POLITICAL MEMORY, SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND ORAL HISTORY. RESEARH RESULTS FROM PRUT VALLEY IN ROMANIA AND REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

Authors

  • SILVIU-PETRU GRECU

Keywords:

political memories, oral history, social representations, Prut Valley, (post)communism, social framework

Abstract

This article aims to create the link between individual psychological processes, collective psychology and political identity. Generally speaking, political memories, representations and cognitions are vectors for creating social and political identities. Beyond the cognitivist perspectives of the memory, we argue that social framework is one of the most important contextual variable for shaping memories and identities. However, political representations create premises for social and political knowledge, political orientation and self-position on the ideological scale. Beyond these features, political representations are involved in political evaluation. For understanding the relation between political representations, memories and identities we analyse a group of interviews applied on the Prut Valley in Romania and Republic of Moldova. We observe that political representations are related to communist nostalgia in the Republic of Moldova. Moreover, these kinds of representations generate stiff political identities. In Romanian case we have observed a negative perception of the communist order and a hybrid political identity which balance between national and supranational political framework.

Author Biography

SILVIU-PETRU GRECU

Ph.D. Lecturer at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi.

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Published

20-12-2019