Socialist Context Research Articles

‘Dionysian Socialism?’: The Korčula Summer School as Kurort of the New Left

Abstract This article explores and analyses several remarkable parallels between two unique cultural spaces, namely, that of the Korčula Summer School and that of the Kurorte – the Grand Spas of Central Europe. Though distinct from one another with respect to their historical as well as topographical locations within Europe, it is as cultural spaces that the two share their least apparent – but perhaps most significant – points of affinity. Just as Baden-Baden had served as the ‘summer capital of Europe’ for one set of cultural elites across political, linguistic and national boundaries, so did Korčula offer a space for cultural and intellectual exchange for philosophers from both sides of the Cold War. The article demonstrates how both of these spaces were marked by their shared internationalism, their political engagement, their privilege, their respective distance from daily social orders, and their intellectual intensity. Thus, it is suggested that Central-European Kurort culture – commonly considered a belle-époque phenomenon – did indeed survive the Great Wars, and found new expressions in a post-war, socialist context.

CIAM and Its Outcomes

CIAM, the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, founded by a coalition of European architects in 1928, was an international forum for new ideas about the urban design of housing and cities in an emerging socialist context. Its most influential concepts were the Existenzminimum, the small family housing unit affordable on a minimum wage income and the focus on CIAM 2, 1929; the design of housing settlements of such units, the focus of CIAM 3, 1930; and the Functional City, the idea that entire cities should be designed or redesigned on this basis. This article briefly explains these ideas and considers some of their subsequent outcomes.

Soviet Empire, Childhood, and Education

Los niños constituyeron un elemento clave del proyecto de construcción del imperio soviético, la reconfiguración de la infancia y la remodelación del espacio colonial en sí. Los niños de diferentes etnias en los territorios de las repúblicas soviéticas debían estar unidos por el idioma ruso y por un sentimiento de patriotismo soviético, manifiesto en lemas políticos como la "amistad de todos", la "igualdad interétnica" y el "internacionalismo". El currículum educativo y las actividades se utilizaron para facilitar la "fusión" social y cultural de todos los grupos étnicos sobre la base del idioma y la cultura rusa soviética. Al mismo tiempo, el imperio soviético promulgó la idea de la "unidad en la diversidad", permitiendo a las minorías nacionales el derecho a la autodeterminación y cierta autonomía política dentro de un contexto socialista. Basándose en la teoría postcolonial y los estudios de geografía crítica, este artículo analiza cómo se usaron los libros de texto de alfabetización temprana para moldear la infancia soviética mediante la regularización de las mentes, los cuerpos y los hábitos de los niños, así como "ubicándolos" en el espacio y el tiempo del imperio. El artículo proporciona un breve contexto histórico del proyecto de construcción del imperio soviético, seguido de un análisis internacional de los libros de texto de alfabetización temprana publicados en Rusia, Armenia, Letonia y Ucrania. Nuestro objetivo es resaltar las continuidades, contradicciones y rupturas en la visión de la infancia soviética —y el futuro soviético de manera más amplia—, viajando desde el centro del Imperio (Moscú) a sus periferias geográficamente diversas (Armenia, Letonia y Ucrania).

Beyond ideological platitudes: socialism and psychiatry in Eastern Europe

For both contemporaneous commentators and historians, psychiatry within what was Communist Europe has largely been discussed through the prism of politics and ideology. Recently, scholars have begun to debate the extent to which psychiatric practices within post-WWII Eastern Europe were beholden to the ideological aspirations of the political elite. This paper enters into these debates by suggesting the need for more nuance in how historians analyse the relationship between ideology and psychiatry in this context. Specifically, it argues that there is a need to differentiate between psychiatric practices that were socialist by design—where professional knowledge was theoretically guided by ideological considerations—and those that were socialist by default—where practices were shaped by the socialist context without being meaningfully inspired by ideology. In order to demonstrate these distinctions, this paper reflects upon psychiatric developments within Communist Yugoslavia (1945–1991). By drawing a clearer distinction between “socialist by design” and “socialism by default”, it becomes easier to reconnect Eastern Europe to the broader historiography of twentieth century psychiatry, while simultaneously providing new insights into the experience of state-sponsored Communism.

