SOURCE: Marin, Noemi. “Slavenka Drakulic: Dissidence and Rhetorical Voice in Postcommunist Eastern Europe.” East European Politics and Societies 15, no. 3 (fall 2001): 678-97.

In the following essay, Marin examines Drakulic's role as a marginalized Balkan critic, commending her “rich narratives of postcommunist and communist times.”

What the communist regimes in Eastern and Central European countries left for posterity are scars of oppression. In spite of communist appeals and propaganda, for decades people fought to reinforce democratic values, freedom, and human rights, within and beyond these countries' borders. Moreover, due to communism's oppressive politics, some of the most eloquent representatives of civil societies chose expatriation and dissidence as a political, cultural, and rhetorical way to articulate democratic beliefs from behind the Iron Curtain.¹

Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, Milosz, Cioran, and Eliade are among well-known expatriates who identify themselves as writers of resistance from communist Eastern and Central Europe.² According to their accounts, expatriation...