Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:36:17.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Persistence of the Past: Memory, Generational Cohorts and the ‘Iron Curtain’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2014

SABINA MIHELJ
SABINA MIHELJ*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU; [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite considerable evidence of the link between generational cohorts and mnemonic persistence in other social and historical contexts, existing research on memory in former state socialist countries tends to focus primarily on evidence of mnemonic change. In contrast, this article seeks to develop a more nuanced understanding of post-state-socialist memories, one capable of accounting for both mnemonic change and persistence. Methodologically, the article combines the analysis of personal memories across several generations with a reconstruction of the changing contours of everyday life in different historical periods, based on archival and secondary sources. To demonstrate the usefulness of such an approach, the article examines the memories of life at the Yugoslav border with Italy, as recounted by the inhabitants of the Slovenian border town of Nova Gorica in 2008.

La persistance du passé: mémoire, groupes de contemporains et rideau de fer

Si le lien entre groupes de contemporains et persistance mnémonique a été largement démontré dans d’autres contextes sociaux et historiques, la recherche sur la mémoire dans les pays dans les pays qui ont abandonné le socialisme d’état après 1989 s’est jusqu’à présent principalement concentrée sur les témoignages de modifications mnémoniques. Cet article tente donc de dégager une interprétation plus nuancée des souvenirs d’après le socialisme d’état, qui soit capable de tenir compte à la fois des modifications et des persistances mnémoniques. Méthodologiquement, il combine l’analyse de souvenirs personnels sur plusieurs générations et la reconstruction des contours changeants de la vie quotidienne à différentes périodes, se fondant pour cela sur des sources primaires et secondaires. Afin de montrer l’utilité de cette approche, il examine plus en détail des souvenirs de la vie à la frontière entre la Yougoslavie et l’Italie, racontés en 2008 par les habitants de la ville frontière slovène de Nova Gorica.

Das fortleben der vergangenheit: gedächtnis, generationskohorten und der eiserne vorhang

Trotz zahlreicher Hinweise auf die Verbindung zwischen Generationskohorten und das Fortleben des Gedächtnisses in anderen sozialen und historischen Zusammenhängen konzentriert sich die bisherige Forschung über das Gedächtnis in ehemaligen staatssozialisten Ländern in erster Linie auf den Nachweis von Änderungen am Gedächtnis. Dieser Beitrag bemüht sich indessen um ein differenziertes Verständnis des vom Staatssozialismus geprägten Gedächtnisses in diesen Ländern, das sowohl Änderungen als auch dem Fortleben Rechnung trägt. Methodologisch verbindet der Beitrag eine Analyse persönlicher Erinnerungen über mehrere Generationen mit einer Rekonstruktion der sich wandelnden Konturen des Alltagslebens in unterschiedlichen historischen Zeiträumen, die auf der Grundlage von Archiv- und Sekundärquellen erfolgt. Zur Veranschaulichung des Nutzens eines solchen Ansatzes werden die Erinnerungen von Bewohnern der slowenischen Grenzstadt Nova Gorica an das Leben an der jugoslawisch-italienischen Grenze im Jahr 2008 untersucht.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 447 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Müller, Jan-Werner, ed., Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kopecek, Michal, ed., Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008);Google ScholarSarkisova, Olga and Apor, Peter, eds, Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums after 1989 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

2 For an overview of oral history initiatives in the region see Mark, James, The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in East-Central Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press 2010)Google Scholar, xxi–xxiv. For examples of studies of personal memory in former state socialist countries see also contributions in Todorova, Maria, ed., Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2010)Google Scholar. Oral history and anthropological studies investigating (at least in part) the personal aspects of memory formation at the Italo-Slovenian as well as the adjacent Slovenian-Croatian border area include Brumen, Borut, Sv. Peter in njegovi časi: Socialni spomini, časi in identitete v istrski vasi Sv. Peter (Ljubljana: Založba/2000)Google Scholar; Ballinger, Pamela, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Smith, Tammy, ‘Narrative Boundaries and the Dynamics of Ethnic Conflict and Conciliation’, Poetics, 35 (2007) 22–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Remembering and Forgetting a Contentious Past: Voices from the Frontier, Italo-Yugoslav’, American Behavioural Scientist, 51, 10 (2008), 1534–1554Google Scholar; Kaja Širok, ‘Kolektivno spominjanje in kolektivna pozaba v obmejnem prostoru: Spomini na Gorico, 1943–1947’, PhD dissertation, University of Nova Gorica, 2009; Alessandro Cattunar, ‘Memorie di confine e identità plurime: Il confine italo-jugoslavo nei racconti di vita dei testimony, 1943–47’, Diacronie: Studi di storia contemporanea: Dossier: Il mosaico dei confini: Le frontiere della modernità, 1 (October, 2009), available at: www.studistorici.com/2009/10/19/cattunar_memorie_di_confine (last visited 22 April 2014).

