Wife Beating: Ideology and Practice under State Socialism in Hungary, Poland, and Romania

Abstract

In 1993–1994, I began to develop a research project on domestic violence in formal law and legal practice in post-socialist Eastern Europe. As part of that project development, I initially queried both academic colleagues at universities where I was lecturing and activists in women’s rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the region with whom I was working on how domestic violence was handled in socialist times. NGO activist colleagues in Hungary, Poland, and Romania told me that there was little to learn from that period. Domestic violence, more precisely, “wife beating” as it was called, was widespread; it was considered “women’s lot,” and it was dismissed or ignored by the state. Full stop. There was nothing else to say. Academic colleagues in these countries, in contrast, tended to minimize the violence. They described it as normal for a distinctive segment of the population—those who did not participate in “civilized values” and drank to excess. This coded language, I soon learned, referred to the lower social classes—peasants and the lower reaches of the proletariat. Certainly, they assured me, there were wife beaters from “good families” too, but these were few in number and were alcoholics and, hence, could not be held accountable for their behavior. I should also note that virtually everyone seemed either puzzled or amused by my questions about the socialist era.