Post-socialist city: the visual experience of everyday life as a factor of nation-building

Abstract

The collapse of the so-called "socialist bloc" of states at the turn of the 1980-1990s. raised, among other things, the question of the formation and / or reformatting of national, regional and local identities in Central and Eastern Europe. This question turned out to be relevant in the context of rethinking the image of a post-socialist city. In this article, we plan to address a number of aspects of processes and practices related to architecture and cultural heritage policy, urban planning and identity in the post-socialist city. Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, cities of the former GDR and others, which developed for several decades under the conditions of the socialist (with all possible remarks) regime, at the new stage retained a number of visual features that referred to the socialist past. The surviving monuments, elements of toponymy, urban space planning, recognizable buildings (such as, for example, the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw), on the one hand, create a common space of historical memory in the region of Central and Eastern Europe; on the other hand, the new nationalizing projects of post-socialist societies have set and are setting the contours of singularity, national and local selfness, redefining the political and cultural maps of cities. While exploring the city as a political text, we plan to take a closer look at how the visual experience of everyday life influences the formation of post-socialist national identity and determines the commemorating practices of residents of such cities.