Feminist Translations in a Socialist Context: The Case of Yugoslavia

Feminist Translations in a Socialist Context: The Case of Yugoslavia

Saint, Celebrity, and the Self(ie): Body Politics in Late Socialist Vietnam

This article examines a series of media events occurring during General Vo Nguyen Giap's death that shine the spotlight on politics of the body in the public arena. The author's analysis focuses on the general's corpse, its connection to the larger body politic of the Vietnamese nation, and its symbolic and practical ties to the bodies of other common citizens. The author frames these interlinked relationships as “body politics,” a process in which the interaction of corporeal bodies in public spaces and their representations by channels of mass media would subject the national body politic to bottom-up contestations as well as reactionary responses. The study of media and its relationship to structures of feeling offers ways to evaluate the multiplicity of readings people have for parading bodies in both democratic and socialist contexts. As old communist leaders whose personal biographies lend legitimacy to the incumbent political order pass away, new figures come to the forefront of public consciousness manifesting as the “people-as-many.” Late socialism is thus seen as a cultural battlefield in which traditional media comes into friction with new media with regard to state censorship, ownership, and control over national ideologies. What we call “politics” and “resistance” are not necessarily concerted and motivated series of actions by specific actors but instead occur at particular conjunctures when public engagement with media stimulates forms of cultural friction across a spectrum of ideological and social relations. General Giap's funeral offers a useful case study about the interaction between traditional and new media and their political implications in present-day Vietnam, which has broader connections to the study of censorship, political subjectivities, and nationalism elsewhere in the digital era.

Paranoid Readings and Ambivalent Allegories in Cuban Cinema

This article examines the changing dynamics of censorship and social criticism in revolutionary Cuban cinema in order to make a case for studying allegory not as a mode whose meanings analysts should (or should not) reveal but, rather, as a contested social process. From the 1960s on, Cuban filmmakers turned to allegory as a means of resisting the reduction of art to propaganda and articulating more ambivalent takes on the Cuban Revolution. Yet spectators steeped in the political binaries of the Cold War often reduced films to arguments for or against socialism. Such paranoid readings have only grown more complex in the post-Soviet era, as changing strategies of state power, a growing orientation toward the global market, and the increasing availability of digital technologies enable more open criticism of the state in art and render criticism itself suspect. Drawing on this case study, this article argues that both depth models of interpretation and debates about “paranoid” or “symptomatic readings” fail to account for the social and political dynamics of texts. To understand how allegory and paranoid readings shape public debate and representation, we must examine how artists and audiences themselves mobilize the mode. This is especially true for Global South, state socialist, and authoritarian contexts, where traditions of political engagement through art, practices of skirting censorship through aesthetic indirection, and demands for depictions of the nation imposed by international art worlds foster practices of reading between the lines for hidden meanings in ways that sometimes cooperate with and sometimes work against artists’ aesthetic and political goals.

Semiotics and urban culture: architectural projections of structuralism in a socialist context

ABSTRACTThe paper studies the relations between architecture, urbanism and structural anthropology, and makes a contribution to the interpretation of how the architects of former Yugoslavia translated structuralism into architectural theory and practice as a means of reading and shaping Yugoslav culture in the context of radical socio-political change. In striving for freedom of opinion, expression, communication and action, and autonomy of scientific and cultural practices, the Yugoslav society through its avant-garde cultural role initiated a shift of focus in urban culture towards semiotics, historicity, dialectics, creativity, criticism and a revival of the humanistic values of traditional culture. From this viewpoint, the paper examines the interests in theory and practice of the most influential Yugoslav architects in the context of structuralism: Mutnjaković, Neidhardt, Grabrijan, Bogdanović and Delalle. Their theoretical approaches effected a change of functionalist principles and values and advocated the return of values of the old city centre and vernacular architecture, specifically its vitality, symbolism, historical continuity, environmental values and diverse urban forms.

