Remembering the last decade of Eastern Europe

Remembering the Neoliberal Turn carves out a new field of research. Along with other works by authors involved in this publication (e.g., Aleksandra Leyk and Joanna Wawrzyniak, Cięcia: Mówiona historia transformacji [Cuts: Oral History of Post-Socialism], Krytyka Polityczna, 2020; Till Hilmar, Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain, Columbia University Press, 2023¹; Jill Massino and Markus Wien (eds.) Everyday Postsocialism in Eastern Europe. History Doesn’t Travel in One Direction, Purdue University Press, 2024), it establishes the field at the intersection of memory studies and the history of neoliberalism. The former studies history as it is remembered and as it functions in society. The latter primarily focuses on the emergence of neoliberalism as the dominant economic and political paradigm since the 1980s, while paying, so far, less attention to its effects. The memory studies approach thus offers an avenue for exploring neoliberalism’s impact “from below”. Eastern Europe, in turn, forms a convenient “laboratory” for such an investigation, as the editors of this volume, Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak, demonstrate.

The volume is divided into three sections, each focusing on a different layer of memory. The first section addresses “Founding Myths and Counter-Narratives of the Transformation”, with contributions examining the political role of the memory of the neoliberal turn in post-socialist countries. For instance, Olga Malinova analyses the discourse surrounding the 1990s as a legitimising factor for political forces in Russia, while Thomas Lindenberger sheds light on the “insincerity” of political communication during the reunification process in Germany and its consequences. The second section, titled “Vernacular Memories and Biographical Narratives”, focuses on specific social groups, classes, and generations, providing insights into their distinct memories of the neoliberal turn. Among others, it highlights how the 1990s were remembered by “ordinary women” in Brașov, Romania (contribution by Jill Massino), and care workers in the former German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia (contribution by Till Hilmar). Finally, the third section, “Cultural Memory of Economic Change”, zooms in on cultural products that present particular visions of the 1990s experience. In this section, the authors primarily focus on films and literature.

The division into three sections is also reflected in the methodologies used in the contributions. While the first section primarily employs discourse analysis, the second mainly features works based on oral history interviews. The final section offers cultural analyses. The diversity of perspectives and methodologies is complemented by the diversity brought in by national specificities. The volume includes four contributions on Poland and four on Germany, three on the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two on Russia, and one each on Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. The editors have also done an excellent job of integrating various perspectives. The volume explores memories from both the “right” and “left” ends of the political spectrum (featured in most contributions to the first section), the “winners” (contributions by Kamil Lipiński and Joanna Wawrzyniak) and “losers” (contribution by Tibor Waluch) of the transformations, as well as representations of both “high” (contribution by Joanna Jabłkowska and Magdalena Sariusz-Wolska) and “low” culture (contribution by Veronika Pehe).

Encapsulating this diversity is one of the volume’s major achievements. It reminds us that the experience of the 1990s varied widely across different nations, classes, and generations. By maintaining this breadth of perspectives, the volume avoids a common pitfall in memory studies. Typically focused on the traumatic histories of wars and authoritarian regimes, the memory studies approach can easily result in framing the 1990s in these simplistic terms. A sole focus on the “losers” of the transformations may have depicted the decade as yet another chapter of Eastern European suffering. In this narrative, external forces—formerly in the form of empires and totalitarian regimes—would have been replaced in the 1990s by multinational corporations and Western international organisations. This perspective is often echoed in discourses across Eastern Europe, on both the right and left of the political spectrum.

At the same time, the variety of collected accounts inevitably undermines the comparative dimension of the volume. It is difficult to draw overarching conclusions when placing side by side a study of Polish political disputes concerning the “Balcerowicz Plan” (contribution by Florian Peters) and the history of the Ukrainian film industry in the 1990s (contribution by Olga Gontarska and Veronika Pehe). However, comparative elements do exist within sections of the volume. For example, the first section highlights how specific national contexts shaped the way memory influences political divisions. Matej Ivančik reveals how a postponed transformation shaped political memory in Slovakia, while Tom Junes and Ivo Iliev point to the consequences of Bulgaria’s lack of a fully-fledged neoliberal turn. Similarly, the contributions by Joanna Jabłkowska and Magdalena Sariusz-Wolska, and by Anna Lux clearly indicate that, in terms of cultural representation, the memory of the neoliberal turn in Germany followed a different trajectory than in other post-socialist countries. In contrast to other cases, artistic interest in the German Democratic Republic and the experiences resulting from its reunification with the Federal Republic of Germany has only emerged recently.

The diversity of the contributions in the volume stems from the definition of neoliberalism itself. Since its critique entered the mainstream following the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberalism has become one of the most inflated concepts. Beyond a specific set of market-oriented reforms, it has come to be understood as a totalising ideology that organises all aspects of life. While the editors of the volume adopt a narrower definition—namely, “the project of economic and social transformation under the sign of the free market” (p. 2, Raewyn Connell, Barbara Fawcett, and Gabrielle Meagher, “Neoliberalism, New Public management and the Human Service Professions: Introduction to the Special Issue”, Journal of Sociology 45 (4):331-38) —it is still difficult to imagine a topic that could be excluded from this broadly defined field of analysis. Even the political realm does not escape the volume’s focus. As Matej Ivančik reminds us in his contribution on Slovakia, “political memory often intertwined with discourses on economic transformation to the extent that it would be unproductive to separate the former from the latter” (p. 40). Bringing together so many diverse accounts under the banner of neoliberalism suggests that the neoliberal turn was the single most important experience shaping post-1989 life in Eastern Europe. In contrast to the transition from one-party systems to democracy, the shift from socialism to capitalism in its neoliberal form had more all-encompassing effects.

Accepting the neoliberal turn as a major experience of the 1990s raises the question of why Eastern Europe was chosen as a separate object of analysis. Neoliberalism was not only an ideology that penetrated all realms of life but also a phenomenon of global scope. The editors explain their decision by pointing to the more radical and abrupt nature of economic reforms in the region. However, at the same time, the volume’s findings strongly emphasise the diverse and uncoordinated timelines of transformations and the memories they created, suggesting a lack of clear patterns (pp. 298-301). This is not to criticise the editors’ choice of analysis; rather, to highlight the value of their approach and its potential wider applicability. As Pehe and Wawrzyniak emphasise in the conclusion, the remembrance of the neoliberal turn could also be traced on a global scale (pp. 302-303).

While memory studies of the neoliberal turn could also be applied to Western Europe, the findings of this volume testify to the need for a distinct approach to the 1990s in Eastern Europe compared to the rest of the continent. The vivid, diverse, and contested memory of this period, highlighted by almost all contributions in the volume, distinguishes the region from Western Europe. The experience of the neoliberal turn and the approaches toward it continue to shape political divisions in many post-socialist countries, define generational lines, and inspire artistic representations. One does not need to conduct a mirroring investigation to recognise that nowhere in Western Europe does this period remain so frequently and explicitly questioned.

The differing experiences of the neoliberal turn in Eastern and Western Europe has become a key factor in explaining the persistent divisions between these regions of the continent. Rather than their socialist and undemocratic past, it is often the trajectories of the 1990s that scholars and political commentators reference to explain the rise of populism in Eastern Europe, which is perceived to be manifested in distinct and often exaggerated forms. However, understanding political developments based on an East-West division might soon become less convincing. While Eastern Europe remains recognisable in terms of its historical formations and semi-peripheral status, the experience of the early 21st century in the countries included in this volume (with the exception of Russia and Ukraine) is not fundamentally different from that of the rest of the continent. If scholars applying memory studies to economic change wish to advance their research in time, this regional category of analysis would no longer be easily justifiable. From this perspective, the 1990s could be seen as the last decade of Eastern Europe.

One of the volume’s particularly illuminating contributions, by Adam Mrozowicki and Justyna Kajta, also points in this very direction. By interviewing Polish “millennials” born between 1985 and 2000, the authors discovered that the collective experience of the 1990s neoliberal turn did not significantly feature in their biographical narratives. Their attitudes toward this period were shaped more by their family backgrounds and their parents’ perspectives than by their own childhood memories. Similarly, the interviewees often did not recognise a direct link between their socioeconomic situations and the transformations of the 1990s. These findings suggest that the specific character of the memory of the neoliberal turn in Eastern Europe may fade with generational change, becoming historicised and losing its animating and polarising features.

This further testifies to the importance of Remembering the Neoliberal Turn. First, the volume arrives at a time when the 1990s are still contested and remembered differently across various groups and generations. Given that this is likely to change, conducting research on these issues now is particularly timely. Second, contrary to what to editors suggest in the introduction, the 1990s have not yet been historically “well-mapped” (p. 7). While “transitology” studies have provided valuable insights into the transformations of this period, they lack a historical character. The opening of archives related to the 1990s, governed by the 30-year rule for accessing materials, will likely lead to a surge of new historical research and interpretations concerning this era. Memory studies, relying on less traditional and more accessible sources, pave the way for this endeavour and underscore its importance. The volume edited by Wawrzyniak and Pehe constitutes a significant step toward historicising what may turn out to be the last decade of Eastern Europe.