History Does Not Travel in One Direction: "Real Existing" Postsocialism in Eastern Europe

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

How have ordinary people been affected by, responded to, and made sense of the manifold changes occurring in Eastern Europe over the past three decades? Focusing on a range of actors—industrial laborers, entrepreneurs, youths, women, sexual minorities, and foreign students, among others— the volume discussed on this roundtable seeks to answer this question and more generally illuminate the complexities and contours of “real existing” postsocialism. Granting non-elites center stage, it complicates hegemonic portraits of the transition and crude divisions of postsocialist societies into “winners” and losers,” highlighting individual experiences, attitudes, and behaviors. Analyzing ruptures and continuities, the chapters reveal the multidirectional, at times non-linear, character of change in the region, as well as the fluidity, elasticity, and, in some cases, irrelevance of larger systemic ruptures. In so doing, it problematizes 1989 as an epochal event and suggests a rethinking of standard periodizations of the transformation.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Jill Massino, UNC at Charlotte

Roundtable Members

• Victor Petrov, U of Tennessee

• Cristofer Scarboro, King's College

• Markus Wien, American U Bulgaria (Bulgaria)