Nostalgia, Anxiety, Politics: Media and Performing Arts in Egypt, Central-Eastern Europe, and Russia

“Nostalgia, Anxiety, Politics: Media and Performing Arts in Egypt, Central-Eastern Europe, and Russia”, edited by Tetyana Dzyadevycz, is an innovative interdisciplinary collection of essays that probes the complexities of collective nostalgia. Dzyadevycz brings together a diverse group of scholars who open new avenues for analyzing the aesthetics of nostalgia across historical and contemporary socio-political contexts, with case studies ranging from Egypt to the post-Socialist bloc, including Romania, former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The volume contributors examine a wide array of media—film, music, digital photography, home videos, archival footage, circus arts, contemporary television series, and political campaign videos—to question the generation, channeling, and weaponization of nostalgia by media production agents. The book sheds light on the surprising and powerful ways in which the aesthetics of nostalgia shape contemporary political processes, offering insights into the global resurgence of populism and authoritarianism. It serves as a poignant reminder of how the manipulation of collective nostalgia through various media forms can influence contemporary political landscapes and shape the future.

Dr. Maria Khotimsky

Department of Global Languages

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Building on the wave of work on the culture and history of emotions and drawing on the seminal work of Svetlana Boym, this extraordinary book shows us the possibilities for the study of nostalgia. With a focus on post-communist anxieties, the project explores other areas as well - including an inciting perspective on Soviet nostalgia in Egypt. The texts collected by Tatyana Dzyadevych allow us to evaluate the construction of our present as a place of sadness and grief for a past that did never happen.

Prof. Dr. José María Faraldo Jarillo

Departamento Historia moderna e historia contemporánea

Facultad de Geografia e Historia

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

[…] This fascinating collection of diverse works at the intersections of memory, nostalgia, cultural production, propaganda and political mythmaking offers an invaluable contribution to the ongoing global scholarly and public debates on how the past informs and shapes the present and the interplays of reality and imagination in matters of remembrance. Exploring collective political memory and mythmaking, entertainment and propaganda, the authors offer kaleidoscopic accounts of unique and under-researched cases. […] This book is recommended for students and researchers of political sociology, anthropology, culture studies and political studies, as well as for any lay reader. It will be of particular interest to those who come from or study the postsocialist world, as the book’s cultural references largely originate from there. Each contribution provides a unique glimpse of collective emotions and imaginations in specific times and places.

[Extract from book review on the journal ‘Europe-Asia Studies’, 78:1, pp. 133-135. Published online: 30 Jan 2026. Reviewer: Aijan Sharshenova (Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia.) DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2025.2589625]