The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present

The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present

Author: Melanie Ilic

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1317390458

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This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsistent or illogical narratives. Oral history, therefore, presents the researcher with a number of methodological and ethical dilemmas, including the interpretation of "silence" in biographical accounts. This collection links the discussion of oral history ethics with that of memory studies. Memories are shaped by factors that may be, simultaneously, both consecutive and disrupted. In written accounts and responses to interview questions, respondents sometimes display nostalgia for the Soviet past, or, conversely, may seek to de-mythologize the realities of Soviet rule. Case studies explore what to do when interview subjects and memoirists consciously, sub-consciously or unconsciously "forget" aspects of their own past, or themselves seek to take control of the research process.


Book Synopsis The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present by : Melanie Ilic

Download or read book The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present written by Melanie Ilic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsistent or illogical narratives. Oral history, therefore, presents the researcher with a number of methodological and ethical dilemmas, including the interpretation of "silence" in biographical accounts. This collection links the discussion of oral history ethics with that of memory studies. Memories are shaped by factors that may be, simultaneously, both consecutive and disrupted. In written accounts and responses to interview questions, respondents sometimes display nostalgia for the Soviet past, or, conversely, may seek to de-mythologize the realities of Soviet rule. Case studies explore what to do when interview subjects and memoirists consciously, sub-consciously or unconsciously "forget" aspects of their own past, or themselves seek to take control of the research process.

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

Author: Francisco Martinez

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2018-07-06

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1787353540

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What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, opening new opportunities for repair and revaluation of the past. Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: the railway bazaar in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a grandiose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses diffi cult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation of belonging; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has been turned into a memory field. The anthropological study of all these places shows that national identity and historical representations can be constructed in relation to waste and disrepair too, also demonstrating how we can understand generational change in a material sense. Praise for Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia 'By adopting the tropes of ‘repair’ and ‘waste’, this book innovatively manages to link various material registers from architecture, intergenerational relations, affect and museums with ways of making the past present. Through a rigorous yet transdisciplinary method, Martínez brings together different scales and contexts that would often be segregated out. In this respect, the ethnography unfolds a deep and nuanced analysis, providing a useful comparative and insightful account of the processes of repair and waste making in all their material, social and ontological dimensions.' Victor Buchli, Professor of Material Culture at UCL 'This book comprises an endearingly transdisciplinary ethnography of postsocialist material culture and social change in Estonia. Martínez creatively draws on a number of critical and cultural theorists, together with additional research on memory and political studies scholarship and the classics of anthropology. Grappling concurrently with time and space, the book offers a delightfully thick description of the material effects generated by the accelerated post-Soviet transformation in Estonia, inquiring into the generational specificities in experiencing and relating to the postsocialist condition through the conceptual anchors of wasted legacies and repair. This book defies disciplinary boundaries and shows how an attention to material relations and affective infrastructures might reinvigorate political theory.' Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent


Book Synopsis Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia by : Francisco Martinez

Download or read book Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia written by Francisco Martinez and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, opening new opportunities for repair and revaluation of the past. Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: the railway bazaar in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a grandiose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses diffi cult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation of belonging; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has been turned into a memory field. The anthropological study of all these places shows that national identity and historical representations can be constructed in relation to waste and disrepair too, also demonstrating how we can understand generational change in a material sense. Praise for Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia 'By adopting the tropes of ‘repair’ and ‘waste’, this book innovatively manages to link various material registers from architecture, intergenerational relations, affect and museums with ways of making the past present. Through a rigorous yet transdisciplinary method, Martínez brings together different scales and contexts that would often be segregated out. In this respect, the ethnography unfolds a deep and nuanced analysis, providing a useful comparative and insightful account of the processes of repair and waste making in all their material, social and ontological dimensions.' Victor Buchli, Professor of Material Culture at UCL 'This book comprises an endearingly transdisciplinary ethnography of postsocialist material culture and social change in Estonia. Martínez creatively draws on a number of critical and cultural theorists, together with additional research on memory and political studies scholarship and the classics of anthropology. Grappling concurrently with time and space, the book offers a delightfully thick description of the material effects generated by the accelerated post-Soviet transformation in Estonia, inquiring into the generational specificities in experiencing and relating to the postsocialist condition through the conceptual anchors of wasted legacies and repair. This book defies disciplinary boundaries and shows how an attention to material relations and affective infrastructures might reinvigorate political theory.' Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent

The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present

The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present

Author: Melanie Ilic

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-03

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 131739044X

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This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsistent or illogical narratives. Oral history, therefore, presents the researcher with a number of methodological and ethical dilemmas, including the interpretation of "silence" in biographical accounts. This collection links the discussion of oral history ethics with that of memory studies. Memories are shaped by factors that may be, simultaneously, both consecutive and disrupted. In written accounts and responses to interview questions, respondents sometimes display nostalgia for the Soviet past, or, conversely, may seek to de-mythologize the realities of Soviet rule. Case studies explore what to do when interview subjects and memoirists consciously, sub-consciously or unconsciously "forget" aspects of their own past, or themselves seek to take control of the research process.


Book Synopsis The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present by : Melanie Ilic

Download or read book The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present written by Melanie Ilic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsistent or illogical narratives. Oral history, therefore, presents the researcher with a number of methodological and ethical dilemmas, including the interpretation of "silence" in biographical accounts. This collection links the discussion of oral history ethics with that of memory studies. Memories are shaped by factors that may be, simultaneously, both consecutive and disrupted. In written accounts and responses to interview questions, respondents sometimes display nostalgia for the Soviet past, or, conversely, may seek to de-mythologize the realities of Soviet rule. Case studies explore what to do when interview subjects and memoirists consciously, sub-consciously or unconsciously "forget" aspects of their own past, or themselves seek to take control of the research process.

Sites of Memory: Soviet Myths in Post-Soviet Culture

Sites of Memory: Soviet Myths in Post-Soviet Culture

Author: Daria S. Kabanova

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Do we treat 1990s as a gap, a rupture between the Soviet past and the post-Soviet present? Post-Soviet film and fiction certainly stage the break up of the Soviet Union and the end of Soviet rule in this way. Post-Soviet culture has left behind a certain set of Soviet cultural myths: the conquest of space, the normal functioning of Soviet life with clear sources of symbolic authority, the Soviet notion of heroism, etc. These myths have not been replaced with anything new. One can sense a real pause in films and texts from the late 80s and early 90s 0́3 as ideology, already exhausted by late socialism, takes a break. Eliot Borenstein speaks of the 1990s as a moment of a loss of national identity, of emasculation of Russian culture. Mikhail Epstein argues that the end of socialism created a loop in the time of national history, whereupon the Soviet future (communism) became the post-Soviet past. Aleksei Yurchak has shown that the utopian stability of the Soviet 0́−forever0́+ was lost in late socialism,staging a seemingly cataclysmic break up of the Soviet Union and its ideological constructs. My project seeks to uncover the sites that post-Soviet texts create in order to reflect on the Soviet narratives that came to an end, and on those that can be put in their place. What kinds of myths do post-Soviet texts rely on to construct a notion of continuity that overcomes what was previously discarded or destroyed? What myths are persistent enough to survive the historical gap? I show that the texts from the 1990s already seek a path to re-mythologize the myths of the past. Their goal is to bridge the gap between the where Russia is now with where it had been. The project surveys the major players of the post-Soviet Russian cultural landscape, its most influential writers and filmmakers, to show that those same texts from the late 80s and 90s that seemingly spoke of the rupture, were always speaking about continuity. Svetlana Boym discusses the ways in which post-Communist nostalgia solidifies and stabilizes the mythological space of Soviet culture, providing contemporary Russian culture with a workable past. With the imaginary worlds of Socialism gone upon the system0́9s downfall, the Soviet past solidifies into the retroactively-produced Žižekian mythical object, the object produced by the loss itself. In this imaginary and imagined past, the two meanings of myth merge: it is a 0́−myth0́+ in a sense that it never existed, its illusory nature exposed by the collapse of Communist ideology and its post- Soviet deconstruction. Yet, it is also a 0́−myth0́+ in the Barthian sense, in a sense that the post- Soviet imagination inflects and expands the meanings attached to the signifiers of the Soviet state. The signs and symbols of the (Soviet) past are invested with other, new meanings,(re)constructed and used to structure and explain the country0́9s present.


