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State socialist Hungary undertook historically unparalleled action to satisfy the health needs of its population. To support its efforts, it recognized in its constitution the protection of health as an essential state task and, later, a right to health. Although formulated as a right of citizens, the right to health was not available to enfranchise the individual. Instead, it expressed common social needs, as well as the responsibility and the institutional obligation of the socialist state to take care of those needs. This emphasis on needs over individual rights had a crucial impact on the implementation of the right to health. Contemporary and retrospective policy and sociological analyses reveal that the healthcare system in state socialist Hungary left the individual exposed to institutional and professional interests within the health system, and their vulnerability as a patient was regularly exploited.

This essay examines the investigation of high-ranking Security Office officer Jan Tataj during increasing numbers of internal purges in Stalinist Poland. Although the starting point for the investigation was provided by “inconsistencies” in Tataj’s curriculum vitae, the investigating officers of the Security Office soon declared his acquaintance with two young women to be the main subject of the entire proceedings. Since both women had previous ties to the anti-communist resistance, it was insinuated that they had used their acquaintance with Tataj for espionage purposes, and thus the Security Office accused Tataj of a lack of vigilance toward these women. Both Tataj and the two women were eventually sentenced to several years of imprisonment by the Military Tribunal in Warsaw after a year-long investigation. The paper primarily analyzes the extent to which the investigating officers considered the two women dangerous because of their gender in the context of contemporary images of women (co-)created by the Stalinist regime, and how incriminating evidence of Tataj’s lack of “vigilance” was generated in this context.

More than three decades after the collapse of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, local urban processes are still very often associated with that historic period or post-socialist transformation. This article aims to undermine the concept of the post-socialist city itself as reductionist, given the crucial importance of factors that differ from the influence of the pre-1989/91 times. The article confronts the discussion on the applicability of the post-socialist framework with field research conducted in selected Polish and Ukrainian cities, in particular the examples of the Kvity Ukrainy (Flowers of Ukraine) protest movement in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the 2003 spatial planning reform’s results in Krakow, Poland. The analysis is based on interviews with representatives of different actors involved in the policymaking process, such as local government representatives, policy advisors, urban planners, journalists, business circles, and members of grassroots initiatives.

The literature about the ex-state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe raised the questions in what way women benefited from the legislation guaranteeing equal rights and the measures of emancipation during the decades of state socialism. The authors that also argued after 1990, the time of the social, economic and political transitions in the region, that women became the big losers of the changes. The paper aims to reflect on these examinations of gender relations during the state-socialist period and point out the contradictory ways of the introduction of women’s emancipation that led to ambiguous results in the propagated program of gender equality. Furthermore it discusses in which ways women’s positions remained subordinated and how the sexist representations of women increased in public life, the media and culture in Hungary after the 1970’s. A review of the main findings of earlier research accumulated so far concerning women’s lifes and gender relations in Hungary during state socialism will be followed by the question of in what ways these controversies of the system were articulated by the contemporary oppositional voices. Did the activists of the dissident Hungarian democratic opposition embrace the ideas of feminism and women’s issues in their criticism of the one-party system? On the base of contemporary documents and recent interviews with ex-activists it will be examined how feminist voices were articulated, yet controversially marginalized among the dissidents.

The purpose of the study is to present Hungary’s first project related to today’s co-housing model in many ways, and which was thus ahead of its time in terms of its social, technical, and economic aspects. The building was completed in 1979 at the initiative of architecture students in Miskolc, Northern Hungary, where young engineers were needed due to the forced industrialization of state socialism. For this reason, the city administration of the era accepted the novel initiative of a university architectural community and built the so-called Collective House, which created the framework for a form of housing previously unknown in Hungary. In addition to the unique use of space, the building was experimental in several ways, including the plans being prepared within the framework of participation, with the involvement of later movers. In addition, panel technology was used for the structure of the building, which until then was mainly typical for the construction of monotonous 5-10-story panel apartment buildings.

