Recently Slavenka Drakulić held a virtual lecture Europe after the collapse of communism at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (@ UC Berkeley).
What were the important, long-term consequences of the collapse of such a big economic system as communism and could we have seen them coming? Do former communist countries, even though they are very different, have a common past that enables them to say “we”? What happened to these countries in the process of the transformation to “brutal capitalism”, why is the corruption the cancer of these societies and how come they are all so drawn to nationalism and the right-wing ideas? How do we cope with the gap between individual and collective memory, and why is memory without history very dangerous?
During the lecture Slavenka Drakulić discussed her books Café Europa: Life After Communism (1996), Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism (2021) and A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism (2011).
Watch the whole lecture here: