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

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.

Goods and States: The Political Logic of State-Socialist Material Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The City ◽  
State Socialist

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).

“Untold Stories of Issei Women: Collective Images and Individual Experiences in Japanese American Oral History”

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40
Author(s):  
Ryoko Okamura
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Cultural Consensus ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
The Family ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Redress Movement ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article examines the relationship between the Japanese American redress movement and the oral interviews of two Japanese immigrant women, known as Issei women. Focusing on the shared images of Issei women in the Japanese American community and the perspectives and self-representations of the interviewees in the oral interviews, it explores how cultural consensus produced stereotypical, collective images of Issei women as submissive, persevering, and quiet persons. As the redress movement progressed in the 1960s to the 1980s, the Japanese American community conducted oral history projects to preserve memories and legacies of their wartime experiences. There are dissimilarities between the original audio recordings and the published transcripts regarding the perspectives of Issei women. This article shows how the community’s desire to preserve idealized images of Issei men and women reduced the accuracy and nuances in the women’s self-representations and the complexities of family relations. Also, contrary to the collective images, Issei women demonstrated how they were independent, assertive, and open individuals expressing their perspectives, complicated emotions, and importance in the family.

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

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.

Writing (for) Workers: Alternative Workers’ Magazines in Francoist Spain and in State Socialist Poland in the 1960s and 1970s

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-72
Author(s):  
Anna Delius
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Labor Activists ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
State Socialist

This article explores how repression and everyday conflicts at the workplace were connected with labor rights and trade unionism in two authoritarian regimes. It focuses on worker and labor activists’ media in Francoist Spain and in state socialist Poland during the years 1965–68 and 1977–79, respectively. Spanish and Polish workers both lacked the right to join and form independent trade unions, the right to free assembly and association, and the right to strike. At the same time, they faced comparable problems in their everyday working lives, including low salaries, excessive overtime, incompetent management, and deficits in safety and hygiene standards. In this context, (illegal) magazines for workers emerged. They provided new arenas for exchanging experiences, advertised strike actions all across the country, called for united action, and explained national legislation and global labor norms. Based on an analysis of Spanish and Polish workers’ publications, this contribution investigates how labor activists in these states addressed day-to-day problems and the constant violations of internationally binding labor norms.

Dual Powers, Class Compositions, and the Venezuelan People

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery R. Webber
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
The People ◽  
Analytical Imprecision ◽  
Urban Guerrillas ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Dual Power

George Ciccariello-Maher’sWe Created Chávezis the most important book available in English proposing an anti-capitalist framework for understanding the Bolivarian process in contemporary Venezuela, as well as its historical backdrop dating back to 1958. The book contains within it a laudable critique of Eurocentrism and a masterful combination of oral history, ethnography, and theoretical sophistication. It reveals with unusual clarity and insight the multiplicity of popular movements that allowed for Hugo Chávez’s eventual ascension to presidential office in the late 1990s.We Created Chávezhas set a new scholarly bar for social histories of the Bolivarian process and demands serious engagement by Marxists. As a first attempt at such engagement, this paper reveals some critical theoretical and sociological flaws in the text and other areas of analytical imprecision. Divided into theoretical and historical parts, it unpacks some of the strengths and weaknesses by moving from the abstract to the concrete. The intervention begins with concepts – the mutually determining dialectic between Chávez and social movements; ‘the people’; and ‘dual power’. From here, it grounds these concepts, and Ciccariello-Maher’s use of them, in various themes and movements across specific historical periods of Venezuelan political development – the rural guerrillas of the 1960s, the urban guerrillas of the 1970s, the new urban socio-political formations of the 1980s, Afro-Indigenous struggles in the Bolivarian process, and formal and informal working-class transformations since the onset of neoliberalism and its present contestation in the Venezuelan context.

