Are you looking for a glimpse into the past? Do you prefer paranoia or home life? Do you know the daily life of another era or some dark episodes? In Romania, the offer is wide. You can visit the Ceaușescu Palace, the Parliament Palace, or even the prisons that were used to suppress dissent. If you go to Serbia, Croatia or Bosnia, the experience will be jarring: compared to the places where war marked the worst of the late twentieth century, Tito’s time will have some mildness.
They are distant cases, but the result is similar: the shadow of the totalitarianism they experienced still looms over these Eastern European countries. Communism continues to make money thanks to tourism, in another step of capitalist mercantilism. According to Catherine Verdery, an American anthropologist specializing in the region and post-socialist memory, there has been only one change in the register: “from ideology it became an emotional repertoire expressing loss and belonging.”
“Nostalgia is not a desire to return to that regime, but rather an attempt to give meaning to the lack of stability, community, and purpose that followed its fall,” the expert wrote via email, referring to her work. The Political Lives of Corpses: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. This phenomenon includes a reality with many nuances. The Romanian regime – where figures show the imprisonment and killing of thousands of people, torture in detention centers, or mass surveillance by the security service – cannot be compared to Tito’s regime in the former Yugoslavia.
Struggles and episodes of repression in this bloc of countries have also been documented, but its break from Stalin and the Soviet Union led to a more decentralized structure and cultural wealth. “We must distinguish between different types of nostalgia and between generations,” warns British sociologist Paul Stubbs, a specialist in Balkan affairs. “For those who lived through socialist Yugoslavia, political memory – anti-fascism, self-administration or the Non-Aligned Movement – is intertwined with emotional memory. It is not just about Tito, it is about the memory of a time not seen as a disaster.” The House of Flowers in Belgrade, where the leader rests, is the heart of the Yugoslav Museum. The most visited in the country.
The plunge of neoliberalism into the era of absolute control. “People miss the rhythm of communal life, the common routine, the spirit of community,” adds Anna Maria Luca, an Italian anthropologist and migration expert. “They miss the fabric of the familiar: the lines, the uniforms, the friendships of neighbors.” This longing is embodied even in bars or establishments decorated with Soviet iconography: “People travel not just to see history, but to feel it.”
But the line between memory and… Promotion It becomes finer and thinner. The age of Instagram has amplified that aesthetic: Brutalist buildings, uniforms, and hammer-and-sickle logos have transformed from images associated with power into images associated with power. Souvenirs. The researcher concludes, “Legacy is a kind of visual time machine, and we can only go back.” classic What we have already accepted; What is still painful cannot be aesthetic.” This seems to be the case in some countries. Communism no longer promises utopias, but continues to generate income.