I've read a lot of late about former Communist states in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere and one of the more interesting things I've noticed is that in East Germany at least there is a significant amount of nostalgia for the "good old days". There is even a term in German, ostalgie that describes the phenomenon. When I was in Berlin in 2003, I saw numerous examples of kitschy appropriation of symbols of East Germany but you see similar stuff in themed bars around the world. Dublin for example has a Pravvda bar, which is decorated with Soviet propaganda. The people drinking overpriced drinks there aren't generally practicing nostalgia though as few if any patrons would have any experience of the real deal. Below is a short France 24 report on the phenomenon.
and here's another, which has people old enough to have vivid memories of the old East Germany in it.
There are also films like Goodbye, Lenin that look back on the régime with lighthearted nostalgia. Of course there are other films that take a more serious and critical look at life in East Germany, such as The Lives Of Others.
In the Russian Federation, the successor party to the Communist Party still attracts a significant amount of the vote.
The idea I'd like to discuss is the limits of nostalgia. Are there any?
As a historical period passes, an orthodoxy is formed about what it was like that perhaps doesn't tally with the personal experiences of all who lived through the period. I'm wondering were there some people who were nostalgic for gulags, or concentration camps, or the days when they were starving etc?
I know a lot of older people here bemoan the modern materialistic culture we have. I have problems with this culture, however I think it is superior to the old situation where children starved and families were forced to break up due to economic circumstance (ie emigration). These people are nostalgic for poverty, claiming that back then there was more community spirit or spirituality in general.
This has been a bit tl:dr but I find the idea fascinating that nostalgia just happens to most or all of us regardless of how shitty our lives have been and how much they improve.
13 Jan 2010 10:28 AM
Taumpy
It seems to me that it's just human nature to look back on the past and remember what was good about it, and forget what was bad. After enough time passes, for most of us, the memories get hazy anyway. I don't actually think it's even so much about thinking of modern times as "worse" so much as that people are afraid of what is new and unfamiliar. So they hold the past up as being better than it was.
I would imagine that people who survived concentration camps probably don't feel nostalgia for the time they spent there. Seems like that sort of experience would be too traumatic to whitewash.
13 Jan 2010 10:31 AM
What Exit?
I find myself nostalgic for some odd things and none of it important.
General music stations of my youth. There were stations that played everything from Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong classics to Doors and Simon and Garfunkle; just a general pop music station. In the 70s stations went away from DJ programming to executives and to much smaller and specific playlists. By the 80s music stations had become really generic and focused on a specific market niche.
This one is even stranger. I miss when the days before cable, when there were a small number of stations. Not that I don’t like today’s variety but I miss the communal knowledge that existed from the 50s into the 80s of common TV shows. The shared experience if you will. I know this is odd and I hope some of you can understand it. But when Fonzie jumped the motorcycles in a multipart show there was a huge buzz. (A lame example) When Edith was raped on “All in the Family” it was a big shock. There was far more common knowledge of shows, even if you did not watch a show, you probably knew something about it.
The more relax childhood of my youth. From a fairly young age I wandered over to friend’s houses on my own. No playdates and my parents often had no clue exactly where I was. As we got older we roamed all over the place. Kids don’t seem to have this anymore. They also seem to have a lot more homework than we had. Also recall the back of the huge station wagons of the day were effectively giant play areas for long trips and often with the back window rolled down.
I also mildly miss drive-ins.
However there is so much I am very thankful for. There is far less pollution today. The air and especially the water are much cleaner now. Growing up I was constantly at the Shore and on bad days garbage or even sewage would wash in from NYC. We also had medical waste scares. The Passaic River use to catch fire sometimes. I saw it myself twice on trips returning from visiting my grandmother in the Bronx (NYC). There were constant jokes about how polluted the Hudson River was, how you could walk across or the like.
I grew up in the Cold War, we had lost Vietnam when I was a child and it looked like we were losing the cold war and headed down the tubes. I feared the Cold War would go hot and a Nuclear Bomb would be landing near my house. This was a serious concern considering where I grew up. The War on Terror is nothing compared to the Cold War as far as real terror. The numbers killed on 9/11 and in these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pale compared to Vietnam. Nearly every knew someone that lost someone in Vietnam or came back broken. It was a bleak time in many ways.
Race riots and race relations were still pretty bad when I was a kid. I saw Asbury Park deteriorate and never really recover to this day. There were riots in the inner cities into the 80s. Things are far better today. Not perfect, but far better.
Crime was out of control. This dramatically changed in the 90s. The Oil Crises of 70s were no joy either.
We have powerful computers and the Internet now. This is an amazing thing, more amazing then I think some of the youngest adults realize.
