Loopholes in the Iron Curtain: Obtaining Western Music in State Socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).

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Family Planning Advice in State-Socialist Poland, 1950s–80s: Local and Transnational Exchanges

Medical History ◽

10.1017/mdh.2020.5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 64 (2) ◽

pp. 240-266

Author(s):

Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska ◽

Agata Ignaciuk

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Family Planning ◽

Birth Control ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

Reciprocal Influence ◽

Health Authorities ◽

Second World ◽

State Socialist ◽

Party State

This paper scrutinises the relations between different models of family planning advice and their evolution in Poland between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, focusing on their similarities and dissimilarities, conflicts and concordances. From 1956 onwards, the delivery of family planning advice became a priority for both the Polish Catholic Church and the party-state, especially its health authorities, which supported the foundation of the Society of Conscious Motherhood and aspired to mainstream birth control advice through the network of public well-woman clinics. As a consequence, two systems of family planning counselling emerged: the professional, secular family planning movement and Catholic pre-marital and marital counselling. We argue that reciprocal influence and emulation existed between state-sponsored and Catholic family planning in state-socialist Poland, and that both models used transnational organisations and debates relating to contraception for their construction and legitimisation. By evaluating the extent to which the strategies and practices for the delivery of birth control advice utilised by transnational birth control movements were employed in a ‘second world’ context such as Poland, we reveal unexpected supranational links that complicate and problematise historiographical and popular understandings of the Iron Curtain and Cold War Europe.

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From Tehran to Helsinki: the International Year of Human Rights 1968 and State Socialist Eastern Europe

Diplomatica ◽

10.1163/25891774-00102003 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 180-201

Author(s):

Ned Richardson-Little

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Eastern Europe ◽

Status Quo ◽

Eastern Bloc ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

The West ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

The Status ◽

Subsequent Rise ◽

State Socialist

When the United Nations proclaimed 1968 to be the International Year of Human Rights, the official goal was to promote the adoption of the recently created human rights Covenants around the world. Instead of compelling the Eastern Bloc to accept liberal democratic conceptions of rights, however, it acted as a catalyst for the genesis of state socialist conceptions of human rights. Eastern Bloc elites claimed these rights were superior to those in the West, which they argued was beset by imperialism and racism. Although some within Eastern Europe used the Year as an opportunity to challenge state socialist regimes from within, the UN commemoration gave socialist elites a new language to legitimize the status quo in Eastern Europe and to call for radical anti-imperialism abroad. While dissent in the name of human rights in 1968 was limited, the state socialist embrace of human rights politics provided a crucial step towards the Helsinki Accords of 1975 and the subsequent rise of human rights activism behind the Iron Curtain.

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Experimental Cinemas in State Socialist Eastern Europe

10.5117/9789462982994 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ksenya Gurshtein ◽

Sonja Simonyi

Keyword(s):

Czech Republic ◽

Eastern Europe ◽

Case Studies ◽

Former Yugoslavia ◽

Experimental Film ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

Experimental Cinema ◽

Political Conditions ◽

And Function ◽

State Socialist

Was there experimental cinema behind the Iron Curtain? What forms did experiments with film take in state socialist Eastern Europe? Who conducted them, where, how, and why? These are the questions answered in this volume, the first of its kind in any language. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines, the book offers case studies from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. Together, these contributions demonstrate the variety of makers, production contexts, and aesthetic approaches that shaped a surprisingly robust and diverse experimental film output in the region. The book maps out the terrain of our present-day knowledge of cinematic experimentalism in Eastern Europe, suggests directions for further research, and will be of interest to scholars of film and media, art historians, cultural historians of Eastern Europe, and anyone concerned with questions of how alternative cultures emerge and function under repressive political conditions.

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The Persistence of the Past: Memory, Generational Cohorts and the ‘Iron Curtain’

Contemporary European History ◽

10.1017/s0960777314000228 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 447-468 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

SABINA MIHELJ

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Generational Cohorts ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

Considerable Evidence ◽

Secondary Sources ◽

The Past ◽

Border Town ◽

Nuanced Understanding ◽

State Socialist ◽

Historical Periods

AbstractDespite considerable evidence of the link between generational cohorts and mnemonic persistence in other social and historical contexts, existing research on memory in former state socialist countries tends to focus primarily on evidence of mnemonic change. In contrast, this article seeks to develop a more nuanced understanding of post-state-socialist memories, one capable of accounting for both mnemonic change and persistence. Methodologically, the article combines the analysis of personal memories across several generations with a reconstruction of the changing contours of everyday life in different historical periods, based on archival and secondary sources. To demonstrate the usefulness of such an approach, the article examines the memories of life at the Yugoslav border with Italy, as recounted by the inhabitants of the Slovenian border town of Nova Gorica in 2008.

