under the new regime. The revolution for the laborers, but the most successful labors? Blood enemies of the peop…
I was born in West Germany shortly after reunification and have family both from the East and West. All pretty much working class, on both sides.
I don't think it's fair to characterize the people the author talks about as children raised under privileged circumstances necessarily. Many working class people, mothers who had plenty of support in raising kids, people who enjoyed relatively egalitarian and free education for the first time and so on have legitimately good memories, and are today some of the most dissatisfied with the state of affairs. In particular the role of women seems to have been mostly lost. When the East had already granted reproductive rights, women in the West got abortions in the Netherlands.
This is generally written off as "Ostalgie" (pun on nostalgia) in exactly the same way the author describes.