Community development through agroecotourism in Cuba: an application of the community capitals framework

ABSTRACTThis study explores the relationship between a Cuban organipónico, an urban, organic cooperative farm, and the surrounding community, particularly in regard to increasing agroecotourism. This was examined through the community capitals framework which allows for the use of a systems approach to inventory and analyse assets and wealth stocks within the community. Individual interviews were conducted in the summer of 2013 with members of the farm cooperative to explore the relationship between the farm and the community, and the way tourism to the farm has improved community capitals. Overall, this study demonstrated the ability for agroecotourism to help support goals of food security, beyond acting only as a tool for economic diversification, but also by influencing other community capitals. The study also adds to the literature on agroecotourism, tourism development in socialist contexts, and the way in which tourism can help support and grow sustainable agriculture.

An ‘excess of the normal’: Luxury and difference in Polish fur critique

This article calls upon fieldwork carried out in Kraków in order to analyse charges of ‘luxury’ in Polish fur critique. It draws from commentary both from ‘card-carrying’ members of Polish animal rights organizations and comparatively off-the-cuff remarks of those reflecting on fur’s provocativeness, without participating in the animal rights movement. In Central and Eastern European socialist and postsocialist contexts alike, luxury has often held a dialectical relationship with ‘normality’. The article argues that the meaning of luxury that emerges in Polish fur critique can be aptly described as ‘an excess of the normal’. Power, with which fur is frequently associated, is conceptualized not only as residing in the hands of elites but in the ‘normal’ and normalizing material culture that fur embodies. The ‘visibility’ of fur as outdoor clothing is critical in this regard. In discussing fur’s luxuriousness, themes of gendered and generational power and of the shortcomings of ethical consumption as a mode of political resistance come to the fore.

Contesting Street Spaces in a Socialist City: Itinerant Vending-Scapes and the Everyday Politics of Mobility in Hanoi, Vietnam

In 2008, Hanoi's municipal government banned street vending from numerous sites, significantly delineating and redefining access to urban space. The ban privileges certain forms of movement by designating streets and sidewalks for the fluid movements of “modern” transportation, rather than the staccato “traditional” mobilities of street vendors who stop frequently to ply their trade. In this article, we explore the everyday mobilities of Hanoi's vendors in light of this ban, focusing on the careful negotiations vendors undertake to secure rights to the city's streets and highlighting how vendor mobilities are socially, politically, and culturally produced and reworked. We combine Cresswell's six facets of mobility with Kerkvliet's everyday politics to form a hybrid everyday politics of mobility. In doing so we highlight vendors' daily experiences of mobility and the politics affecting itinerant vendors compared to their stationary counterparts. Based on eight months of fieldwork in Hanoi, incorporating interviews, mobile ethnographic methods, and vendor journaling, this article contributes an in-depth examination into the politics of (im)mobility in the Global South, considering how mobility is framed and produced in a distinctly socialist context. By focusing on the everyday politics of vending in Hanoi and the tactics undertaken to carve out mobilities in the urban landscape, we illustrate these vendors' daily lived realities as well as their connections with and contestations of local, regional, and global political–economic systems. We find mobility is a mechanism of resistance, as vendors strive to maintain mobile livelihoods despite threats of state sanctions and exclusion.

"Active and Conscious Builders of Communism": State-Sponsored Tourism for Soviet Adolescents in the Early Cold War, 1945-53

This article examines state-sponsored tourism for Soviet adolescents during the post-World War II years of Stalin’s rule, 1945–1953, a topic not explored in any depth within scholarship on the USSR, despite the surprising degree of importance ascribed to this area by the authorities. Through adopting the lens of tourism studies and childhood and youth studies, the essay enriches our understanding of Soviet postwar society, particularly the overt official endeavors to forge model young citizens and the covert efforts to legitimize the political system, encourage natalism, and spread the Soviet model throughout the world via Cold War public diplomacy. Finding striking convergences and illuminating disparities between the approaches of different political and social structures to young people and their leisure time, this piece advances our understanding of the ways that modern societies maintain and reproduce themselves, or fail to do so. Furthermore, the essay considers matters of broader humanistic relevance, such as the mobilization of emotions for government purposes and the politicization of childhood and youthhood. It compares the Soviet case study to authoritarian and democratic western states and uses the socialist context of the postwar Soviet Union to enrich and add nuance to current scholarly models, based overwhelmingly on case studies of western settings that undercount the importance of state organs.

