Sotzromantizm and its theaters of life

The introduction offers the notion of Sotzromantizm (socialist romanticism) as a way of framing critical engagements with the actually existing socialism of the 1950s-1980s. Large-scale historicizing projects relied on the romantic re-appropriation of space to generate versions of identity, social communities, spiritual values, and relations to the past that significantly differed from the rationalistic canons of the perfectly planned socialist society. As the introduction argues, Sotzromantizm offers us a ground from which to challenge the emerging dogma that depicts late socialist society as a space where pragmatic cynics coexisted with useful idiots of the regime. Instead, the concept allows us to shift attention to ideas, institutions, spaces, objects, and identities that enabled (rather than prevented) individual and collective involvement with socialism.