Nostalgia and lost identity

Nostalgia for the Soviet Union is a major social phenomenon in Russia today due to the irrevocable losses of the recent past in which Soviet citizens involuntarily became immigrants in their own country. With reference to discussions of nostalgia in philosophical and psychoanalytic literature, I suggest that nostalgia may represent either a defensive regression to the past or a progressive striving for wholeness through re-connecting with what has been lost in the service of a greater integration. I compare this with the processes of adaptation seen in immigrants and provide a clinical illustration of a young man coming to terms with loss and change in the post-Soviet era. When nostalgia is recognized as a legitimate emotional experience it may facilitate mourning and enable the integration of the past with the present and the development of a new identity.