3 Mark, The Unfinished Revolution.

4 Sarkisova and Apor, Past for the Eyes; Volkhard Knigge und Ulrich Mählert, eds, Kommunismus im Museum: Formen der Auseinandersetzung in Deutschland und Ostmitteleuropa (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005).

5 Steinmetz, George, ‘Reflections on the Role of Social Narratives in Working-Class Formation: Narrative Theory in the Social Sciences’, Social Science History, 16, 3 (1992), 491CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Schudson, Michael, ‘Lives, Laws, and Language: Commemorative vs. Non-commemorative Forms of Effective Public Memory’, The Communication Review, 2, 1 (1997), 4–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Levy, Daniel and Dierkes, Julian B., ‘Institutionalizing the Past: Shifting Memories of Nationhood in German Education and Immigration Legislation’, in Müller, Memory and Power in Post-War Europe, 244–64Google Scholar.

8 Judt, Tony, ‘The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Post-War Europe’, in Müller, Memory and Power in Post-War Europe, 157–83, 171Google Scholar.

9 Jerez-Farrán, Carlos and Amago, Samuel, eds, Unearthing Franco's Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

10 Halbwachs, Maurice, On Collective Memory (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 191–236Google Scholar.

11 Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

12 Bodnar, John, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 252–3Google Scholar.

13 Daphne Berdhal, ‘ “(N)Ostalgie” for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East Things, German’, Ethnos, 62, 2 (1999), 192–211, 206Google Scholar.

14 Tanja Petrović, ‘ “When We Were Europe”: Socialist Workers in Serbia and their Nostalgic Narratives: The Case of the Cable Factory Workers in Jagodina’ in Todorova, ed., Remembering Communism, 127–154, 149.

15 Coser, Lewis A., ‘The Revival of the Sociology of Culture: The Case of Collective Memory’, Sociological Forum, 7, 2 (1992), 365–73, 371CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Schwartz, Barry, ‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington’, American Sociological Review 56, 2 (1991), 221–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 233.

17 Pamela Ballinger, ‘The Politics of the Past: Redefining Insecurity along the “World's Most Open Border” ’, in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Duvall, Raymond, eds, Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 84Google Scholar.

18 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press), p. 29Google Scholar.

19 Schwartz, Barry, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of American Memory (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

20 Markovits, Andrei S. and Reich, Simon, ‘The Contemporary Power of Memory: The Dilemmas for German Foreign Policy’, The Communication Review, 2, 1 (1997), 89–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Schudson, ‘Lives, Laws, and Language’, 6–10.

22 Olick, Jeffrey K. and Robbins, Joyce, ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998), 105–40, 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Mannheim, Karl, ‘The Problem of Generations’, in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1952), 276–322Google Scholar.

24 Ibid. 291.

25 Mannheim, ‘The Problem of Generations’, 298.

26 Schuman, Howard and Scott, Jacqueline, ‘Generations and Collective Memories’, American Sociological Review, 53, 3 (1989), 359–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Sociological studies include Howard Schuman and Corning, Amy D., ‘Collective Knowledge of Public Events: The Soviet Era from the Great Purge to Glasnost’, American Journal of Sociology, 105, 4 (2000), 913–56Google Scholar; Schuman, Howard and Rodgers, Willard L., ‘Cohorts, Chronology, and Collective Memories’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 28, 2 (2004), 217–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jennings, M. Kent and Zhang, Ning, ‘Generations, Political Status, and Collective Memories in the Chinese Countryside’, The Journal of Politics, 67, 4 (2005), 1164–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corning, Amy D., ‘Emigration, Generation, and Collective Memories: The Presence of the Past for Emigrants from the Former Soviet Union’, Social Psychology Quarterly, 73, 3 (2010), 223–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Psychologists reached similar results, identifying a ‘reminiscence bump’ or ‘peak’ associated with events that occurred in early adulthood. See e.g. Rubin, David C., Rahhal, Tamara A. and Poon, Leonard W., ‘Things Learned in Early Adulthood are Remembered Best’, Memory and Cognition 26, 1 (1998), 3–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Conway, Martin A., Hanyu, Qi Wang, Kazunori and Haque, Shamsul, ‘A Cross-cultural Investigation of Autobiographical Memory: On the Universality and Cultural Variation of the Reminiscence Bump’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36, 6 (2005), 739–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Schuman and Corning, ‘Collective Knowledge of Public Events’.