Book Review: Advertising, Sex, and Post-socialism: Women, Media, and Femininity in the Balkans, by Elza Ibroscheva

Advertising, Sex, and Post-socialism: Women, Media, and Femininity in the Balkans. Elza Ibroscheva. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013. 174 pp. $65.00 hbk.If you saw an advertisement of a woman stripping from her professional, business attire down to her bare chest, what would you predict was the purpose of the advertisement? To sell lingerie? Perhaps to promote a pay-per-view film? But what if the woman was a politician trying to secure your vote? For the Bulgarian audience, this is not difficult to imagine because this was a reality detailed by Elza Ibroscheva in Advertising, Sex, and Post-socialism.Ibroscheva is an associate professor and the director of graduate studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and she has published several articles on the por- trayal of women in the Bulgarian media. In her book, Ibroscheva examines the devel- opment of advertising and subsequent mass consumption in the Balkan region, with special attention paid to Bulgaria, and the effect advertising has had on cultural per- ceptions of sex and gender. She argues that media advertising is a powerful cultural dictator that effectively shapes gender identities and reinforces gender hierarchies, which, in the Balkan region, allows for the sexualization and commodification of women. Her case is detailed in five chapters: Sex? Please We Are Socialist; Advertising and the Economy; Liberating Women; Of Vodka, Watermelons, and Other Sexy Fruit; and Sex and Politics.Sex? Please We Are Socialist provides the reader with a comprehensive under- standing of socialist life during the Soviet era and how the media's function was to promote socialist ideals. Ibroscheva educates the reader on gender roles during the socialist regime by effortlessly weaving together concrete examples from the Balkan magazines Zhenata Dnes, Lada, and Bhozur. She describes how the party claimed gender equality, while forcing women into two archetypes: worker and mother. Because of this, women were portrayed in the media through this party-driven socialist context only and physically represented with a practical, functional appearance. Thus femininity, fashion, and sexuality were widely absent in socialist media.In Advertising and the Economy, Ibroscheva reveals how advertising functioned in socialist society by analyzing three different major newspapers pub- lished over four decades. Essentially, socialist advertising existed as a means of culti- vating culture and driving practical consumption. ideologues recognized the need for consumption, but only promoted the consumption of necessities (in contrast to developing desire). To make clear this distinction, Western advertising was demon- ized in these newspapers because its sole goal was to improve sales for companies, drive competition, and promote excessive consumption.These earlier chapters may be considered the foundation for the argument Ibroscheva presents in Liberating Women. The marketing of femininity during the Balkans' transitional period from socialism to post-socialism (late 1970s to early 1990s) effectively shaped women's social, economic, and political positioning in society, which is still in effect today. This chapter examines multiple publications from the Balkan region, focusing on the media's depiction of gender and the growth of a budding capitalist market. During the transitional period, the public became increasingly aware of the variety of consumer choices their Western counterparts enjoyed and, as an act of rebellion, began to mass consume themselves through black markets. With women, this rebellion manifested itself as the process of consuming to enhance femininity, a stark contrast to functional consuming habits of previous gen- erations of women. The media adjusted to these changes by also featuring more feminine women in their articles and discussing the topics of beauty and fashion. This trend was seen as progressive as it gave women agency over their sexuality; however, the media's prolific promotion of femininity enforced the significance of physical beauty, essentially subscribing to traditional patriarchal conventions. …

How the Concept of Totalitarianism Appeared in Late Socialist Bulgaria: The Birth and Life of Zheliu Zhelev’s Book Fascism

