Our book aims to move away from singular history writing toward multiple histories. It has brought together a group of scholars to (re)narrate histories in ways that would lead to more complex understandings of the (post)socialist pasts, presents, and futures.
Committed to this outlook, we invited colleagues from different disciplines to engage with our volume in a series of afterwords rather than having one last word or single voice close the book. These authors speak from multiple perspectives, including different disciplinary and methodological backgrounds, as well as various levels of personal connections to (post)socialist histories and contexts. They discuss contributions and implications of our work for different fields, including international relations, comparative education, childhood studies, collective biography research, and decolonial studies. This ensemble of comments, reflections, and critiques offers different ways for readers to connect with our work and also points out new perspectives, complexities, and directions for future research. Together they inspire ample thoughts for what could follow afterward.
We invite you to join this conversation by sending us your thoughts and comments here. They could be written from a personal perspective or as a response to the book from your research expertise.
My goodness – the cover image left me speechless and the hair stood up on my arm. It is very powerful when you are confronted with an image that evokes all those memories. I was educated in Hungary during the socialist times from kindergarten to university and I have very positive and fond memories of my primary and secondary school years. Seeing it reflected back at me in this image from so far away in the past just chills me to the bone. Now I just want to read it all but I have to delay it till I have the uninterrupted time that it deserves. I feel this book gives me an opportunity to revisit and re-understand my school life in the socialist era – now as an adult and as a scholar. Zsuzsa, Nelli and Iveta, I am so very pleased that you have put this book together with the contributing authors. This is no doubt going to generate debate; there is such a need for something like this to appear in print. So thank you and very best of luck with the book launch on 1st March in Berlin. I wish I could be there!!