A critical reflection on the current state of research into the history of the production of geographical knowledge during the period of state socialism is presented in this report. Using the example of the Czechoslovak administrative reform from 1949, several questionable aspects of current interpretations are identified. In particular, the problematic use of three crucial concepts in the study of the history of geography: time (a politics of memory); space (spatial imaginations); and geographical knowledge. Examples of approaches to each concept are presented, which can overcome the insufficiencies and contribute to a better understanding of the mutual relations between state socialism and the production of geographical knowledge. Research into the history of geography during the period of state socialism is important both to understand the current state of ‘post-socialist’ national geographies, and to add to the production of an inclusive history of global geography. One necessary condition is, however, to leave the current descriptive and encyclopaedic styles, which are marked with ahistoricism and presentism. In contrast, it is essential that the history of geography during the period of the state socialism become a serious issue, which is analysed through critical and reflexive approaches.

ČÍŽOVÁ, Júlia – ĎURČO, Michal. Positive Deviance in 1980s Czechoslovakia: The Case of the Bratislava Environmental Movement. Historický časopis, 2022, 70, 3, pp. 461–486, Bratislava. 1980s Czechoslovakia provides the backdrop for an emergence of an approach to social change conceptualized within sociology as positive deviance. The term is used to describe individuals and communities which defy negative behaviour patterns in society. The Normalization period in Czechoslovakia was generally characterized by passivity and reluctance to engage in public matters. It was within this atmosphere that the so-called “islands of positive deviance” became antidotes to general resignation and proved to be hotbeds of citizen activism, later paving the way for the emergence of civil society. One such example of activism within the setting of devastated nature in Slovakia was the Slovak environmental movement formally constituted under the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Protectors (SZOPK). The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors leading up to the transformation of an official, state-controlled organization into a well-respected social movement. Due to the broad scope of their pursuits, the paper mainly focuses on activities which raised their public profile and contributed to the spread of positive behaviour patterns in society.

This paper seeks to outline recent trends in historical research on disability during state socialism in Eastern Europe. In doing so, it explores how an emerging generation of historians have investigated various aspects of disability in Eastern Europe before 1989 and raises the question of whether there was a distinct experience of disability under state socialism. Drawing on studies published in English and German, the paper traces both Soviet discourses and practices after 1917 and Central and Eastern European trajectories after 1945. It argues that disability policies and expert discourses were informed by a productivist logic as a governing strategy to increase work capacity and to integrate the disabled into socialist society. The paper concludes by discussing the need for a transnational, comparative approach for conceptualising how disability was construed during communism in Eastern Europe.

The aim of the Hungarian state socialist regime to renew the operetta art manifested in the transformation of operetta-playing via the setting of its main cultural objectives. Once private theatre organizations were disbanded in 1949, newly written and composed operetta pieces had to be adjusted to meet the expectations cultivated by those responsible for the drawing up of the contemporary cultural policies, not only in terms of theme, subject, and dramaturgy but also, as productions designed for stage performance. At that time, questions regarding the realm of operetta dance and choreography arose as significant professional issues. The remarkable case of operetta dance was brought to the notice of the larger professional community by an article written by choreographer Ágnes Roboz, which was published in 1952 in the Táncművészet magazine (1951). Due to its professional nature, this magazine served as a suitable platform for the discussion of the operetta dance genre. The present study reflects upon its publications from the period between 1952 and 1956. Throughout these years, 16 articles discussing the categorization of operettas were published. I aimed to analyze these primary sources according to their genre before presenting, juxtaposing, and contextualizing them. Thus, my objective is to gain a thorough understanding and comprehensive overview of professional discussions and arguments over 1950s operetta dances and choreographies.