29 Francis L. F.Lee, ‘Generational Differences and in the Impact of Historical Events: The Tiananmen Square Incident in Contemporary Hong Kong Public Opinion’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Online First, Dec. 2011.

30 Holian, Anna, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Danforth, Loring M. and Boeschoten, Riki Van, Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

32 Danforth and Van Boeschoten, Children of the Greek Civil War, 228.

33 Schuman and Scott, ‘Generations and Collective Memories’, 373–4.

34 Scott, Jacqueline and Zac, Lilian, ‘Collective Memories in Britain and the United States’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 75 (1993), 315–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Fedja Burić, ‘Dwelling on the Ruins of Socialist Yugoslavia: Being Bosnian by Remembering Tito’, in Todorova, Maria and Gille, Zsuzsa, eds, Postcommunist Nostalgia (London: Berghahn, 2010), 227–43Google Scholar.

36 Andrews, Molly, Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 134–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wertsch, James V., Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 149–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Burić, ‘Dwelling on the Ruins’, 241.

38 Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, 159.

39 Ballinger, History in Exile, 153–70, 200–1.

40 Smith, ‘Remembering and Forgetting’.

41 Smith, ‘Narrative Boundaries’.

42 Lidija Nikočević, ‘Myth, Rhetoric and Political Relations at the Istrian Border’, in Wilson, Thomas M. and Donnan, Hastings, eds, Culture and Power at the Edges of the State: H National Support and Subversion in European Border Regions (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2005), 229–53Google Scholar.

43 e.g. Ryder, Norman B., ‘The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change’, American Sociological Review 60 (1965), 843–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Matilda White Riley, ‘On the Significance of Age in Sociology’, American Sociological Review 52 (1987), 1–14, 4.

45 Riley, M.W., ‘Aging and Cohort Succession: Interpretations and Misinterpretation’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 37 (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spitzer, Alan B., ‘The Historical Problem of Generations’, American Historical Review, 78 (1973), 1353–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kertzer, David I., ‘Generation as a Sociological Problem’, Annual Review of Sociology, 9 (1983), 125–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Robert L., Researching Life Stories and Family Histories (London: Sage, 2000), 24–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Spitzer, ‘The Historical Problem of Generations’, 1370–84.

47 A similar mixed methodology – consisting of a combination of ethnographic and historical approaches – is used by Danforth and Van Boeschoten in their study of child refugees during the Greek Civil War (Danforth and Van Boeschoten, Children of the Greek Civil War). I owe thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for bringing this study to my attention.

48 Zerubavel, Eviatar, ‘Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past’, Qualitative Sociology, 19, 3 (1996), 286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 e.g. interviews with Danica Zadravec, b. 1923, 26 Apr. 2008, Ljudmila Jakac, b. 1932, 8 June 2008, and Janez Lavrin, b. 1928, 20 June 2008.

50 e.g. interviews with Zdenka Hauptman, b. 1935, 8 June 2008, Ivanka Sever, b. 1926, 26 Apr. 2008, and Marija Pahor, b. 1925, 9. Feb. 2008.

51 Interview with Lidija Bajd, b. 1961, 9 Feb. 2008.

52 In the early 20th century, Trieste was among the main continental ports of Europe, and the fifth largest Austrian town in terms of its financial revenue. See Marina Cattaruzza, ‘Population Dynamics and Social Change in Trieste and its Hinterland, 1850–1914’, in Richard Lawton and Robert Lee, W., eds, Population and Society in Western European Port Cities, 1650–1939 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), 176–211Google Scholar.

53 Apih, Elio, Facismo e antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia (Bari: Laterza, 1966)Google Scholar.

54 Sluga, Glenda, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 138Google Scholar.

55 Ibid. 144.

56 Pokrajinski arhiv v Novi Gorici (PANG), Series Mestna ljudska občina Solkan, Box 2, Document 572: ‘Praznovanje priključitve’, 16 Sept. 1947.

