Beyond the Young Pioneers: Memory Work with (Post)socialist Childhoods

Abstract

How can I respond to such an extraordinary cascade of memories of socialist childhoods from so far outside those worlds? This feels like an ‘afterword’ from an ‘other world.’ Geopolitically and ideologically, my childhood in rural Australia seems to be more than a hemisphere away. But memories work subliminally and affectively and moments of resonance will take any reader by surprise. Images and iconography circulate beyond their geopolitical contexts. Fragments of experience, conversation, and popular culture float to the surface.