ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the key processes shaping the particular politics of identity that have emerged under post-socialism. The issue of identity was of particular concern to communist regimes. In addition to efforts to reform economic and political systems, such regimes were concerned with the identities that their ‘citizens’ constructed for themselves. This was part of the much broader project of ‘building’ new socialist (here referring to the ideology of Marxism) societies. Within this project each individual had a particular idealised role to play. At an ideological level, at least, this political project envisaged nothing less than a complete remodelling of society. This was important to maintain the legitimacy of one-party rule, but it was also about attempts to create a new society. The first basis for this was the attempt to establish new sources of identity that people constructed in relation to the Communist Party and to notions of ‘Communist society’. This involved statesponsored attempts to remove previous sources of identities and allegiances, including efforts to suppress or modify national identities, pre-Communist gender identities and religious adherence. This was first experimented with in the USSR post-1917 before being spread in various forms to other communist countries post-1945, where the nature and depth of state-driven identity projects varied considerably.