57 Ibid.

58 PANG, Series Gradnja Nove Gorice, Box 1, ‘Nova Gorica’, Nova Gorica, 1, 1 (1947), 1.

59 Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Penguin, 2005), 13–40Google Scholar.

60 Lampe, John, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 239Google Scholar.

61 The aid resumed again soon after Yugoslavia's 1948 Cominform split with the Soviet Union.

62 One of the latest estimates put the total number of those who left the territories annexed to Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1961 at 302,000. See Mattiuz, Olinto Mileta, ‘Gli spostamenti di popolazione nel territorio annesso alla Jugoslavia dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale: Tentativo di quantificazione demografica’, in Dopoguerra di Confine: Povojni čas ob meji, eds Catalan, Tullia, Mellinato, Giulio, Pupo, Raoul, Verginella, Marta (Trieste: Regione Autonoma Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Università di Trieste and Istituto regionale SML nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 2007), 687–704Google Scholar.

63 Quantitative data indicating the ethnic composition of migrants from the region of Gorizia are not available, but data collected for the districts of Koper, Izola and Piran in northern Istria can serve as a useful guide. In the period between 1955 and 1957, a total of 10,265 inhabitants and their family members applied for Italian citizenship, of which an estimated 1,367 were Slovenian and 62 Croatian. See Gomba, Jureč, Esuli ali optanti? Zgodovinski primerv luči sodobne teorije (Ljubljana: Inštitut za slovensko izseljenstvo ZRC SAZU, 2005), 132Google Scholar.

64 PANG, Series Mestna ljudska občina Solkan, Box 2, several different documents.

65 PANG, Series Okrožno sodišče v Gorici, Box 16, Document Su 9/51, 3 Jan. 1952.

66 Interview with Ivanka Sever, b.1926, 26 Apr. 2008. For a similar recollection of the period see also the interview with Marija Pahor, b. 1925, 9 Feb. 2008. All interviews have been anonymised and names used here are pseudonyms.

67 Interview with Janez Lavrin, b. 1928, 20 June 2008. See also the interview with Ljudmila Jakac, b.1932, 8 June 2008, for a similar narrative.

68 Interviews with Milan Majer, b.1946, 21 June 2008, and Ljudmila Jakac, b. 1932, 8 June 2008.

69 Interview with Ana Ferluga, b. 1921, 8 June 2008.

70 Interview with Milan Majer, b.1946, 21 June 2008.

71 Interview with Ljudmila Jakac, b. 1932, 8 June 2008.

72 Interviews with DarinkaVodovnik, b. 1926, 26 Apr. 2008, Janez Lavrin, b. 1928, 20 June 2008, Ivanka Sever, b. 1926, 26 Apr. 2008, and Ljudmila Jakac, b. 1932, 9 June 2008.

73 Interview with Janez Lavrin, b.1928. The mnemonic patterns identified above were far from unique to Nova Gorica. Oral history study conducted among elderly inhabitants elsewhere in the region produced similar results. See Abram, Olga, ‘Šanjel v času zavezniške vojaške uprave’, Acta Histriae, 12, 2 (2004), 169–202Google Scholar; Rožac-Darovec, Vida, ‘L’attraversamento del confine nei ricordi delle donne istriane’, Qualestoria, 35, 1 (2007), 35–58Google Scholar.

74 Interview with Marija Pahor, b. 1925, 9 Feb. 2008

75 Interview with Darinka Vodovnik, b. 1926, 26 Apr. 2008.

76 Interviews with Ivanka Sever, 26 Apr. 2008, b. 1926 and Darinka Vodovnik, b. 1926, 26 Apr. 2008.

77 Interviews with Zdenka Hauptman, b. 1934, 8 June 2008, and Janez Lavrin, b. 1928, 20 June 2008.

78 Yugoslav border guards.

79 Interview with Marija Pahor, b. 1925, 9 Feb. 2008.

80 In 1955, the number of border transits by Yugoslav citizens in the region of Gorizia/Nova Gorizia alone was well over 200,000, while the number of transits by Italian citizens in the same period amounted to less than 90,000. See Sambri, Claudio, Una frontiera aperta: Indagini sui valichi italo-jugoslavi (Bologna: Arnaldo Forti Editore, 1970), 77 and 91Google Scholar.

