Post-socialist Period Research Articles

Xiaomei Chen. Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture

This book presents a nuanced, revisionist exploration of the development of modern and contemporary Chinese theatre and related arts, challenging the conventional demarcations between Republican, high socialist, and post-socialist periods. It discloses subtle entanglements in theatre theory and practice, underscoring the persistent approaches to aesthetics and politics across eras and theatrical genres.

The Continuous Reproduction of Contradictions in the Urban Development of New Belgrade’s Central Area

The initial source for the continuous reproduction of contradictions in the central area of New Belgrade’s urban development was the mismatch between the dynamics of political and economic reforms and the static urban planning system that has been banded to the most progressive but rigid functionalist ideals that could not adapt to the emergent pace of these reforms. Consequently, during the socialist and post-socialist periods, the central area of New Belgrade grew irregularly by developing contradictory fragments rather than totality. The inconsistency of the socialist authorities in completing the capital city according to the urban plan despite political imperatives has continued with the post-socialist governing tendencies towards irregularity, privatization, and commercialization of urban development. A series of individual, short-term, and profitable urban projects that have opposed the socialist urban structure, have reused inherited socialist urban infrastructure as a fertile ground for their growth. More than presenting a new insight into the history of urban development of the central area of New Belgrade, this study uses it as the prime case to disclose the unsustainability of the urban planning system during the socialist past and post-socialist present. An alternative urban planning system would embrace the challenges of the continuous reproduction of contradiction by affirming an institutional network of platforms for collaboration among citizens, urban planners, authorities, and developers.

NON-TERRITORIAL AND TERRITORIAL OBJECTIVES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN ETHNOREGIONAL PARTIES

In Central and Eastern Europe, even the post-socialist period has not made it easy for ethnic communities to exercise their linguistic and cultural rights, and territorial autonomy or self-government, as a risk to territorial integrity, has been granted only in exceptional cases. This paper focuses on the main objectives of ethnoregional parties to reorganise the power structure of the national political system. The study is based on an analysis of core documents from 92 parties in 15 Central and Eastern European countries, identifying and classifying the objectives set out in these documents. The results highlight the ethnoregional objectives in Central and Eastern Europe, including not only the cultural-linguistic dimension but also the need to change internal/external borders or the division of power within each state, highlighting the diversity and complexity of the problems and objectives underlying each category.

Formal urbanisation in East-Central Europe

The East-Central European region has undergone a unique urbanisation process during socialist and postsocialist periods. These peculiarities result from social and economic development delays, which the statehas tried to remedy through massive interventions. One such intervention is urban reclassification, where the state promotes certain places it deems crucial, granting them urban status, often without actual developmentor urban characteristics. Due to its artificial character, this intervention is called formal urbanisation in our approach being a specific local feature of the urbanisation process. The visible result is the growth of the urbanpopulation, often only by administrative causes, with the reclassification of villages as towns. The emergence of numerous small towns, which we refer to as newest towns, has significantly influenced urbanisation, alteredthe concept of towns and cities3, and generated significant debates. In this paper, we compare the formal urbanisation of the socialist and post-socialist eras, trying to estimate the added value of formal urbanisation inthe latter period. We compare the administrative backgrounds of formal urbanisation in selected ECE countries for similarities and differences. Throughout the research, we analyse their formal urbanisation involvingapproximately 800 municipalities promoted since 1990 in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Romania, trying to identify common and unique features in the processes. Based on historical determination, modernisation, and integration into new spatial processes, considering demographic and functional changes, we developedtypes of formal urbanisation. Our research has revealed several common factors in the reclassification process, such as local initiatives, while we have also identified disparities between principles and practices and varyinglevels of control from regional and national actors. The study has also led to a deeper understanding of formal urbanisation in the context of the urbanisation process as a whole.

