Goodbye Lenin or Not: Cinematic Representations of the End of Communism

Abstract

In Specters of Marx Jacques Derrida maintains: ‘Communism was essentially distinguished from other labour movements by its international character. No organised political movement in the history of humanity had yet presented itself as geo-political, thereby inaugurating the space that is now ours and that today is reaching its limits, the limits of the earth and the limits of the political’ (Derrida 1994: 38). Derrida thus points to two reasons why it is essential to discuss the end of communism in this book: it was an important event and it had a global dimension. This view is echoed in numerous works about contemporary history or the end of communism specifically. A sign of it is the frequent use of the term ‘break’ and ‘revolution’ in this context. Piotr Sztompka claims: ‘The year 1989 was a major cultural and civilizational break, a beginning of the reconstruction of the deepest cultural tissue as well as civilizational surface of society’ (Sztompka 1996: 120). Michael Kennedy begins his book Cultural Formations of Postcommunism with the words: ‘The world was radically transformed in 1989, much as it was in 1789 or 1848. Political and economic systems and everyday lives were radically changed’ (Kennedy 2002: 1). Another term which appears in the discourses on the transition to postcommunism is that of ‘return’ or even ‘rebirth’ (for example Soltan 2000). The new system embraced by the people of Russia and Eastern Europe was also returning, in a sense, to what was before communism, which often required refreshing the old traditions or creating new ones which were meant to legitimise this metaphorical return. In my native Poland, it led to introducing several new state holidays to commemorate important anniversaries, including the winning of battles with its neighbours. Finally, the end of communism meant almost everywhere a need to close various gaps between the old socialist East and capitalist West: gaps in technology, productivity, capital, environment, motivation, legislation and democracy, to name just a few (Sevic´ and Wright 1997: 20–1). The emphasis on break, returning to the old, noble times of independence and prosperity and catching up with those ahead of it, constitute common features of postcolonial discourse. Indeed, postcolonial theory proved to be a useful tool to research the new/old cultures emerging from what was regarded as communist rubble (see, for example, Cooke 2005; Barrington 2006; Kelertas 2006) and I will apply it in the course of my analysis. Conversely, the end of communism drew attention to the exclusion of former Soviet satellites from postcolonial studies, resulting from, among other reasons, an unwillingness of left-leaning Western academics to confront the realities of living under the Soviet regime in places such as Estonia or Latvia (Chioni Moore 2001).