Few would dispute the claim that the most significant political text--and political event--in the history of late socialism in Bulgaria was Zheliu Zhelev's Fascism. Completed around 1967 and published in 1981, the book was censored immediately after its publication for making implicit analogies between the fascist regimes and the political organization of the socialist states. Yet despite the state's attempts to limit its circulation, the book captured the political imagination of the generation of the 1980s, reordering political coordinates, eroding the legitimacy of state power, and triggering a political crisis of enormous proportions. Its author, Zheliu Zhelev, trained as a philosopher of Marxism-Leninism in the 1960s but during his graduate studies developed a liberal political perspective and became a harsh critic of the regime. Known as one of the most prominent dissident voices in the country, Zhelev took a trajectory similar to that of Vaclav Havel, becoming the first democratically elected president of Bulgaria after 1989. This article traces the trajectory and political life of Zhelev's book, the only explicitly liberal political critique of state power written and published under Bulgarian socialism. The book presents Europe's fascist states as totalitarian regimes, reproducing Western Cold War right-wing and liberal frameworks that dominated the analysis of fascist and communist societies and their political institutions for most of the second half of the 20th century. In the socialist context, however, these arguments played out in a unique way, tactically inverting some of the most central tenets of Marxism-Leninism. First, by seeing the state as a determining element of social relations, Zhelev undermined the primary status of economic and material relations with respect to the political superstructure and thus attacked the Marxist-Leninist base--superstructure model. Second, by pitting liberal democracy against fascism--and by analogy, against socialism--he radically destabilized the political coordinates of the Marxist-Leninist system, for which fascism constituted the most dangerous enemy, the most stable line of opposition. The publication of the book triggered a complex political response. On the one hand, it inflamed the repressive apparatus to such an extent that people began speaking of the next wave of re-Stalinization--in a certain way, it called into being or reignited what it aimed to expose. On the other hand, the reactions following its publication reveal a three-dimensional political spectrum that complicates any attempt to paint a picture of domination, subordination, and mass complicity in a top-down hierarchy--the very picture Zhelev puts forward in his analysis of the totalitarian state. The complexity of debates around the book calls into question widely accepted arguments about the tangential and inconsequential role of ideology in political life during socialism, as well as arguments about the apolitical or depoliticized nature of the official public sphere, as opposed to the private one, in which politics are often presumed to have been lived and experienced. (1) After 1989, however, Bulgarian dissident intellectuals were blind to such nuances: they eagerly embraced totalitarianism as their favorite analytical framework, stubbornly resisting any approaches that might provide an alternative to the picture of total ideologization, top-down, ubiquitous control, and mass repression. (2) Ironically, just as Western scholars of Soviet and socialist history worked to undo the persistent legacy of the totalitarian framework and the way its theoretical and political assumptions influenced our understanding of the modern socialist era, Zhelev's book introduced totalitarianism into late socialist Bulgaria's political and scholarly debates and shaped the liberal imaginary of critically minded communities. (3) In the last decade, much has been written on the genealogy and use of totalitarianism as an analytical framework in Soviet studies and the way it has structured our notions of socialist subjectivity, struggle, and political agency. …

Rane 1970-e i filmski slučaj Tomislava Radića

Although his early feature length works – Živa istina and Timon – created quite a stir and could be called provocative at its time (the first half of 1970s), as much as they can be considered stylistically interesting with its focus on the documentary style, Tomislav Radic can hardly be called a typical dissident, regardless of the suggestion that the politics caused the hiatus in his filmmaking (found in Ivo Skrabalo’s very influential history of Croatian cinema). He remained in the country after his initial experiences with the mainstream cinema institutions and even became a dean of the drama academy in Zagreb during socialism. Not surprisingly, after 1990 he was very close to the nationalist government and yet he became the author of the first artistically successful fiction film about the perils of (Croatian) transition – Sto je Iva snimila 21. listopada 2003. The author is in this case more ambivalent than his work, but the fact that his films mix very freely facts and fiction (in all of his best works – from the 1970s as well as the 2000s and 2010s – actually encourage analytical merging of art and the man who made it, thus making the study of dissenting and contesting figures of socialism more challenging. The insight into aspects of Radic’s work gives a very useful perspective on the complexities of working in the socialist context.

