Palgrave Macmillan have recently published a new book by Iveta Silova, Nelli Piattoeva and Zsuzsa Millei. The edited volume is titled “Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies. Memories of Everyday Life”, and it explores childhood and schooling in late socialist societies by bringing into dialogue public narratives and personal memories.
You can read more about the book here: http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319627908
This is how Alexei Yurchak, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, USA, characterises the work: “The authors of this beautiful book are professional academics and intellectuals who grew up in different socialist countries. Exploring “socialist childhoods” in a myriad of ways, they draw on memoirs and memories, personal experience and collective history, emotional knowledge of an insider, and the measured perspective of an analyst. What emerges is life that was caught between real optimism and dullness, ethical commitments and ideological absurdities, selfless devotion to children and their treatment as a political resource. Such attention to detail and paradox makes this collective effort not only timely, but also remarkably genuine.”