Western Mediations in Reevaluating the Communist Past: A Comparative Analysis of Gothár\u27s Time Stands Still and Andonov\u27s Yesterday

Roumiana Deltcheva\u27s article, Western Mediations in Reevaluating the Communist Past: A Comparative Analysis of Gothár\u27s Time Stands Still and Andonov\u27s Yesterday, offers a comparative analysis of two films, Peter Gothár\u27s Time Stands Still and Ivan Andonov\u27s Yesterday. Both films appeared in the 1980s, in Hungary and Bulgaria, respectively, and were highly acclaimed by the critics and the audience. Both films deal with the Communist past of these two countries. In her analysis, Deltcheva\u27s adopts the perspective of in-between peripherality, a particular manifestation of the post-colonial paradigm in its application to East Central and Central Europe. The two films use similar strategies to suggest the specific position that the countries belonging to the Soviet sphere of political influence possessed during the forty years of communist rule. Ironically, the films completed prior to the Changes of 1989 present a much more vivid representation of these processes than anything else that has since been produced in the region

East Central Europe as a Politically Correct Scapegoat: The Case of Bulgaria

Roumiana Deltcheva analyzes in her article East Central Europe as a Politically Correct Scapegoat: The Case of Bulgaria the mechanisms of image construction of East Central Europe in the West, taking Bulgaria as a case study as seen in literary and filmic texts. A historical overview of literary and theoretical texts which deal with the cultural semiosphere of Bulgaria is presented to demonstrate that contrary to widely held perceptions in North American (US and Canada) politically correct scholarship, Europe is not a homogeneous cultural unity. In fact, a clear centre/periphery situation is established and delineated along the geographical axis West/East (as well as North/South, etc.). In the post-communist period, preconceived notions from earlier times continue to dominate, sustained by the dominant cultural discourses in (East) Central Europe

The Sarmatian Review, Vol. 18, No. 3

Contents: "SR INDEX"; Roumiana Deltcheva, "The Difficult Topos In-Between: the East Central European Culural Context as a Post-Coloniality"; Alex Kurczaba, "East Central Europe and Multiculturalism in the American Academy; Colin Cleary, "Poems."; Krzysztof Koehler, "Poems, tr. by W. Martin"; "BOOKS"; John Radzilowski, "General Anders and theSoldiers of the Second Polish Corps (review)"; Jan Twardowski, "Princess (a poem)"; K.K.Baczyński, "Where to? (a poem) Tr. by Alex Kurczaba"; "SR Translation of Documents Series"; Angela Brintlinger and Krzysztof Koehler, "Syllabi of Central and Eastern European courses"; "ANNOUNCEMENTS and NOTES"; "About the Authors