Vaccine as a Sociocultural Artefact: The Example of Locally Produced Polio Vaccine in Serbia

Abstract The paper argues that vaccines could be viewed as artifacts which communicate various social messages and are used as instruments for fulfilling different sociopolitical goals besides meeting public health needs. It further suggests that such social, cultural and political influences may have real effects on the choices of vaccine technologies or vaccine production, and aims to demonstrate their importance in the area which is normally seen as the domain of objective science. This is demonstrated by using the example of the locally produced oral polio vaccine (OPV) in Serbia during the socialist and post-socialist periods in the country’s history.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Completeness and Transparency of Information

The article presents the results of research in the field of increasing objectivity of information on the social responsibility of the state and business reflected in the reports of economic entities. The main stages of the formation and evolution of this concept in the world scientific literature and in practice of corporate structures are shown. The purpose of the study is to determine the main directions of social responsibility of business and select the forms of their reflection in reporting. Methods for determining social responsibility in individual countries are analyzed. The specifics of its reflection in reporting during the period of centralized economic management and in the post-socialist period of development in Russia has been revealed. Based on the analysis of reports on the social activities of modern corporate structures in Russia, the need to unify and standardize the reporting of corporate structures on social responsibility is justified. The areas of activity in the field of social responsibility, reflected in the form of ESG reporting, are systematized, their specifics and algorithmization of indicators that allow assessing the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of social responsibility are provided. To systematize and classify initiatives in the field of social responsibility, methods of comparative analysis, detailing, classification and determination of the interdependence of social responsibility with the indicators of sustainable development of the organization were used. Proposals have been formulated for structuring reports on the social responsibility of corporate economic entities and management bodies at different levels, taking into account the requirements for their harmonization and compatibility when assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of the state’s social activities. The materials of the article can be used in the development of internal regulations governing social responsibility reporting, as well as in organizing control of information included in the reporting and assessing its reliability.

Prostitution and Public Policy in Post-Socialist Bulgaria

The article examines prostitution in Bulgaria, which has become a widespread ‎phenomenon in the post-socialist period when the number of sex workers increases and the places where sex services are offered proliferate. At the same ‎time, the policies towards prostitution remain archaic and inadequate to the ‎new circumstances. ‎The text draws on an empirical base, mixing qualitative and quantitative ‎research conducted in the period 2008-2022. Results of two nationally representative surveys of public opinion on the subject are analyzed. Additionally, ‎reviews of court cases, other documents and Internet forums of clients using ‎paid sex services are discussed. Results from monitoring of specialized police ‎operations related to prostitution are presented.‎ The first part of the text presents the historical development of prostitution ‎in Bulgaria – before socialism and during the communist regime. The second ‎part focuses on the rise of prostitution in post-socialist Bulgaria – development of the sex market is traced; main layers of prostitution and social mobility patterns are analyzed; the role of the third party is discussed. The third part ‎examines the current policies regarding prostitution in Bulgaria. In the concluding section, the article discusses the potential for developing new policies ‎on prostitution in post-socialist Bulgaria.

‘Property of the Nation’ - Resource Nationalism to Become a Political Doctrine in Contemporary Mongolia?

The proposed paper is a study of resource nationalism. Resource nationalism appeared in Mongolia in the post-Socialist period. In this paper, we understand resource nationalism as a wide spectrum of strategies domestic elites employ in order to increase their control of natural resources - definition by Paul Domjan and Matt Stone. After an analysis of legal materials, mass media articles and political rhetoric, the author of this paper concludes that the sources of resource nationalism should be searched in the texts that date back to the Socialist era. Also, the sources of resource nationalism can be found in the ideas about justice of those times. The idea that natural resources belong to the people has been fixed in mass opinion, while contemporary nationalists justify this idea from the standpoint of “blood and soil”. That creates serious problems for Mongolia, a country with resource economy. The matter is that economic growth driven with foreign investments has caused a deep social stratification. In its turn, social stratification gave birth to a social demand for fair profit distribution from natural resource extraction. In the political sphere, this social demand quickly received a reaction - in the form of resource nationalism rhetoric. In the paper, we notice that resource nationalism in Mongolia has not been formed as a vivid legal or political doctrine. Today, it is a set of populist rhetoric of current interest which are used both for lobbying future political decisions in mining and for legitimizing the decisions already made.