Analysing the output of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior’s own film studio, which produced educational films between 1955 and 1989, this essay investigates the modes in which the border zone was represented during the decades of state socialism. Considering the vicinity of the border as an area, where ideological confrontations are battled out, the article argues that there is a significant difference between the films produced in the 1950-60s, and those from the mid-1960s onwards. The earlier pieces depict an emotionally charged border zone the defence of which is a social-political duty: father-type superiors teach rookie soldiers about this obligation in coming-of-age stories. However, from the mid-1960s onwards, the films seem to confine themselves to an instrumental mode of persuasion, which presents border protection as a merely technical question. The article briefly ties these shifts to the changing modes in official discourses during the decades of state socialist Hungary.

The aim of this article is to show examples of feminist art in relation to contemporary gender policies and political situation in socialist Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to the 1980s. Czechoslovak gender policies that enabled women to access employment opportunities in the 1950s simultaneously led to their high over-employment that was not resolved during the period of state socialism. The conflicting relationship between the role of mother and working woman therefore became one of the main topics of the feminist art production of that time.

Self-help housing has been proposed as a solution to provide qualitatively adequate and affordable housing not only nowadays, but also during the late state socialism in the 1970s and 1980s in the former Czechoslovakia. In this article, we focus on how the self-help housing provision was during that era linked with the responsibilisation of households, a technique of governance usually associated with neoliberal regimes. On the case of self-help housing construction in town Myjava, which was supported by local authorities and initiated by local company eager to attract workers, we show then eventually main burden for management and risks steaming from the construction was carried by the individuals and their (extended) families. Seemingly the ideological contradiction of this individualistic solution was resolved through rigorous standardization of construction projects, which enabled to maintain a self-help housing as one of the regime’s tools for solving the housing question. We argue that in this respect, in the shift of responsibility from the formal institutions to the individuals, the housing system displays continuity between the late socialist and capitalist regimes, thus contributing to emerging body of literature which problematise the strict dichotomy between the socialist and capitalist eras.

The article introduces a monothematic issue of Studia Ethnologica Pragensia by positing “kutilství” (a local variant of DIY) as a historically situated phenomenon and shows that despite a generally shared image of a late socialist, typically masculine handyman practice, “kutilství” has much deeper historical and cultural roots. The emergence of self-led manual activities as a response to the modernisation of society points to societal tensions that underpin “kutilství” (and DIY more broadly) since the beginning of the 20th century. The disciplination of independent production and consumption, which can be subsumed under the term “prosumption”, has played an important role in relation to the formation of both State and Market, especially the segment targeting DIYers. The authors elucidate how pondering “kutilství” and DIY in general can become a starting point for scholars to understand and challenge modernist dichotomies that are transcended in the practice of “kutilství” / DIY — dichotomies of work and leisure, market and non-market production as well as production and consumption, professionalization and amateurism, but also masculinity and femininity. The authors argue that situatedness of and hybridization enabled by “kutilství” should represent key axes of research of both “kutilství” and DIY and the theorization(s) derived from it.

Denying free travel abroad and back to one’s homeland represented an integral part of the communist regime’s authoritarian control in socialist Czechoslovakia. In this context, people who were allowed to travel abroad were in a privileged position. Paper concentrates on the experiences of people who “stayed at home”: the partners and children of workers who were able to travel and work abroad. The analysis of interviews with seafarers’ wives show a strong reproduction of gender stereotypes in these families. This fact is questioned very little by both men and women, because in the seafarer’s profession provided these families with a specific sort of luxury and uniqueness, bringing them considerable benefits that distinguished these people from the majority of the population.

Józef Robakowski is a prolific experimental artist who has worked across multiple media including experimental photography, film and video, video installation, video performance, experimental television, artistic documentation, curating and other activities from the 1960s to the present. Recent publications have shed some light on the Polish Workshop of Film Form he was a founding member of but it is still necessary to underline Robakowski’s distinctive contribution to this collective project. Moreover his creative activity has extended well beyond this and has as much to do with the creative use of video, which he pioneered in Poland from the 1970s, in a creative trajectory that calls into question stable distinctions between film, television and video. While his early video work can be characterised as having largely formalist concerns with the nascent medium, its evolution via video performances points to dimensions beyond any mere medium specific formalism. Significantly, across all his work there is an attention to the relations between energy and technical images, that gives both these aspects of his work consistency. This article will present several examples of Robakowski’s works, as well as several of Robakowski’s artistic statements which taken together articulate an approach to artistic practice that is non-illusionary and bio-technical-energetic, drawing on and extending the legacies of avant-garde precursors into the contemporary multi-media digital present.

