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Memory, Identity, and Citizenship in Lithuania

2010; Routledge; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01629778.2010.498188

1751-7877

Neringa Klumbytė,

Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: nostalgiapost-Sovietpolitical historyalterityworkmoney Notes Notes 1 Goodbye, Lenin! at the same time is an ironic and utopian film. See Boyer (2006 Boyer, D. 2006. Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany. Public Culture, 18(2): 361–81. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 2 Nostalgia for socialism and for Tito is different in former Yugoslav states. Tanja Petrović holds that the Slovenes express their nostalgia freer because of Slovenia's economic and political success (Velikonja 2008 Velikonja, M. (2008) Titostalgia—A Study of Nostalgia for Josip Broz (Mirovni inštitut). [Google Scholar], p. 39). Nostalgia is less prominent in the countries that have only recently gained independence or where political tensions are still high (Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo). Among Kosovo Albanians, there is practically no public display of Titostalgia (Velikonja 2008 Velikonja, M. (2008) Titostalgia—A Study of Nostalgia for Josip Broz (Mirovni inštitut). [Google Scholar], p. 39). 3 The law project was proposed by the MPs Paulius Saudargas and Petras Luomanas, law no. 89–2741, Vilnius, 2009, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, available at: http://www3.lrs.lt/pls/inter/w5_show?p_r=618&p_d=87463&p_k=1, accessed 12 June 2009. 4 The names of villages are not mentioned and the names of informants are changed following American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics (see Fluehr-Lobban 1992 Fluehr-Lobban, C. 1992. "Ethics". In Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, Edited by: Russell, BH. 173–202. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. [Google Scholar]). 5 James Ferguson (1999 Ferguson, J. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, Berkley: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) argued that nostalgia among the Zambian Copperbelt miners reflects their experience of history as a kind of abjection. 6 Several people younger than 35 whom I interviewed in the beginning of my research did not speak of the Soviet history in terms of 'better Soviet times'. Even if they did remember some positive aspects of the Soviet past and discussed various negative aspects of the present, the major narrative structure of better Soviet times and present decline was absent from their discussions. Unlike older people, most people younger than 35 simply could not compare their adult experiences, such as work and family life, with experiences in Soviet times when they were children and teenagers. 7 All interviews were conducted by me in Lithuanian. Different people assisted me with transcription of the interviews. I especially thank Violeta Meiliūnaitė and Joana Gruodytė for transcribing interviews. The interviews were translated into English by me and Elizabeth Novickas. I coded and analyzed data with NUD*IST myself. 8 Other scholars who conducted their research in the early and mid 2000s in other locations in Lithuania also report that people speak positively about late socialism. See Sliavaitė (2005 Sliavaitė, K. 2005. From Pioneers to Target Group: Social Change, Ethnicity and Memory in a Lithuanian Nuclear Power Plant Community, Lund, Sweden: Lund Monographs in Social Anthropology 16. [Google Scholar]) on Visaginas, the eastern town of Lithuania known for its multiethnic community, Knudsen (2006 Knudsen, I. 2006. 'Life was Better during Soviet Times: The Discourse of Suffering in the Lithuanian Countryside' Paper presented at the 9th EASA Biennial Conference Europe and the World, Bristol, UK, 18–21 September [Google Scholar]) on villagers in southern Lithuania, Ramonaitė (2005 Ramonaitė, A. 2005. 'Piliečių ir valstybės santykis pokomunistinėje demokratijoje: Politinio susvetimėjimo Lietuvoje analizė' PhD dissertation, Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science [Google Scholar]) on communities in various parts of Lithuania (the Molėtai region, the cities of Vilnius and Klaipėda, the cities and the region of Joniškis and Tauragė). On similar narratives glorifying the socialist past in Latvia and Estonia see Skultans (1998 Skultans, V. 1998. The Testimony of Lives. Narrative and Memory in Post Soviet Latvia, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), Kirss (2004 Kirss, T., Kõresaar, E. & Lauristin, M. (eds) (2004) She Who Remembers Survives: Interpreting Estonian Women's Post-Soviet Life Stories (Tartu, University Press). [Google Scholar]), and Goba (2004 Goba, K. 2004. Seda. People of the Marsh, Vides: Filmu Studija. [Google Scholar]); on other Eastern European states, see Kideckel (2008 Kideckel, D. 2008. Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]) on workers in the Jiu Valley and Făgăraş, Romania, and Petrović (2006 Petrović, T. 2006. '"When We Were Europe": Socialist Workers in Serbia and Their Nostalgic Narratives. The Case of the Cables Factory Workers in Jagodina (Serbia)'. Paper presented at the International Conference on Post-Communist Nostalgia University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, 7–8 April [Google Scholar]) on workers in Jagodina, Serbia; also Paxson (2005 Paxson, M. 2005. Solovyovo: the Story of Memory in a Russian Village, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]) on villagers in the Russian north. Some other authors also confirm that the Brezhnev period in Russia was widely seen as a golden era, a time of stability, economic abundance, social justice and belief in the future (Humphrey 2002 Humphrey, C. 2002. