Multiculturalism and Ostalgie

Abstract

Abstract “Ostalgie” is coming from a German word referring to nostalgia for aspects of life in East Germany, and not only. It is a new multipurpose and new expression related the German terms “Nostalgie” (nostalgia in Italian) and Ost (East). Its anglicised equivalent, ostalgia, it is rhyming with “nostalgia” and it is also sometimes used. The collapse of Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall destruction, was the concept protected concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from ‘61 to ’89, It especially divided West and East European countries, the wall cut off West Berlin from almost all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Formally its demolition began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992 and coincides in some generation from the Warsaw Pact countries, legally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation with the “Mutual Assistance” URSS of the birth of “ostalgie”, that it goes against with modern principle of multicultural society and globalisation of the world. At the eighth congress of the communist party Lenin recognized the right to self-determination of the populations of the empire and promised them significant concessions, although its final intent was to reach the true dictatorship of the proletariat which would have rendered the ethnic-national distinctions useless. The Soviet Union became the incubator of new nations with the dissolving of the Russian nation in the Soviet state. Does the “ostalgie” refer to the USSR, is this compatible with multiculturalism? Is it compatible with that plurality of tending different cultures that coexists in mutual respect and which implies the preservation of their specific traits by rejecting any type of homologation or fusion in the dominant culture?