Que reste-t-il de nos amours?

Abstract

Is the 1989-1991 frame of understanding still relevant? Did history already throw away the empty bottles of the 1991 celebrations? Et que reste-t-il de nos amours? With this series of articles and a comment, we set out to explore the ways in which European societies, and Europe itself, differ from what had been hoped and designed in the years 1989-1991. The contributions included put the emphasis on the different horizons of expectation and realms of experience that have their roots in 1989-1991, exploring whether this period continues to define individuals, societies and historical representations of Eastern Europe and beyond. We thus reflect on the relevance of the study of past expectations in order to understand what has happened during the last decades around us, promising new directions of research regarding social transformation, political rhetoric, collective memory and how historical and personal narratives match or contradict.While reviewing articles and books from the late 1980s, I had the impression of practising a sort of emotional archaeology -so far, so close. The literature from that time talks about death, risks, prison writings, centres of gravity and circles of friends, absurdity, moral dilemmas, Second World War... showing high hopes and a sense of history in the making overall (Buford 1990). One would say that those texts aged rather badly; or was it ourselves who did? There are dozens of books and articles on the topic; yet the year 1991 has not had the attention it deserves, being most often reduced to two ideas: 'return to normality' and the 'end of History'. It has often been associated with endings, collapse and revolutions; however, the break-up of the USSR did not bring about a stable (political, economic and military) order, but a different sort of instability. Furthermore, the sense that we are leaving behind a certain regime without entering a new onein fact, still very much enmeshed in it -is giving post-socialism an unexpected relevance for understanding global penetration into localities and how national identities are not relics from the past but being reshaped, reconciling unity and diversity in new ways.Post-socialism is now twenty-five years old, an appropriate milestone to reflect on this social phenomenon and the multidimensional