Tibor Valuch is anything but a newcomer to the field of consumption history of modern Hungary. His impressive oeuvre spans almost four decades of publishing activities, engaging profoundly with the material situation of different social classes, especially during state socialism, but also after the political change of 1989–90. While the bulk of his work has so far only been accessible to Hungarian- and, occasionally, German-speaking academia, Valuch’s newest book, published by Central European University Press, finally makes the essence of his research on everyday consumption practices in Hungary available to most scholars interested in consumption patterns in Eastern Europe. Based on an analysis filling more than 500 pages, this is a major and highly awaited undertaking.In his work Everyday Life under Communism and After, social historian Valuch is interested in how “everyday people” (1) of different social strata experienced the ruptures and continuities brought upon them by major systemic changes between 1945 and 2000 in Hungary (15). He puts special emphasis on everyday practices which, according to Valuch, “play a definite role in influencing social processes on both the micro and macro scales” (2). By analyzing in particular consumption patterns occurring in everyday life, the author aims to trace the expression of social differentiation through consumption, using Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework on the formation of classes. While the question of the availability of goods and services during state socialism is contested in Hungary, it is reasonable to link consumption policies to the legitimacy of socialist rule. Thus the author argues that improvements in consumption logically increased the legitimacy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (27). Furthermore, Valuch is specifically looking at the trajectory of the Hungarian middle class, which he defines in a rather narrow fashion, in terms of access to private property.The book under review is based on the 2013 publication Magyar hétköznapok: Fejezetek a mindennapi élet történetéböl a második világháborútól az ezredfordulóig [Hungarian everyday: chapters from daily life from World War II to the turn of the millennium]. Concentrating on a long timeframe of 1938 to 2000 (somewhat different than what the title indicates), the book consists of six chapters, with the first one functioning as an introduction. As individual consumption cannot be separated from the financial means at people’s disposal, the second chapter logically proceeds to explore different levels of income as well as social inequalities, both of which grew throughout the socialist period, peaking in the 1980s. The following chapter describes how Hungarian society, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, became a consumer society, with retail spaces changing dramatically and with individual shopping practices increasingly aimed at gaining access to living space, household durables, clothing, and foodstuffs. While chapter 4 is a thorough take on living spaces, with rural and urban divides as well as specific social classes in mind, the following chapter looks at the dynamic changes of clothing over time, both in the countryside and in cities. In chapter 6, Valuch finalizes his book by looking at the transformation and persistence of eating habits while implicitly showing the gender dimension of those practices. In classic social history fashion, the author grounds his analysis firstly on statistical data and then on archival documents related to domestic trade and supply of goods, market research, estate inventories, media discourse, and photographic material. Tellingly, Valuch bases his analysis mainly on primary sources of micro- and macrohistorical nature—largely without engaging with current scholarly contributions on consumption in Hungary and in Eastern Europe more generally.The strong points of his book include an analysis of poverty, which—as Valuch convincingly shows—existed throughout state socialism, while accumulations of wealth increased tremendously, especially during late socialism. Interestingly, he shows a clear divergence in the popular perception of high incomes earned outside the official framework and the corresponding data, showing popular understanding as being alarmist without being confirmed by statistics. However, the author argues that the socialist system has proved to be the most capable yet at implementing decent living standards for the largest amount of people. While this could be read as a form of political success, the author makes clear that the strategy stemmed from political calculation rather than ideological conviction (91). Whatever the motivation might have been, the policies maintaining living standards did, as Valuch argues, provide the party with legitimacy. Here, I suggest further investigation into whether material provision naturally resulted in an increase of state legitimacy or if this might have been a more dynamic and contradictory correlation—at times even counterintuitive. And indeed, the Socialist Party interpreted enhanced material conditions also as a potential threat to ideological assumptions about consumption as a means for developing a fully enlightened, socialist personality. One way of promoting the latter was the notion of “rational consumption” which, according to Valuch, revealed substantial inconsistencies (99). Given the contradictory positions of the party it would have been interesting to discuss in which ways ordinary citizens made sense of conflicting socialist principles in their everyday lives.1 All the more as the acquisition of, for example, expensive household durables required “superhuman sacrifices” (105) by ordinary citizens, shedding a somewhat different light on what Hungarian sociologists dubbed as “refrigerator socialism” in the 1970s.On a more critical note, the integration of international scholarship needs to be addressed, especially as the book is intended for an international academic readership. Although not at all exhaustively, within the introduction Valuch discusses some important contributions of international literature on consumption practices in socialist Eastern Europe, as well as more specifically in Hungary. Unfortunately, he largely fails to integrate their results into his analysis later in the book. The work would also have benefited from the extensive historiography on other Eastern European states, helping the author to employ a broader perspective toward the region. Yet, the international component is missing not only from the secondary literature, but it is also absent from some of his analyses of everyday consumption in modern Hungary. For example, the discussion of the transformation of retail forms and, most importantly, of the establishment of self-service supermarkets (116–28) at the beginning of the 1960s is not contextualized in terms of global trends in the retail sector.The author’s major goals include the tracing of social change of the prewar middle class during state socialism. Valuch understands the destiny of the middle class, defined by private property, as a tragic story of interruption or destruction (18, 96), showing a somewhat static understanding of highly dynamic social processes, especially in the early period of state socialism. Recent literature on the topic, most interestingly the edited volume The Socialist Good Life by Cristofer Scarboro, Diana Mincyte, and Zsuzsa Gille, even proposes the formation of a specifically socialist middle class, bearing different characteristics than its bourgeois predecessor.2 In addition, when criticizing certain scholarly interpretations, like the understanding of a particular socialist form of consumerism, a more thorough discussion as well as appropriate references would have taken the analysis to a different level (92). Although Valuch takes an understandably critical stance against the highly loaded term “consumerism” in the context of socialism, the author himself uses the term, as well as “consumption,” interchangeably throughout his own analysis, instead of settling on the latter as a neutral and system-independent term.3 The book would also have profited from a more rigorous editing process, as some themes overlap throughout the chapters.A major strength of the book lies in the longue durée approach of analysis, which allows Valuch to trace (dis)continuities in consumption patterns and to reach a more nuanced understanding of social practices before, during, and after state socialism. The detailed analysis according to different social strata, both in urban and rural settings, also deserves special mention, being—as far as I am aware—unique across scholarship on the topic. As it contains an impressive body of meticulously researched and highly interesting material on everyday life, it will serve as an important work of reference for anyone working not only on Hungary but on any other Eastern European state, opening many more avenues for researching consumption culture during and after state socialism. The book deserves a broad reception which will link international scholars to the peculiarities of Hungarian consumption and ultimately to the question of how it shaped the modern history of the country.
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Oct 30, 2023
Sándor Horváth 
Open Access