Written testimony, oral history and retail environments

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Shopping Mall ◽  
Shopping Centers ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Property Development ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The 1960S

Purpose – This paper aims to join a growing movement in marketing history to include the voices of consumers in historical research on retail environments. It aims to show that consumer perspectives offer new insights to the emergence and reception of large-scale, pre-planned shopping centers in Australia during the 1960s, and allow one to write a history of this retail form from below, in contrast to the top-down approach that is characteristic of the broader literature on shopping mall development. Design/methodology/approach – Written testimonies by consumers were gathered using a qualitative online questionnaire. The methodology is related to oral history, in that it seeks to capture the subjective experiences of participants, has the capacity to create new archives, to fill or explain gaps in existing repositories and provide a voice to those frequently lost to the historical record. Findings – The written testimonies gathered for this project provide an important contribution to the understanding of shopping centers in Australia and, particularly Sydney, during the 1960s, the ways that they were envisaged and used and insights into their reception and success. Research limitations/implications – As with oral history, written testimony has limitations as a methodology due to its reliance on memory, requiring both sophisticated and cautious readings of the data. Originality/value – The methodology used in this paper is unique in this context and provides new understandings of Australian retail property development. For current marketers, the historically constituted relationship between people and place offers potential for community targeted promotional campaigns.

scholarly journals LA MUJER Y LA EDUCACIÓN DE LA PRIMERA INFANCIA EN LA ARGENTINA EN LA DÉCADA DE 1960

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 252
Author(s):  
Mónica Fernández Pais
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Master Gardener ◽  
Women In It ◽  
Women And Education ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Siglo Xx

En este artículo abordaremos algunas cuestiones relacionadas con la Educación Inicial y el protagonismo de las mujeres en la misma en los albores de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Nos interesa analizar cómo se constituye un modo de ser “maestra jardinera” y para ello debemos remontarnos a los aportes de los primeros pensadores que advertían sobre el lugar protagónico de la madre en la construcción de una sociedad nombrada como educada. Las prescripciones para ser mujer y madre parecen influir de modo decisivo en las representaciones acerca del ser “maestra jardinera".. MULHERES E EDUCAÇÃO DA PRIMEIRA INFÂNCIA NA ARGENTINA NA DÉCADA DE 1960 Neste artigo, abordaremos algumas questões relacionadas à Educação Infantil e o papel da mulher no início da segunda metade do século XX. Interessa-nos analisar como se constitui um modo de ser "jardineiro mestre" e, para isso, devemos voltar às contribuições dos primeiros pensadores que alertaram sobre o lugar protagônico da mãe na construção de uma sociedade denominada de educada. As prescrições de ser mulher e mãe parecem ter influência decisiva sobre as representações de ser professora dos mais jovens, registradas nas fontes primárias e testemunhos da história oral. Palavras-chave: Mulher; Professor de jardim de infância; Jardim de infância. WOMEN AND EDUCATION OF FIRST CHILDHOOD IN ARGENTINA IN THE 1960S Abstract: in this article we will address some issues related to Early Education and the role of women in it at the dawn of the second half of the twentieth century. We are interested in analyzing how a way of being "master gardener" is constituted and, for that, we must go back to the contributions of the first thinkers who warned about the protagonic place of the mother in the construction of a society named as educated. The prescriptions for being a woman and a mother seem to have a decisive influence on the representations about being a teacher of the youngest ones, as recorded in the primary sources and testimonies of oral history. Keywords: Woman; Kindergarten teacher; Kindergarten.

scholarly journals "All in hand": images of power and communicative practices of regional elites in later years of the USSR through the prism of spoken history

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-64
Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Vorontsov ◽  
Yuriy S. Nikiforov
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Main Attention ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
History Data ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
Upper Volga ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Paul Thompson

Oral history data, which were obtained during interviews with representatives of the Soviet regional elite of the second half of the 1960s to 1980s, were analysed as part of the study of the processes of interaction between the Upper Volga regions' local authorities and Moscow. The main attention of the authors of the article is focused on images of power and on communicative practices of regional elites in the later period of existence of the USSR. An attempt to reconstruct the mechanisms and strategies of the regional elite of the Soviet province, including bureaucratic procedures and communicative practices, images and scenarios of power in the local authority functioning in the 1960s to 1980s, is undertaken in terms of oral history. The theoretical-methodological basis of the work is related to the ideas of Viktor Mokhov about regional elites; of Paul Thompson and Marina Sokolova, about the functionality of oral history; to Alexei Yurchak's concept about the last days of socialism; to Richard S. Wortman's scenarius of power.

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