Socialist Wallpaper: The Culture of Everyday Life and the Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement, 1968–1990

Abstract

The Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement (CBWM) was the official mass organization responsible for women’s issues in communist-era Bulgaria. As with earlier examples of state socialist women’s committees, such as the Zhenotdel in the Soviet Union, the CBWM was tasked with changing the culture of everyday life (битовa кyлтyрa) for women and families in Bulgaria. Initially, their efforts focused on improving women’s access to education, enhancing their professional qualifications, and creating structural supports for working mothers (i.e., kindergartens, creches, maternity leaves, etc.) By the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, however, the CBWM’s efforts increasingly came to focus on personal improvement through the promotion of “hobby” activities (sewing, embroidery, cooking, etc.) and on discussions of esthetic issues in the domestic sphere. This article examines the internal documents and official publications of the CBWM between 1968 and 1990. We argue that although the women’s committee was always compelled to justify its work with regard to the promotion of Marxist theories, the CBWM may have strategically used the concept of bitova culture to legitimate programing that might have otherwise been considered “bourgeois” by male elites in the Bulgarian Communist Party. Thus, even though the programs and courses sponsored by the CBWM openly encouraged the development of a more “proper” socialist consciousness, they also provided women with a break from their many duties as mothers, workers, and active members of the socialist society. As such, they were welcomed by the women who participated in them.