Symbolic policy in small towns of Zamojszczyzna region, Poland, in the post-socialist period

Abstract Small cities have attracted less attention from researchers of transformation processes, although in some countries they are an important part of the social landscape, as they are in Poland. I present the results of research on the public space and symbolic politics in three small towns in Zamojszczyzna, a region in southeastern Poland. All are characterized by interrupted or disturbed historical continuity due to the extermination of their Jewish communities, which made up the majority of the population until World War II. After 1945, the Jewish past was silenced, while the symbolic space was dominated by the memory of the resistance movement. I show in my text that since the 1990s there have been significant transformations in the aforementioned towns. In some of them, firstly, interest in Jewish heritage and efforts to preserve it are becoming more apparent. Second, there is a noticeable shift from commemorating anti-fascism to promoting the so-called struggle against communism, a reflection of the current politics of remembrance at the central level. I argue that the use of cultural heritage in small towns serves largely to gain recognition. Local authorities often use not only elements of the past that fit into national narratives, but also local traditions or even fictional literary heroes, for this purpose.

Relations between Sofia and Moscow against the background of domestic political processes in Bulgaria

The article analyses the development of Russian-Bulgarian relations after February 24, 2022. The author draws attention to the fact that in the post-socialist period Sofia has developed a practice of viewing bilateral relations with Moscow not as an independent direction of foreign policy, but as a secondary part of a more general task of integrating the country into Euro-Atlantic community. Because of that the reaction of the Bulgarian political mainstream to the beginning of a special military operation of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine does not represent anything fundamentally new, but rather looks like a logical development of the traditions of Bulgarian diplomacy of recent decades. At the same time, the article emphasizes the presence of political players in Sofia who are interested in adjusting the course of Bulgarian-Russian relations by reducing their dependence on ideological and geopolitical factors.

East-west or up the urban hierarchy? Internal migration patterns in Slovakia since post-socialist transformation to COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Changing spatial patterns of migration are closely related to the transformation of economy and society. Most current studies focus either on international migration or on the migration of particular urban regions. Our study evaluates migration trends in the entire national regional system, and thus it contributes to its comprehensive understanding. The study aims to evaluate the relationship of internal migration from economically lagging eastern to more developed western regions of Slovakia on the one hand, and migration between categories of regions according to the hierarchical position of their urban core on the other hand. The study follows the differential urbanization concept and analyses detailed data on individual migrations in Slovakia in 1996–2020. It thus covers the period from the post-socialist transformation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show the increasing intensity of east-west and up the urban hierarchy migration. Due to the significant polarization of migration between the eastern and western regional subsystems, we examined separately in both subsystems the migration excluding flows between the subsystems. The results revealed a concentration of population into metropolitan regions in both subsystems, although the intensity of the processes was lower and the onset of trends delayed in the eastern subsystem. A significant feature of development in the post-socialist period was intensive exurbanation in both subsystems. The study thus points to the importance of subnational and regional approaches to migration research, and reveals trends that can contribute to the explanation of migration development even in countries where such detailed migration statistics are not available.

“We are shepherds, but not sheep”: farmer protest and rural identity in Bulgaria

ABSTRACT Rural society in Bulgaria has seen considerable upheaval over the past century, moving from a position of political significance, rural actors were subsequently subordinated under the communist regime (1946–1989). The post-socialist period saw further turmoil as land restitution, privatisation, and depopulation reshaped rural communities, leading to increased marginalisation. Facing uncertain futures, rural producers have engaged in a range of actions to challenge and resist threats to their material interests and rural way of life. This article draws on a dataset of protest events in the media by rural producers over the 2000–2019 period to understand how and why they protested. In doing so, it considers how the claims presented can be seen to reflect efforts to protect rural communities in a time of change. The findings suggest that material interests serve as the key mobilising force, but that these rest on a sense of collective identity around the importance of rural society to support their claims.

