Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with the historical memory of the communist movement and of state socialism in Eastern Europe before and after 1989. It analyzes the post-1989 memory of communism and the self-identity of the left in the former West (mostly France and Italy, but also Austria, Greece, Spain and Portugal) and East (Hungary, East Germany and Russia). The book is also devoted to analyses of socialist and post-socialist memorial landscapes in former German Democratic Republic (GDR), Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. It concentrates on the narratives the movement established, when in power, about its own past, with the examples of the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia, also addressing the unwanted past during the regime crisis with the example of Poland.