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Decay or Endurance? The Ruins of Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Thomas Lahusen
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Abstract

The building of socialism, in its concrete and metaphorical sense, has been in a state of constant decay—in ruins—from its very foundation. For those who inhabited it, endurance became a way of life. It is precisely this endurance that explains the resistance, by both people and the landscapes in which they live, to the market. Nostalgia for socialism has become a commodity, but not for those who still live in its ruins, because they are home. This essay by Thomas Lahusen explores this ruined landscape, from the vanishing Palace of the Republic in Berlin and the decrepit-looking buildings made of precast concrete slabs of real socialism, to its culture, which shares decay and ruin with its built structures. Lahusen juxtaposes this landscape to philosophical essays on the collapse of communism and to recent histories, some of which yield new fetishes and new commodities.

Type
Forum
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , Winter 2006 , pp. 736 - 746
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2006

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References

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