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 9 Diana Mincytė (2006 Mincytė, D. 2006. 'Small-Scale Farms Large-Scale Politics: The Changing Landscape of Rural Lithuania', PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [Google Scholar]) reports that from 2003 to 2005 the number of large-scale farms owning more than 200 hectares climbed by almost 40%, from 526 to 726, and the number of very small farms of fewer than five hectares grew from 11,627 to 13,784, or by 16%, suggesting that the middle-range farms are yielding to the consolidation of farms, accompanied by the pauperization of the smallest farm holders. 10 See Vida Kasparavičienė's analysis of Lithuanian fiction (2004, pp. 22–34). 11 After Lithuania's integration into the EU, the job market was changing. Many people, especially younger ones, sought work opportunities in other EU countries. Consequently, most people in urban areas maintained that employers valued their employees more, and that it was becoming easier to find some jobs. The situation became worse again in 2008 and 2009 during the global economic crisis. 12 Lidija Šabajevaitė (1999 Šabajevaitė, L. 1999. Lietuvos socialinė transformacija. 1990–1997 metai, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla. [Google Scholar]) claims that there is a clear relationship between suicide rates and political, economic, and social changes in Lithuania. 13 In 1975, the private sector was producing 39% of Lithuania's total agricultural output, despite the fact that the Soviet state officially discouraged private agriculture (Misiunas & Taagepera 1983 Misiunas, RJ and Taagepera, R. 1983. The Baltic States. Years of Dependence 1940–1980, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]). See also Diana Mincytė (2006 Mincytė, D. 2006. 'Small-Scale Farms Large-Scale Politics: The Changing Landscape of Rural Lithuania', PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [Google Scholar]) on private farming in Soviet Lithuania. 14 Similar economic setbacks were experienced in industrial towns throughout Eastern Europe (Kideckel 2008 Kideckel, D. 2008. Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]; Sliavaitė 2005 Sliavaitė, K. 2005. From Pioneers to Target Group: Social Change, Ethnicity and Memory in a Lithuanian Nuclear Power Plant Community, Lund, Sweden: Lund Monographs in Social Anthropology 16. [Google Scholar]). 15 In her footnotes, Verdery (1983 Verdery, K. 1983. Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], p. 33) remarks that the positive opinion cited was from the 1970s, before the food shortages and rationing of the early 1980s, which provoked deep discontent among rural as well as urban Romanians. 16 In the case of Bulgaria, Deema Kaneff (2002 Kaneff, D. 2002. "Work, Identity, and Rural-Urban Relations". In Post-Socialist Peasant?: Rural and Urban Constructions of Identity in Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Former Soviet Union, Edited by: Leonard, P and Kaneff, D. New York: Palgrave. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) has argued that work has been a central feature of rural identity in general. 17 Although Stephen Kotkin develops his arguments for Stalinist Russia, they do apply to late Soviet Lithuania. 18 Sarah Ashwin (1999 Ashwin, S. 1999. Russian Workers: the Anatomy of Patience, Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 14) insightfully argued that integration into collectives was achieved through alienated collectivism, which Ashwin defines as workers' relation to 'the collective as something standing outside of and opposed to themselves: it was neither perceived nor realized as the product of the collective organization of individual workers or the association of their immediate work collectives'. 19 The full citation is: 'A society is what it remembers; we are what we remember; I am what I remember; the self is a trick of memory' (Wendt 1987 Wendt, A. 1987. "Novelists, Historians and the Art of Remembering". In Class and Culture in the Pacific, Edited by: Hooper, A. 78–91. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific and Centre for Pacific Studies of the University of Auckland. [Google Scholar], p. 79). 20 Jonathan Friedman (1992 Friedman, J. 1992. The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity. American Anthropologist, 94: 837–59. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 852) has argued that 'Culture is supremely negotiable for professional culture experts, but for those whose identity depends upon a particular configuration this is not the case. Identity is not negotiable. Otherwise, it has no existence.' 21 The inefficiency of (Soviet) state-run agriculture was a very popular criticism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the interviewed still voiced similar critical arguments in the early 2000s. 22 In 2007, I noticed that some urban people spoke positively of many Soviet-era developments even if they were subjected to alterity regimes in Soviet times. Their discourse served to de-legitimize the post-Soviet government and to criticize reforms. Dionyzas Varkalis insightfully pointed out that these people do not like to be thought of as nostalgic, since they do not long for Soviet times (personal communication with Dionyzas Varkalis, Klaipėda, July 2007). They might have also wished to be dissociated from nostalgia since the nostalgic are variously othered in public and official spaces.