81 Valdevit, Giampaolo, La Questione di Trieste 1941–1954: Politica internazionale e contesto locale (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1987), 257–63Google Scholar.

82 Šušmelj, Jože, ‘Videmski sporazum’, in Jože Pirjevec, Gorazd Bajc in Klabjan, Borut, eds, Vojna in mir na Primorskem (Koper: Založba Annales, 2005), 307–22Google Scholar.

83 Sambri, Una frontiera aperta, 74 and 87.

84 Mlinar, Zdravko, Humanizacija mesta: Sociološke razsežnosti urbanizma in samoupravljanja v Novi Gorici (Maribor: Obzorja, 1983), 64Google Scholar.

85 Sambri, Una frontiera aperta, 70 and 84.

86 Sambri, Based on, Una frontiera aperta, 74 and 87Google Scholar.

87 Nanut, Cvetko, ‘Ob 25. obletnici najmlajšega mesta na naši zahodni meji’, Srečanja, 5, 45–6 (1973), 7–14Google Scholar, 12.

88 Based on data provided in Patricija Bukovič, ‘Zgodovinski in prostorski razvoj Nove Gorice’, MA thesis, University of Ljubljana, 2008, 124.

89 Viljenka Škorjanec, ‘Priprave na osimska pogajanja’, in Jože Pirjevec and Borut Klabjan in Bajc, Gorzad, eds, Osimska meja (Koper: Založba Annales, 2006), 109–28, 69–70Google Scholar.

90 Interviews with Vlado Brajkovič, b. 1960, 30 June 2008, Klara Udovič, b. 1958, 30 June 2008, and Metka Ravnikar, b. 1956, 21 June 2008.

91 Interview with Vanda Simoniti, b. 1953, 8 June 2008.

92 Interviews with Anton Dekleva, b. 1953, 26 Apr. 2008, and Klara Udovič, b. 1958, 30 June 2008.

93 Interview with Lidija Bajd, b. 1961, 9 Feb. 2008.

94 Interview with Marija Pahor, b. 1925, 9 Feb. 2008.

95 Interview with Lidija Bajd, b. 1961, 9 Feb. 2008.

96 Interview with Metka Ravnikar, b. 1956, 21 June 2008.

97 Ibid.

98 Šumi, Irena, ‘Etnično razlikovanje v Sloveniji: Izbrane problematizacije’, Razprave in Gradivo – Revija za narodnostna vprašanja: Percepcije etničnega razlikovanja v Sloveniji, 45 (2004), 69, note 107Google Scholar.

99 See e.g. Sambri, Una frontiera aperta; Strassoldo, R. and Zotti, G. Delli, eds, Cooperation and Conflict in Border Areas (Milano: Franco Angeli Editore, 1982)Google Scholar; Calamia, A. M., Mengozzi, P. and Ronzitti, N., eds, I rapporti di vicinato tra Italia e Jugoslavia (Milano, Giuffrè, 1984)Google Scholar; Klemenčic, Vladimir, ‘Odprta meja med Italijo in Jugoslavijo in vloga manjšin’, Teorije in praksa, 11, 9/10 (1974), 928–36Google Scholar.

100 Pupo, Raoul, Confine scomparso: Saggi sulla storia dell’Adriatico Orientale del Novecento (Trieste: Instituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione nel Friuli Venezia Giulia, 2007), 36–7Google Scholar.

101 Novi list, 18 September 1971, 4.

102 e.g. interview with Anton Dekleva, b. 1953, 24 Apr. 2008.

103 Mihelj, Sabina, ‘Negotiating Cold War Culture at the Crossroad of East and West: Uplifting the Working People, Entertaining the Masses, Cultivating the Nation’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53, 3 (2011), 509–39, esp. 526–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 104. Interview with Lidija Bajd, b. 1961, 8 Feb. 2008. For a similar contrast with the Berlin Wall, see the interview with Zoran Rakovec, b. 1965, 30 June 2008.

105 Interview with Zoran Rakovec, b. 1965, 30 June 2008.

106 Stark, David, ‘From System Identity to Organizational Diversity: Analyzing Social Change in Eastern Europe’, Contemporary Sociology, 21, 3 (1992), 299–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carothers, Thomas, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, Journal of Democracy, 13, 1 (2002), 5–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.