5 March 2024, 6 pm (CET)

How are the post-1989 economic reforms remembered today in Central and Eastern Europe? How do these memories differ and to what extent do they contribute to the current political climate? How do they affect our current understanding of the post-1989 period, and what counter-memories have they triggered? 
All these questions will serve as a starting point for an online discussion around the volume ‘Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989’, edited by Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak and published as part of the ENRS and Routledge book series ‘European Remembrance and Solidarity’.

To join the meeting, please register  here.

The participants of our book launch are the discussants Sarah Gensburger, Michał Przeperski and Tom Junes with the book editors Joanna Wawrzyniak and Veronika Pehe.
As well as other authors of the book.

The discussion will be moderated by Dr Małgorzata Pakier, Head of the ENRS Academic Section and coordinator of the European Remembrance and Solidarity book series, and a collaborator of the Center for Research on Social Memory, Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw.

More on the book, click here.

Part I. Founding myths and counter-narratives of the transformation
2. Shock therapy mythologies: contested memories of Poland’s Balcerowicz Plan - Florian Peters
This chapter investigates the intersections of political discourse and vernacular memories on Poland's neoliberal "shock therapy". Discussing both affirmative and demonizing narratives of the "Balcerowicz Plan", it makes the case to regard them as an implicit foundational myth of post-1989 Poland.

3. A recurring bone of contention: the memory politics of Slovakia’s economic transformation - Matej Ivančík
The chapter reveals how mnemonic warriors utilized Slovakia's economic transformation in order to legitimize their contentious political acts, thus contributing to the country's postcommunist political landscape.

4. From communism to neoliberalism: conflated memories of Bulgaria’s corrupted transition - Tom Junes and Ivo Iliev
It is hard to speak of any tangible neoliberal turn in Bulgaria. Though one can state that the country in transitioning from state socialism ended up in a neoliberal reality, it was a protracted process overshadowed by political strife, organised crime networks, state capture, and unregulated wild capitalism. The memory of the transition is therefore characterised by various conflations of capitalism with communism or democracy.

5. Political uses of memory of the early period of the post-Soviet transformations in contemporary Russia - Olga Malinova

6. Regimes of truth and the discontent of memories: self-deception and denial during the growing together of the two Germanies - Thomas Lindenberger


Part II. Vernacular memories and biographical narratives
7. Economic change, skills and the shifting horizons of social recognition: East German and Czech care workers remember the disruptive 1990s - Till Hilmar

8. ‘The lost years’: gender, citizenship and economic change in Romania during the long 1990s - Jill Massino

9. 'There was no more work, no more life, no more anything…': Hungarian workers’ memories of the neoliberal transition - Tibor Valuch

10. How the Polish business elite remembers the neoliberal turn - Kamil Lipiński and Joanna Wawrzyniak
The authors analyze the biographical narratives of main 'winners' of the neoliberal turn: Polish business elite. They identify 3 main types of those narratives: transnational 'pioneers' of corporate capitalism, implementing capitalism from without, local 'fixers', creating market economy from within under state socialism and the 'rescuers'/'destructors', transforming the state-owned assets. Different forms of capital conversions and business backgrounds, represented by those narratives, help to grasp the variety of capital conversions performed by Polish business elites, their role in business elite narratives, and the distinct forms of legitimization of capitalism they provide.

11. The neoliberal turn in biographical narratives of young people in Poland - Adam Mrozowicki and Justyna Kajta
To what extent are the neoliberal changes after 1989 reflected in the biographical stories of young Poles? In answering this question, Justyna Kajta and Adam Mrozowicki point out that spontaneous references to economic transformation after 1989 in young people’s life stories are relatively rare. The authors explain this fact by the influence of young age, the limited communicative memory of this period in families and the impact of individualistic neoliberal ideologies. At the same time, they note that locating individual biography within the framework set by macro-social changes is facilitated by political socialisation, including the right-wing involvement of some of the narrators.    


Part III. Cultural memory of economic change
12. Privatization comedies as media of memory of the Czech(oslovak) economic transformation - Veronika Pehe

13. Screening the criminal underworld of capitalist nation-state making: Dogs and memory of the 1990s in Poland - Saygun Gökarıksel
The chapter focuses on the cult Polish film, “Psy” (Dogs), to examine the imaginary of criminality underlying postsocialist capitalist nation-state making and its popular memorialization in Poland. The film has produced a lasting memory of the social anxieties about the uneven and secretive accumulation of capital and privilege in the 1990s through a portrayal of the hypermasculine world of secret policemen scavenging, fighting, and betraying each other.  

14. The moral right to economic crime: remembering the Russian 1990s in a tragic mode in Alexei Ivanov’s Nasty Weather [Nenast’e] - Ksenia Robbe

15. Films without a viewer: Ukrainian filmmakers and memory of the neoliberal turn in the post-Soviet space - Olga Gontarska and Veronika Pehe
In this chapter the authors confront us with the question: Is Ukraine's transformation period solely a matter of the past or is it an ongoing process? It shows how difficult it is to find the right language to describe the Ukrainian experience. The chapter deals with how Ukrainian cinema has been deprived of the power to shape memory.

16. The German ‘floating gap’: post-unification memory in literary fiction - Joanna Jabłkowska and Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
In this chapter the authors argue that German literature has rarely dealt with the realities of the 1990s in East Germany. While there is a large number of literary works devoted to the turn of 1989 the subsequent years are depicted only fragmentarily. Only in very recent years, writers have slowly discovered the post-unification years.

17. ‘We’re rushing towards capitalism like the Titanic towards a fucking iceberg’: representations of East German (social) transformation in films and TV series from the 2000s until today - Anna Lux
The chapter is about representations of the economic transformation in East Germany in films and TV series. These representations changed, the author argues: Initially, the economic transformation was seen in the background, was a scenery. Only since the last ten years the economic collapse became an independent part of the plot. By implementing economic memories in this way films are an important part of the changes in discourse on the transformation and its far-reaching political, economic and social consequences.

18. Memories of the neoliberal turn in comparative perspective: a research agenda - Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak