A Project About Memory And Perception

Our international, interdisciplinary and comparative research project analyses today's memories of the communist experiment, in order to better understand the legacy of the system. It brings together two strands of inquiry: on communism and on memory.

The practice of communism was diverse geographically and diachronically, with specificities between nation-states, as well as within societies. The project covers the whole post-Second World War period, but focuses on the period after de-Stalinization. While paying due attention to institutional aspects of memory, the project's primary focus is on subjectivity and its pluralizing role in the historical experience of socialism.

Research is currently conducted on two core case studies: Bulgaria and Romania, the initial ground for the development of a comparative framework, that will include the German Democratic Republic and Poland as control cases. The project is directed by Prof. Maria Todorova (University of Illinois) and Prof. Stefan Troebst (University of Leipzig).