How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

The problem of privacy has many dimensions in Yugoslavia, both physical and spiritual. Drakulić confronts it professionally as she has a conversation with the censor designed to surveil her work, and finds the experience disorienting, as the man declares he knows her mind well from reading her work, and talks of the need to treat journalists “tenderly” (80). He further enhances this intimacy when he compliments her appearance, declaring she is more attractive in person, and that his main purpose was in fact to meet her. This display of chauvinism and paternalism has a broader psychological effect, though, as Drakulić realizes its intended purpose was to get her to examine her life and every move before the meeting even took place.

The lack of privacy is perhaps most obvious in Drakulić’s examination of multigenerational living in crowded apartments. She describes a childhood when her family lived with strangers, and an adulthood where many of her friends are unable to fully separate from their parents. Apartments are one of the only “life prizes” the system offers, as they are a refuge from state scrutiny (91). Drakulić is aware that the very concept of privacy as politically acceptable is only emerging slowly, as people in Croatia are used to crowding on their neighbors at the post office, and typically any craving for privacy was politically suspect. This extends to a corresponding disdain for public space that is visible in dirty parks. Drakulić accounts for this through the mindset that “public equals state equals the enemy” (165). Communism, then, alters the individual’s relationship to people, to physical space, and to one’s own individuality.

Communism also affects one’s mindset, and the public versus private battle involved with grief and trauma. Drakulić underscores this in her work’s Introduction, when she declares, “we may have survived communism, but we have not yet outlived it” (xvii). This is particularly apparent in Drakulić’s relationship to Croatia’s first free elections, as she says, “I was glad that Tito wasn’t gazing at me but through a window, into a future that only he could see and that will forever remain a secret to us” (148). She feels, even as a person open about communism’s failures, that something has been lost, a utopian dream that never came to pass, and that Tito’s legacy has been somehow betrayed. In other respects, Drakulić’s communist upbringing persists, especially in her relationship to religion. While she is glad her mother is experiencing Mass again, and even feels a “tinge of envy” at how long she has held on to the rituals and still knows how to participate, she is quickly alienated. When the priest equates the recent political changes with the will of God, she is skeptical, and notes that she feels as though she has “overeaten” after partaking of religion for the first time (157).

Drakulić also presents communism as an enduring metaphysical system. Ulrike’s memories of Berlin remain in her mind, and Drakulić laments that so little of the Berlin Wall remains, though she approves of the Checkpoint Charlie museum’s careful preservation of those who sought escape from East Germany, one that gives the landscape its own color. She argues that while the new regimes try to replace communist symbols and forget they existed, “the cities are remembering, and showing it, and the people, too” (167). While Drakulić does not grieve for a political system, she nevertheless acknowledges communism as its own way of life, with a legacy that should not be erased from public view even if she does not precisely cherish it.