This article examines two Polish films from the 1980s, Wielka majówka (“The Big Picnic”, 1981) directed by Krzysztof Rogulski and Czuję się świetnie (“I Feel Great”, 1984) directed by Waldemar Szarek, which cast Maanam, one of the most popular Polish bands of that period. I present these films in the context of a dominant representation of artists in Eastern European cinema and of Polish Romanticism, which endows artists with a specific role, arguing that this approach is to some extent different to what we typically observe in western biopics. Together, these two films show that while in the 1980s filmmakers in Poland recognized the commercial potential of using rock music and rock stars in films, they were not fully aware of the advantages of making biopics according to the western formula or did not care about these advantages.

This paper explores injustices experienced by disabled people in the postsocialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theory of social justice, the analysis proposes a ‘matrix’ that reveals the negative impact of two factors – state socialist legacy and postsocialist neoliberalization – on disabled people’s parity of participation in three dimensions of justice – economic redistribution, cultural recognition, and political representation. The legacy of state socialism has underpinned: segregated service provision; medical-productivist understanding of disability for assessment purposes; denial of disability on everyday level; and weak disability organizing. Neoliberal restructuring has resulted in: retrenchment of disability support through decentralization, austerity, and workfare; stigmatization of ‘dependency’ through the discourse of ‘welfare dependency’; responsibilization of disabled people; and depoliticization of disability organizations by restricting their activities to service provision and incorporating them in structures of tokenistic participation. The analysis is informed by reports and academic studies of disability in the postsocialist region.

Obviously, we face an economic crisis that dominates the headlines of daily newspapers, academic journals and features as the title of TV-and-radio casts alike. And, not withstanding political differences, there is widespread consensus that the economic crisis is only the tip of an iceberg. However, there is little readiness to go beyond the inherited fundamental assumptions of a “modern industrial capitalist market society”. The article argues that all the categories are increasingly under threat. The social quality, the quality of life and the noosphere paradigm of global social development offer space for considerations that question societal developments not only on the phenomenological level. Instead, the authors ventilate gnoseological, ontological and axiological prerequisites of sustainable global social development. The noosphere paradigm is enriched with the theories of social quality and the quality of life, thus contributing to the wider and diverse debates on what can be called people's humanistic socialism. In view of the complexity of the impending transition from the present to a future global society with people’s humanistic socialism, it is necessary to plan it thoroughly, beginning with the support of the processes and institutions that currently provide a seedbed; developing new transformational forms of the future features of global society has to go hand in hand with this. It makes sense to carry on with the conceptualization of questions bearing on the formation of nooshpheric social quality and its design.

The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women’s transnationalism and women’s agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned and socialist genealogies of women’s activism expressed during the meeting, the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production needs to be revisited, in order to encompass multiple forms of women’s political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of women’s individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan’s and Vida Tomšič’s stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that women’s political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which included both the refusal and the acceptance of women’s activism within existing national and international institutions.

In academic writing, facts about the past generally require the citation of relevant sources unless the fact or idea is considered “common knowledge:” bits of information or dates upon which there is a wide scholarly consensus. This brief article reflects on the use of “common knowledge” claims in contemporary scholarship about women, families, and sexuality as experienced during 20th century, East European, state socialist regimes. We focus on several key stereotypes about the communist state and the situation of women that are often asserted in the scholarly literature, and argue that many of these ideas uncannily resemble American anti-communist propaganda. When contemporary scholars make claims about communist intrusions into the private sphere to effect social engineering or the inefficacy of state socialist mass organizations or communist efforts to break up the family or indoctrinate the young, they often do so without citation to previous sources or empirical evidence supporting their claims, thereby suggesting that such claims are “common knowledge.” We believe that those wishing to assert such claims should link these assertions to concrete originating sources, lest it turn out the “common knowledge” derives, in fact, from western Cold War rhetoric.