Marriage and the reproductive regime of a digitally connected Roma diaspora

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the marriage, family, and reproductive regimes prevalent in a Roma group that, in the post-socialist period, has moved from Romania to over 16 countries in Western Europe and North America. It is based on a long-term collaborative ethnography that allowed the detailed reconstitution of 807 unions held from 1938 to 2021. Family networks in this diaspora have today a transnational character and maintain an intense social interaction by digital means. The paper will show how a partly autonomous social order is constituted and reproduced by a marriage and kinship system that involves gender formations and autonomous domestic development cycles. At its core is an implicit and successful reproductive regime that is often assumed to be biologically determined, and of no value to cultural analysis. Marriages tend to be universal, adolescent, pronatalist, and endogamous (often consanguineous) within this “community of understanding.” They are also negotiated and arranged by paterfamilias following a literal patriarchy or father rule. However, young people often act on their preferences influencing their parents or eloping. Marriages as household exchanges are launched by three major economic transactions. These transactions open the horizontal “circulation” of women and wealth between households following viri-patrilocal residence norms that generate patrigroups and fraternal coalitions.

Legal Ambiguity and Land Dispossession: Multi-Scale Conflicting Views on Territorial Authority at the Herlen Bayan-Ulaan State Reserve Pasture Area, Mongolia.

Abstract The Mongolian government pursues various objectives that are often assumed to benefit citizens, including socio-economic development, biodiversity conservation and innovative technologies in the agricultural sector to adapt to climate change. But, for pastoralists, these activities have allowed the appropriation of pastoral lands from their home jurisdictions, the process of which is often murky and ambiguous. The vision for development held by different international and national agents sometimes fails to recognise the complexity inherent in converting pastoral land for alternative economic and conservation development. This paper examines a recent legal battle focused on the Herlen Bayan-Ulaan State Reserve Pasture Area, where different stakeholders put forward contested claims of authority over rural jurisdictional territories. The conflict is rooted in the ambiguous and conflicting co-existence of liberal and statist approaches to socio-economic policies applied by the Mongolian government. Whereas the socialist period system's imposition of exclusive state control reduced local actors' (government and residents) control and authority over resources governance, the post-socialist period system promoted 'alternative economic and conservation activities' and protected state and individual property rights, leaving mobile pastoralists with highly ambiguous claims. This paper argues that the state ought to have a specific role of providing an adequate legislative and executive framework to support more complex interdependent multi-scale pastoral institutions. This paper describes the changing role of the state in land governance, wherein the state has assumed all management and financial authority while subjecting pastoralists to conflicting legislative and executive policies. This has eroded the local systems of land and resource governance and created an open access scenario, allowing appropriation of jurisdictional pastoral lands. This trend of exclusive state control has the implication of contradicting and dismantling a longstanding interdependent pastoral institutional environment and has been counterproductive to enhancing natural resource management and the adaptive capacity of local actors to climate change.

The role of landmarks in shaping Tirana’s urban identity: the shift from socialist to post-socialist city

ABSTRACT This study examines the change of urban identity from the socialist period to post-socialist Tirana, evaluating the role of landmarks. The continuously changing city image in the post-socialist period, associated with the construction of new high-rise buildings, is the commencement of this research. The aim is to measure to what extent the change of the landmarks in the post-socialist period impacts Tirana’s identity. To achieve this goal, we interviewed Tirana citizens (N = 209) about the socialist/post-socialist period landmarks representing city identity. The methodology includes surveying, mapping, visualization, and clustering. Through a conceptual diagram, the study emphasizes the role of landmarks within the urban identity concept by utilizing their salience-providing features, which are visual, semantic, and locational. The results reveal that the socialist city identity is represented by landmarks that possess a strong image and semantic values. In contrast, post-socialist city identity is represented by new landmarks, which are reported as many and emphasize the rise of experience-oriented landmarks in an entertainment district. The study found a location shift in the landmarks representing Tirana’s urban identity from the socialist to post-socialist city. However, in both periods, the majority are on the city’s main Boulevard (city spine), which works as a mental skeleton.

(Post)socialist Meontopolitics

This article deals with the analysis of what has been constructed as a double modernization of Belgrade, during the socialist (1945–1991), and postsocialist periods (1991–), as well as the environmental consequences these processes on the left and right side of the Sava River between the Branko’s ridge and the Gazela Bridge. The area is significant because of the spaces of socialist-, and postsocialist modernizations: the Sava River Park, and the Belgrade Waterfront, which sit directly across each other. In both cases, modernization has entailed meontopolitics – an introduction of non being into the existing relationality through territorial fragmentation, production of conflict zones and intensification of space use. Each period and its kind of modernization assumed destruction of local non-human environments as their condition of possibility leading to (post)socialist necroecologies, a historically produced environmental condition inimical to some human and non -human actors as the defining feature of the environmental condition of both socialist-, and contemporary Belgrade.

Management and maintenance of multi-family buildings in Croatia: perspective of co-owners’ representatives

The paper deals with maintenance and management problems in multi-family buildings in Zagreb and other Croatian cities from the perspective of co-owners’ representatives. After 1990, when there was intensive privatization of housing, the responsibility for the maintenance of the housing stock shifted to private owners and management companies. Apartment owners have been given the obligation to maintain multi-family buildings and have faced problems and challenges in maintaining and managing common property. The empirical research was conducted on a convenience sample of co-owners' representatives (N = 353) using the survey method. The results are analysed according to three construction periods of multi-family buildings: built before 1945, during the socialist period (from 1945 to 1990) and the post-socialist period (after 1991). The results show that in all three construction periods there are certain bigger or smaller shortcomings regarding the building quality, and then the maintenance. The paper concludes that insufficient financial and organisational resources, insufficient engagement of managers, inadequate collaboration between representatives and managers, and weak energy renovation of multi-family buildings are some of the most important problems faced by co-owners’ representatives.

Residential segregation in a radically changing urban context: experiences from Belgrade

ABSTRACT This article examines the historical perspective of residential segregation in Belgrade and addresses the contextual factors responsible for the dynamics of this segregation. The article considers the decline in social status from the centre to the periphery as the main feature of citywide segregation in Belgrade, along with perpetuated peripheral informality. It also examines the impact of large-scale socialist estates, which were intended to contribute to an egalitarian society and counteract residential segregation. To examine the long-term patterns of residential segregation in Belgrade, we use a combination of sources and research approaches, due to the incomparability and lack of statistical data. Recent changes in segregation patterns during the first two decades of the post-socialist period were additionally analysed at the census-unit level, using data on the education of the population as a proxy for their social status.

Between the Balkans and Central Europe: Celebrity chefs, national culinary identity and the post-socialist elite in Slovenia

This article explores the construction of a national and supra-national culinary identity in Slovenia in the decades since its independence from Yugoslavia through the TV chefs Valentina and Luka Novak’s celebrity cookbooks. As they cook for the nation, they establish the idea of what is to be “Slovene” in post-socialism. Based on an analysis of the spin-off cookbooks from their popular TV series Love through the Stomach broadcast on Slovene television from 2009 to 2014, the paper discusses their complex navigation between various aspects of Slovenia’s history, as the chefs distance the cuisine from its Yugoslav past and explicitly reorient its food culture toward Central Europe. In doing this, they reflect and reinforce larger discourse shifts that have been taking place in Slovenia since the 1980s and through which its political and media elites prepared the ground for Slovenia’s entry to the EU in 2004, distancing themselves from its “Balkan” neighbors and embracing its European essence. This paper shows how such shifts can be reflected in culinary texts, such as cookbooks, contributing to the understanding of everyday food texts as political texts. The paper also demonstrates the role of the Slovene middle-class elite as culinary trendsetters in the post-socialist period.

From degradation to potential urban regeneration? Residents’ perspectives on a historical neighbourhood in Timişoara, Romania

Recent studies have indicated that residents’ perceptions on urban neighbourhoods are a multidimensional indicator that refers to an individual’s perception of their own position in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns in various social contexts. Our article makes theoretical and empirical contributions to discussions on the perceptions of residents of a historic neighbourhood and how they experience changes in the the context of postsocialist period. Using a questionnaire launched to Timişoara residents (N=480), in the historic district of Fabric, the findings of our study indicate that the degradation of historical buildings, the living space and living conditions are the main causes of dissatisfaction on the part of residents. Although the advantages of the Fabric neighbourhood are its historical heritage and the central location in Timisoara, the state of decay of the historical buildings and the lack of safety are among the major problems of the neighbourhood identified in the narratives of the respondents.