Book Synopsis Sites of Memory: Soviet Myths in Post-Soviet Culture by : Daria S. Kabanova

Download or read book Sites of Memory: Soviet Myths in Post-Soviet Culture written by Daria S. Kabanova and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we treat 1990s as a gap, a rupture between the Soviet past and the post-Soviet present? Post-Soviet film and fiction certainly stage the break up of the Soviet Union and the end of Soviet rule in this way. Post-Soviet culture has left behind a certain set of Soviet cultural myths: the conquest of space, the normal functioning of Soviet life with clear sources of symbolic authority, the Soviet notion of heroism, etc. These myths have not been replaced with anything new. One can sense a real pause in films and texts from the late 80s and early 90s 0́3 as ideology, already exhausted by late socialism, takes a break. Eliot Borenstein speaks of the 1990s as a moment of a loss of national identity, of emasculation of Russian culture. Mikhail Epstein argues that the end of socialism created a loop in the time of national history, whereupon the Soviet future (communism) became the post-Soviet past. Aleksei Yurchak has shown that the utopian stability of the Soviet 0́−forever0́+ was lost in late socialism,staging a seemingly cataclysmic break up of the Soviet Union and its ideological constructs. My project seeks to uncover the sites that post-Soviet texts create in order to reflect on the Soviet narratives that came to an end, and on those that can be put in their place. What kinds of myths do post-Soviet texts rely on to construct a notion of continuity that overcomes what was previously discarded or destroyed? What myths are persistent enough to survive the historical gap? I show that the texts from the 1990s already seek a path to re-mythologize the myths of the past. Their goal is to bridge the gap between the where Russia is now with where it had been. The project surveys the major players of the post-Soviet Russian cultural landscape, its most influential writers and filmmakers, to show that those same texts from the late 80s and 90s that seemingly spoke of the rupture, were always speaking about continuity. Svetlana Boym discusses the ways in which post-Communist nostalgia solidifies and stabilizes the mythological space of Soviet culture, providing contemporary Russian culture with a workable past. With the imaginary worlds of Socialism gone upon the system0́9s downfall, the Soviet past solidifies into the retroactively-produced Žižekian mythical object, the object produced by the loss itself. In this imaginary and imagined past, the two meanings of myth merge: it is a 0́−myth0́+ in a sense that it never existed, its illusory nature exposed by the collapse of Communist ideology and its post- Soviet deconstruction. Yet, it is also a 0́−myth0́+ in the Barthian sense, in a sense that the post- Soviet imagination inflects and expands the meanings attached to the signifiers of the Soviet state. The signs and symbols of the (Soviet) past are invested with other, new meanings,(re)constructed and used to structure and explain the country0́9s present.

Velvet Retro

Velvet Retro

Author: Veronika Pehe

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2020-02-01

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1789206286

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Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.


Book Synopsis Velvet Retro by : Veronika Pehe

Download or read book Velvet Retro written by Veronika Pehe and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.

Reclaiming the Personal

Reclaiming the Personal

Author: Natalia Khanenko-Friesen

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1442637382

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"This edited collection is a contribution to the emerging field of oral history research in the post-socialist societies of Central Europe and former Soviet Union, and demonstrates what oral history can contribute to the changing nature of post-socialist social sciences."--


Book Synopsis Reclaiming the Personal by : Natalia Khanenko-Friesen

Download or read book Reclaiming the Personal written by Natalia Khanenko-Friesen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This edited collection is a contribution to the emerging field of oral history research in the post-socialist societies of Central Europe and former Soviet Union, and demonstrates what oral history can contribute to the changing nature of post-socialist social sciences."--

Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow

Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow

Author: Olga Shevchenko

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2008-12-17

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0253002575

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In this ethnography of postsocialist Moscow in the late 1990s, Olga Shevchenko draws on interviews with a cross-section of Muscovites to describe how people made sense of the acute uncertainties of everyday life, and the new identities and competencies that emerged in response to these challenges. Ranging from consumption to daily rhetoric, and from urban geography to health care, this study illuminates the relationship between crisis and normality and adds a new dimension to the debates about postsocialist culture and politics.


