Peculiarities of industrial progress in Eastern Europe and the development of the working Class

Volume 1 ◽  
1968 ◽  
pp. 193-214
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe

The Phenomenon of Solidarity: An Attempt of Assessment

1983 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Matejko
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Communist System ◽  
First Time

What happened in Poland in the early 1980s is fascinating in many respects. The possibility of changing the Communist system in a peaceful manner was once again tried without much success, this time by the mass movement of industrial workers, with some additional help offered by intellectuals. The importance of these events should be fully recognized. As Persky states, “For the first time, a workers' state had been forced to concede to its workers, among other things, the ironic right to form their own working class organization to defend themselves from the workers' state.” According to Ascherson, the success of Polish workers in setting up permanent representation beyond the control of the Party was a major achievement. In this respect the events of 1980/81 differed substantially from all previous workers' uprisings in eastern Europe.

scholarly journals Workers under Communist Rule: Research in the Former Socialist Countries of Eastern-Central and South-Eastern Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Heumos
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Social History ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Eastern European Countries

SummaryAfter the collapse of the communist system in eastern Europe, the development of the historiographies in the Czech and Slovak republics, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Federal Republic of Germany has been characterized by a broad spectrum of differences. This article offers an overview of the ways in which these differences have worked out for the history of the working class in the eastern European countries under communist rule, understood here as the social history of workers. It shows that cultural and political traditions and the “embedding” of historical research in the respective societies prior to 1989, the extent to which historiography after 1989 was able to connect to pre-1989 social-historical or sociological investigations, and the specific national political situation after 1989 make up for much of the differences in the ways that the history of the working class is dealt with in the countries concerned.

Remaking the Polish Working Class: Early Stalinist Models of Labor and Leisure

Slavic Review ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padraic Kenney
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Class Conflict

The Stalinist revolution began to accelerate in Poland, as throughout eastern Europe, in 1947, with the implementation of multi-year plans, the repression of opposition and the enforcement of unity in the bloc; by the beginning of 1950, the transformation of the bloc was more or less complete. The construction of the Stalinist system did not occur in a vacuum but was shaped in part by societies, and the regimes which emerged were thus more complex than has been generally acknowledged. That complexity stems in part from Stalinist regimes’ interest in transforming society through mobilization and integration, rather than merely subduing it. Active participation in political and economic life was required; mere acquiescence to the demands of the regime was insufficient; and class conflict was to be eliminated, replaced by an alliance between the working class and its former adversaries.

Stereotypes as Historical Accidents: Images of Social Class in Postcommunist Versus Capitalist Societies

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 927-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lusine Grigoryan ◽  
Xuechunzi Bai ◽  
Federica Durante ◽  
Susan T. Fiske ◽  
Marharyta Fabrykant ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Social Structural

Stereotypes are ideological and justify the existing social structure. Although stereotypes persist, they can change when the context changes. Communism’s rise in Eastern Europe and Asia in the 20th century provides a natural experiment examining social-structural effects on social class stereotypes. Nine samples from postcommunist countries ( N = 2,241), compared with 38 capitalist countries ( N = 4,344), support the historical, sociocultural rootedness of stereotypes. More positive stereotypes of the working class appear in postcommunist countries, both compared with other social groups in the country and compared with working-class stereotypes in capitalist countries; postcommunist countries also show more negative stereotypes of the upper class. We further explore whether communism’s ideological legacy reflects how societies infer groups’ stereotypic competence and warmth from structural status and competition. Postcommunist societies show weaker status–competence relations and stronger (negative) competition–warmth relations; respectively, the lower meritocratic beliefs and higher priority of embeddedness as ideological legacies may shape these relationships.

"It's building up to something and it won't be nice when it erupts"

Focaal ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 (62) ◽  
pp. 42-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Grill
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Labor Migrants ◽  
White Area ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Post Industrial

Drawing on research among Slovak Roma labor migrants to the UK, this article examines differentiated modalities of belonging and a crystallization of the category of Roma/Gypsy in one neighborhood in a post-industrial Scottish city. This originally working-class, predominantly white area has been transformed, through several waves of migration, into a multicultural neighborhood. Established residents of the neighborhood express a sense of growing crisis and blame for local decline is frequently placed on migrants and, in particular, Gypsy migrants from Eastern Europe. The article focuses on the shifting forms of ethnocultural categorization that mark Roma difference in Glasgow.

Reverse, restore, repeat!

Focaal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (72) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eeva Kesküla
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Term Analysis

In this article, I look at Russian-speaking miners' perception of their position in Estonian society, along with their moral economy. Former heroes, glorified for their class and ethnicity, they feel like a racialized underclass in neoliberal Estonia. Excluded from the nation on the basis of ethnicity, they try to maintain their dignity through the discourse of hard work as a basis for membership in society. Based on the longer-term analysis of Estonian history, I argue that the current outcome for the Russian-speaking working class is related to longer historical processes of class formation whereby each period in the Estonian history of the twentieth century seems to be the reversal of the previous one. I also argue for analysis of social change in Eastern Europe that does not focus solely on ethnicity but is linked to class formation processes.

How Not To Write About Lenin

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
John Molyneux
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
National Scale ◽  
Paris Commune ◽  
Near Misses ◽  
Hungarian Revolution ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
Time Discount

AbstractEighty one years on, the Russian Revolution remains an event of unique significance for socialists, Marxists and historical materialists. It is the only occasion to date of which it can plausibly be claimed that the working class itself overthrew the capitalist state, established its own power and maintained it on a national scale for a significant period of time. Discount the Russian Revolution and we are left only with heroic but local and short-lived attempts and near-misses such as the Paris Commune, the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, the Munich Soviet and Barcelona 1936, or the long list of seizures of power, usually by armed forces of one sort or another, in the name of the working class or Marxism (Eastern Europe 1945–47, China 1949, Cuba 1959, etc.).

scholarly journals Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Pittaway
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social History ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Industrial Labor ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Projects

The essays in this special issue by Jack R. Friedman, Sándor Horváth, Peter Heumos, and Eszter Zsófia Tóth, reflect a growing interest in the social history of industrial labor and industrial communities in postwar Central and Eastern Europe. While they approach their subjects in different ways and employing distinct methodologies, the essays suggest how the history of the working class and its relationship to postwar socialist state formation across the region might be rethought. They illustrate how the protracted construction and consolidation of socialist states in the region was negotiated on an everyday level by working-class citizens, and that this was a dynamic process in which state projects interacted with a variety of working-class cultures, that were in turn segmented by notions of gender, skill, generation, and occupation. The essays all demonstrate, in their different ways, how working-class Eastern Europeans were not simply acted upon by the operation of dictatorial state power, but played a role in state formation across the region. This role was characterized by an ambiguous relationship between workers and those in power who sought legitimacy by claiming that their states represented the interests of the “working class.” Yet the policies those in power pursued often confronted working-class communities directly in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, as these essays suggest. This produced a complex relationship characterized by consent, accommodation and conflict that varied from locality to locality, state to state, and from period to period.

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