Promoting Civil Society in Contemporary Poland: Gendered Results of Institutional Changes

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing discussion concerning factors determining the development of civil society in a post-state socialist context. It examines the financial mechanisms designed to promote civic engagement in Poland, including EU grants and the so-called ‘percentage law’ that allows citizens to support NGOs of their choice with 1 % of their taxes. A detailed analysis of these mechanisms demonstrates that they are advantageous for some types of non-governmental organizations and not for others. Instead of enhancing the situation of the whole sector, they tend to support NGOs that already have substantial resources and hold a strong position vis-a-vis the state. Moreover, organizations and groups fighting for issues considered to be controversial—such as women’s NGOs advocating for the right to abortion or criticizing authorities for their lack of concern when it comes to violence against women—have limited chances to gain financial support from both the state and those sources that are independent from the state. This shows how seemingly gender-neutral institutional arrangements may bring gendered results. The following analysis is based on available statistics (several reports provided by the Klon-Jawor Association, Social Diagnosis Reports from 2007 and 2011) and qualitative data (semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis of the Polish media).

The Rise of Distrust: State Officials, Gifts and Social Hierarchy in Laos

AbstractConceptualisations of the state as a reified entity fall short in the case of socialist Laos. Foreign commentators often imagine Lao political life through a discourse of state governance, yet the Lao themselves, in popular narratives, tend to emphasise their day to day interactions with state officials. In their everyday lives, the latter are treated as individuals with which it is possible to interact. This article explores the relations between the Lao people and their government officials, and how those relations have changed in recent history (mainly since 1975). Wedding receptions – vital events in Lao social life, where power is invoked through performance and representation – are taken as case studies for the analysis of authority and legitimacy in a socialist state context.

The Communist Culture Industry: The Music Business in 1980s Poland

In the midst of authoritarian rule by the Communist Party, Poland saw rock music reach astounding popularity in the 1980s. This article uses the production of rock music in the People’s Republic of Poland as a lens to examine the tangled web of culture, economics, and politics that comprised the dynamic last decade of communist rule in Eastern Europe. It discusses how rock emerged amidst the contradictory forces at work in 1980s Poland – reform versus retrenchment, ideology versus practical necessity, and the need for change versus the inertia of the immense bureaucracy. Looking at how a production-centered approach applies to a socialist economy facilitates a consideration of what socialism was and precisely how it differed from contemporary capitalist systems, as well as to reflect on how socialist states differed from each other. Finally, this examination of the culture industry in 1980s Poland suggests a richer approach to analysis of popular culture in a socialist context. Cultural production in socialist Eastern Europe was engaged in a complex interplay with politics, but also with economics and industry conditions.

‘Everything comes down to money’?: Migration and working life trajectories in a (post-)socialist context

Using 25 life histories of Poles, this paper addresses the way in which migration has had an impact upon the trajectories of individuals’ working lives both under socialism and after 1989. In our discussion, we explore some of the connections between different waves of migration, bringing together historical and contemporary research on migration as well as engaging with current debates on post-socialism that problematize the disjuncture between socialist and post-socialist experience. Our contention here is that one way in which socialism and post-socialism might be integrated is through focusing on the experiences of individuals whose lives span these eras. We suggest that while there are continuities across the periods, there are also disjunctures created not only by the changed politico-legal context, but also through changed attitudes towards the role of migration as part of individual life trajectories.

Shortage, fuzzy property and other dead ends in the anthropological analysis of (post)socialism

The article begins with the observation that, despite almost ideal conditions, anthropological research on postsocialism has had little impact on general theoretical debates. One reason for this development, it will be argued, can be found in earlier interpretations of socialism that continue to have an effect on the field by obstructing innovative conceptualizations. The appropriation of ideas derived from neo-institutionalism by anthropologists produced analyses that found both socialism and postsocialism to be deficient. Thereby the ambivalent construction of the socialist ‘other’ allowed the general focus on economics to appear unproblematic. Following the introduction of Western institutions into formerly socialist contexts, the analytical focus shifted from old ‘different’ and ‘inefficient’ institutions to now ‘inefficient’ or at least ‘different’ actors. Taking the example of work relations, the article shows that only by overcoming these normative assumptions about the ‘other’ can anthropologists begin to question implicit knowledge and thereby open the possibility for new theorizing.