The article ponders upon the potentially discriminative attitude towards Orthodox identity as a comparative impediment towards socioeconomic progress in 12 countries where such identity is believed to be shared by the majority, developed in political economists’ academic discourse. The current data provide no confident or decisive evidence for judgments of this kind. One might look at other sources for modern Orthodox nations’ relatively laggard development pattern.

How can social inequality in state socialist societies be framed conceptually? The article discusses issues of writing the history of societies under communist dictatorship in view of recent sociological approaches and ties in with debates about the relationship between the social sciences and historiography. It traces intended and unintended patterns of social advantages and disadvantages, discourses on ‘privileges’ and ‘proletarian egalitarianism’ as well as social dynamics in the run-up to the system transformations at the end of the 1980s. With a special emphasis on the case of East Germany, the article highlights the ‘intersectional’ distribution of poverty and wealth in terms of monetary income, mechanisms of bureaucratic allotments and ‘grey market’ effects. It argues that the roots of postcommunist inequalities after 1989/90 are to be found in social differentiations that evolved in late state socialism. ∗ ∗ ∗ Wie lässt sich soziale Ungleichheit in staatssozialistischen Gesellschaften konzeptionell fassen? Der Beitrag stützt sich auf neuere Ungleichheitskonzepte der Soziologie und führt die Debatte um das Verhältnis von Sozial- und Geschichtswissenschaften fort – im Hinblick auf aktuelle Fragen einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der kommunistischen Diktaturen. Diskutiert werden die gewollten und ungewollten Verteilungen sozialer Vor- und Nachteile, die innergesellschaftlichen Diskurse über „Privilegien“ und „arbeiterlichen Egalitarismus“ sowie die sozialen Dynamiken im Vorfeld der Systemtransformationen Ende der 1980er-Jahre. Besonders am Beispiel der DDR zeigt der Aufsatz die „intersektionale“ Verteilung von Armut und Reichtum nach Einkommen, bürokratischen Mechanismen und Effekten des „grauen“ Marktes. Eine weiterführende These lautet: Es gab einen engen Zusammenhang zwischen der sozialen Differenzierung im späten Staatssozialismus vor 1989/90 und der „Verungleichung“ danach.

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on the processes of residential differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw during the era of state socialism. It identifies the housing types that were part of the housing provision regime at different periods of the socialist era, and discusses the inequalities in access to them, examining how they affected the development of the socio-spatial pattern. The study finds that despite the egalitarian ideology of socialism, the socialist housing provision system produced several socio-occupational residential differentiations. Sometimes these were the direct result of projects conducted by the public sector itself; there were inequalities in access to public rental housing. Sometimes these were a result of the toleration of, or support for, differentiation in co-operative and owner-occupied housing. Furthermore, the study finds that there was continuity in the appreciation of some residential areas. Therefore, developments during socialism did not always challenge the capitalist past, but rather actually often continued its socio-spatial patterns, especially within inner city areas

This article focuses on the recently deceased Maltese socialist leader Dom Mintoff (1916-2012) and his introduction of a scheme that was intended to change higher education and develop it ostensibly on socialist lines but, in effect, in a manner intended to facilitate the country’s transition from mercantile capitalism to that of productive industrial development. The scheme he introduced, with its immediate socialist echoes but which warrants more careful scrutiny to unveil both its contradictions and real economic purpose, was the Worker-Student scheme, arguably Mintoff’s original, albeit much decried and controversial, contribution to higher education thinking. In this paper, I will take a look at the main issues surrounding the concept of the worker-student scheme and the way they were put into practice during the scheme’s almost ten year period of existence (1978-1987). I shall analyse them in the context of the Malta Labour Party’s then professed socialist politics. What are the contradictions and consistencies regarding what have come to be regarded as key concepts in a socialist politics of education?