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On display in East and West

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing ◽

10.1108/jhrm-03-2015-0011 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 156-173 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Luminita Gatejel

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Cultural History ◽

Soft Power ◽

Well Being ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

Content Type ◽

Secondary Sources ◽

The Cold War ◽

State Socialist

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how state socialist countries used soft power to improve their image in the West and advocate “the socialist way of life” in the context of the Cold War. Design/methodology/approach – The author argues from a cultural history perspective that underlines transfers and entanglements among the two camps during the Cold War. The study is based on primary and secondary sources such as automotive periodicals and archival material from the German Bundesarchiv. Findings – International fairs turned in the late 1950s into a new “battlefield” of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and its allies were celebrating at these meetings, important medial victories, laying the grounds for a state socialist consumer society. For the first time, Western audiences were realizing that irrespective of certain stylistic differences, consumer goods and particularly cars were not that different on the other side of the Iron Curtain. However, ideological bias and manufacturing flaws prevented them from being fully acknowledged by the Western side. Originality/value – Cold War research mainly focused on bipolar confrontation and the high-level decision-making process. This study is part of a recent trend in historiography to reassess the history of the Cold War, focusing on the multi-layered interactions between the two camps. It also shows that consumption and material well-being were important topics for understanding the dynamics and the flow of ideas through the Iron Curtain.

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Imaging the Other Side of the Iron Curtain: Then and Now. Oral History Research Conducted in Eastern Slovakia

Slovenský národopis / Slovak Ethnology ◽

10.2478/se-2021-0016 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 69 (2) ◽

pp. 294-307

Author(s):

Slávka Otčenášová

Keyword(s):

Oral History ◽

Main Element ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

Aged People ◽

Biographical Research ◽

Western Influence ◽

Western Block ◽

Adult Lives ◽

The 1960S ◽

State Socialist

Abstract For forty years, the Iron Curtain was a symbol of a Europe divided between Soviet and Western influence. Powers on each side of the border invested huge efforts into creating ideologically motivated images of the Other. The article presents the outcomes of biographical research which offers an insight into how aged people in Eastern Slovakia remember their pre-1989 perceptions of the Western Block and how they think of life in the West today, focusing on the main element of their memories in this respect – emigration. It is the outcome of a broader oral history project being conducted in Slovakia since 2017, aiming to obtain and analyse current images of socialism, as communicated today by the generation of witnesses who were living their adult lives during the period spanning between the 1960s and the 1980s; and understanding the relations between the current attitudes and values of the respondents and their experience of life in state socialist regimes.

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Women's Perceptions of Consequences of Career Interruptions due to Childcare in Central and Eastern Europe

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279410000541 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 89-112 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

MARIE VALENTOVA ◽

NEVENA ZHELYAZKOVA

Keyword(s):

Central And Eastern Europe ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

Negative Consequences ◽

Social Survey ◽

Central European ◽

Career Interruptions ◽

Liberal Economy ◽

Women’S Perceptions ◽

State Socialist

AbstractThe present paper aims to examine the effect of the transition from a state socialist regime to democracy and a liberal economy on women's perceptions of the consequences of employment breaks due to childcare on their further careers in seven post-socialist Eastern and Central European countries. The paper uses data from the 2004 European Social Survey to explore whether women who interrupted their careers to look after young children were more likely to suffer negative consequences for their careers after the transition from socialism to a market-based economy than before the lifting of the Iron Curtain. The paper does this by comparing the consequences perceived by women whose children were born before 1987 with those of women with at least one child born later. It begins by grouping together women from across the region, and then looks at the differences by country of the consequences as perceived by these women. It concludes that women across the region were more likely to experience negative consequences after the transition than before. However, the effect of transition is not found to differ across countries using the ESS data.

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