Book Synopsis Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow by : Olga Shevchenko

Download or read book Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow written by Olga Shevchenko and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ethnography of postsocialist Moscow in the late 1990s, Olga Shevchenko draws on interviews with a cross-section of Muscovites to describe how people made sense of the acute uncertainties of everyday life, and the new identities and competencies that emerged in response to these challenges. Ranging from consumption to daily rhetoric, and from urban geography to health care, this study illuminates the relationship between crisis and normality and adds a new dimension to the debates about postsocialist culture and politics.

Post-communist Nostalgia

Post-communist Nostalgia

Author: Maria Todorova

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0857456431

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Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.


Book Synopsis Post-communist Nostalgia by : Maria Todorova

Download or read book Post-communist Nostalgia written by Maria Todorova and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

Fashion Meets Socialism

Fashion Meets Socialism

Author: Jukka Gronow

Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura

Published: 2015-08-19

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9522227528

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This book presents, above all, a study of the establishment and development of the Soviet organization and system of fashion industry and design as it gradually evolved in the years after the Second World War in the Soviet Union, which was, in the understanding of its leaders, reaching the mature or last stage of socialism when the country was firmly set on the straight trajectory to its final goal, Communism. What was typical of this complex and extensive system of fashion was that it was always loyally subservient to the principles of the planned socialist economy. This did not by any means indicate that everything the designers and other fashion professionals did was dictated entirely from above by the central planning agencies. Neither did it mean that their professional judgment would have been only secondary to ideological and political standards set by the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, as our study shows, the Soviet fashion professionals had a lot of autonomy. They were eager and willing to exercise their own judgment in matters of taste and to set the agenda of beauty and style for Soviet citizens. The present book is the first comprehensive and systematic history of the development of fashion and fashion institutions in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Our study makes use of rich empirical and historical material that has been made available for the first time for scientific analysis and discussion. The main sources for our study came from the state, party and departmental archives of the former Soviet Union. We also make extensive use of oral history and the writings published in Soviet popular and professional press.


Book Synopsis Fashion Meets Socialism by : Jukka Gronow

Download or read book Fashion Meets Socialism written by Jukka Gronow and published by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This book was released on 2015-08-19 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents, above all, a study of the establishment and development of the Soviet organization and system of fashion industry and design as it gradually evolved in the years after the Second World War in the Soviet Union, which was, in the understanding of its leaders, reaching the mature or last stage of socialism when the country was firmly set on the straight trajectory to its final goal, Communism. What was typical of this complex and extensive system of fashion was that it was always loyally subservient to the principles of the planned socialist economy. This did not by any means indicate that everything the designers and other fashion professionals did was dictated entirely from above by the central planning agencies. Neither did it mean that their professional judgment would have been only secondary to ideological and political standards set by the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, as our study shows, the Soviet fashion professionals had a lot of autonomy. They were eager and willing to exercise their own judgment in matters of taste and to set the agenda of beauty and style for Soviet citizens. The present book is the first comprehensive and systematic history of the development of fashion and fashion institutions in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Our study makes use of rich empirical and historical material that has been made available for the first time for scientific analysis and discussion. The main sources for our study came from the state, party and departmental archives of the former Soviet Union. We also make extensive use of oral history and the writings published in Soviet popular and professional press.

Last Exit to Utopia

Last Exit to Utopia

Author: Jean-François Revel

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1594032645

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An English translation of Jean-Francois Revel's 1999 essay in which he examines the response of French intellectuals to the collapse of Soviet communism in the decade after its end.


Book Synopsis Last Exit to Utopia by : Jean-François Revel

Download or read book Last Exit to Utopia written by Jean-François Revel and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An English translation of Jean-Francois Revel's 1999 essay in which he examines the response of French intellectuals to the collapse of Soviet communism in the decade after its end.