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on the processes of residential differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw during the era of state socialism. It identifies the housing types that were part of the housing provision regime at different periods of the socialist era, and discusses the inequalities in access to them, examining how they affected the development of the socio-spatial pattern. The study finds that despite the egalitarian ideology of socialism, the socialist housing provision system produced several socio-occupational residential differentiations. Sometimes these were the direct result of projects conducted by the public sector itself; there were inequalities in access to public rental housing. Sometimes these were a result of the toleration of, or support for, differentiation in co-operative and owner-occupied housing. Furthermore, the study finds that there was continuity in the appreciation of some residential areas. Therefore, developments during socialism did not always challenge the capitalist past, but rather actually often continued its socio-spatial patterns, especially within inner city areas

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on the processes of residential differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw during the era of state socialism. It identifies the housing types that were part of the housing provision regime at different periods of the socialist era, and discusses the inequalities in access to them, examining how they affected the development of the socio-spatial pattern. The study finds that despite the egalitarian ideology of socialism, the socialist housing provision system produced several socio-occupational residential differentiations. Sometimes these were the direct result of projects conducted by the public sector itself; there were inequalities in access to public rental housing. Sometimes these were a result of the toleration of, or support for, differentiation in co-operative and owneroccupied housing. Furthermore, the study finds that there was continuity in the appreciation of some residential areas. Therefore, developments during socialism did not always challenge the capitalist past, but rather actually often continued its sociospatial patterns, especially within inner city areas

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on the processes of residential differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw during the era of state socialism. It identifies the housing types that were part of the housing provision regime at different periods of the socialist era, and discusses the inequalities in access to them, examining how they affected the development of the socio-spatial pattern. The study finds that despite the egalitarian ideology of socialism, the socialist housing provision system produced several socio-occupational residential differentiations. Sometimes these were the direct result of projects conducted by the public sector itself; there were inequalities in access to public rental housing. Sometimes these were a result of the toleration of, or support for, differentiation in co-operative and owner-occupied housing. Furthermore, the study finds that there was continuity in the appreciation of some residential areas. Therefore, developments during socialism did not always challenge the capitalist past, but rather actually often continued its socio-spatial patterns, especially within inner city areas

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the age of life history archives with a wider access for the social scientists is only coming. However, secondary analysis of qualitative data is not limited to documents that are stored in public archives. It happens quite often that researchers make use of an interview transcript, or a part of it, which has originally been gathered for a different occasion. Thus, they use these data for studying new topics that are sometimes far from the original research questions and objectives. In this paper we discuss some methodological problems arising from such practice. We show that, on one hand, the ethnomethodological perspective is especially demanding on the quality and the pinpoint accuracy of transcripts and the descriptions of the interviews by which the narratives were elicited (field memos). On the other hand, however, the ethnomethodological perspective orients scholars to formulate their research objectives according to what the data itself offers. The methodological problems related to the re-use of data can hardly be resolved in advance and on a general level. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0003248

Following the swift demise of the state-socialist regime in 1989, a profound transformation of family and fertility patterns has taken place in the Czech Republic. Family formation has been postponed and period fertility rates have fallen to very low levels, especially among young adults. Unmarried cohabitation has become relatively widespread and marriages have been progressively delayed or even foregone. These rapid shifts in family-related behaviour were primarily driven by a period change and resulted in a sharp discontinuity in cohort patterns of union formation and childbearing. We argue that the rapid change in family-related behaviour after 1990 was driven by a fundamental shift in the constraints and incentives for childbearing, which was conducive to later and more carefully planned family formation. The rapidity of observed changes can be explained as the outcome of a simultaneous occurrence of several factors, especially the expansion of higher education, the emergence of new opportunities competing with family life, increasing job competition, rising economic uncertainty in young adulthood, and changing partnership behaviour.