Popular Culture, Gender and State Socialism: Zhenata dnes Magazine

This article deals with the discourse of popular culture during the state socialism in Bulgaria and especially with the media aimed at female audiences. The Zhenata dnes (The Woman of Today) magazine is a starting point for the topic of what are the concepts of gender within socialism and are they changing. During the Cold War, there was a widespread belief that media were a direct reflection of narrow ideological norms. However, the example of Zhenata dnes clearly outlines the permeability and flexibility of topics related to the emancipation of women. The magazine openly publishes letters from readers, as well as analyses criticizing the government for the unhappy fate of women. Dissent, feminism and Western themes. The magazine was disliked and warned in the period 1966‒1980 that it had gone beyond the ideologically acceptable limits, but nevertheless it still exists. How did popular media targeting women create their image in the society of that time? How did the government want to build their image and how is it achieved in the magazine, thanks to the progressive positions of its editors and authors?

Central Europe

Central Europe is still imagined as an area dominated by Christianity, for the most part the Catholic Church, in close alliance with Christian rulers who minimized the impact of both the Protestant Reformation and minorities such as Judaism. This idea rests, however, on an oversimplified picture of the religious history of the region. Recent research has shown that the reality was more complex, and that historians still know very little about what the overwhelming majority of people believed or how they practised their religion. Christianity has never completely monopolized the religious landscape of Central Europe and has itself been constantly changing. The history of Christianization, Reformation, empires, and nationalism present in Central Europe as well as state socialism, the Cold War and today’s relative pluralism give an idea of this complexity.

The Political Opportunity Structure and the Evolution of the Organizational Base of Peasants’ and Farmers’ Protest Activity in Poland in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

The main research question of this article is as follows: What was the impact on the protest potential of peasants and farmers in the analyzed periods of the relations between the structure of political opportunity and the way these social groups were organized? In the author’s opinion, the impact was indirect, although it remodelled the organizational aspects of how the peasant and farmer movement functioned: from organizations in the form of political parties, through trade unions in the period of state socialism, up to producers’ organizations in contemporary Poland. It must be added, however, that the key factor responsible for these changes in the organizational background of the peasantry was changes within those social groups themselves: firstly, the empowerment of the peasantry in the inter-war period, the professionalization of farmers during state socialism, and the marketization of their activity after 1989.

Self-Government in Late 1980s Czechoslovakia: The Slovak Philosopher Miroslav Kusý against the Communist Party1

Self-government is one of the most popular terms in left-wing political thought. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was used and discussed both in Western liberal democracies and in the communist bloc. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used this notion from the mid-1980s onwards, forming part of his wider policy of perestroika. Although the Czechoslovak leaders were not interested in political reforms and were largely sceptical about economic changes, the Soviet example resonated with the public and impacted on official discussion in Czechoslovakia. In this context, the Czechoslovak parliament adopted the Act on State Enterprise in July 1988, which was preceded by the discussion of the Proposal on the Act on State Enterprise (1987). This article draws attention to Czechoslovak dissident milieus and the response to the parliament’s proposal. It focuses on the Slovak philosopher Miroslav Kusý (1931-2019), who articulated the most substantial critique of the official plans. While accepting the principle of self-government, he argued that the proposal was subject to fundamental misinterpretations. In assessing his arguments, the article traces a particular intervention within the wider debates on state socialism in the 1980s.

Activism and Dissent under State Socialism: Coalitions and Campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s

This article introduces a special Labour History Review issue on the subject of Challenges to State Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe: Activists, Movements and Alliances in the 1970s and 1980s. Our piece highlights different stimuli for dissent and opposition in the Eastern bloc, drawing attention to three strands that helped to inform political activism. First, it discusses the way in which various forms of dissident Marxism informed critiques of ‘actually existing socialism’ and helped activists to envision alternative ways of organizing society and state. Second, it emphasizes intersections between different actors and motivations, including links between the labour movement and forms of activism that have sometimes been categorized as ‘new social movements’. Third, it notes the relevance of transnational inspirations and alliances, with a particular consideration of those that cut across the two power blocs. As a whole, the essay establishes the broader context for the case studies of activism and dissent that feature in this special journal issue.

Shortageflation 3.0: War economy – State socialism – Pandemic crisis

The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted governments and central banks to take unorthodox measures aimed at protecting the standard of living of people and sustaining the production and service activities of companies. The policy of aggressively increasing the supply of money has entailed a significant rise in the budget deficit and public debt. It is important to consider the extent of its impact on the escalation of inflation processes and to formulate suggestions regarding the economic policy. Inflation is already higher than the official indicators show it, because it is partly suppressed. The increase in the general price level does not fully reflect the actual inflation rate. We are dealing with shortageflation – the simultaneous occurrence of price inflation and repressed inflation accompanied by shortages. It is methodologically interesting to compare this current phenomenon, 3.0, with the suppression of inflation in the war economy, 1.0, and in the economies of state socialism, 2.0. Such comparisons highlight not only the similarities of these processes but also the differences resulting from the specificity of responses of households and businesses. This paper discusses five channels of unloading excessive savings, indicating the most beneficial ones from the point of view of sustainable economic development in the post-pandemic future. It is particularly important to prompt the conversion of compulsory savings into voluntary savings, and at the same time, to stimulate the transformation of the inflationary monetary reserves into the effective demand expanding the use of existing production capacities and investments creating new capacities.

Blind Spots in Post-1989 Czech Historiography of State Socialism: Gender as a Category of Analysis

Gender is rarely considered in the works on state socialism in Czech history writing. Given the prominence of the equality of the sexes in communist rhetoric and the heated anti- and pro-feminism media and intellectual debates of the 1990s, the omission stands out as a remarkable loss of opportunity in historical research. It also defies logic. For if “emancipation” and “equality” were so strongly present in pre-1989 discourse and women constituted half the population, does it not follow that the plain demographic fact should drive the interest of researchers to inquire where this population was, what it did, and what it had to say? The question has so far attracted primarily sociologists, but how does it fare in historiography? What are the losses of the absence and the gains of the inclusion of a gender perspective on the history and memory-making of state socialism? This article will first consider the status quo of gender blindness in Czech historiography and its possible reasons in the context of the legacy that state socialism left to social sciences and humanities: the legacy of expertise, disciplinary legitimation and epistemological legacy. A discussion of the consequences of the near absence of gender history and analysis from post-1989 interpretations of state socialism in historiography follows: blind spots and loss of knowledge, lack of precision and a gender bias of historical accounts, and perpetuation of false legacy. Finally, the article discusses the gains to Czech historiography, memory-making and international discussion, if scholars do consider gender.

डॉ. आंबेडकर आणि मुक्त अर्थव्यवस्था

Our country adopted democracy on January 27, 1950. Political democracy is the system of government formed by electing the people's representatives by the majority. If the foundation of political democracy is not social democracy, it will not last. Gautama Buddha's philosophy provides the values of freedom, equality, brotherhood, and justice. Apart from this, for the development of the whole human being, the solution of eradicating misery and misery from this world is the principle of Arya Ashtangikmarga. So social democracy can be established through the socialism of the Buddha. On this Dr. Ambedkar believed.Another democracy is needed for human life to be happy. That is economic democracy. Establishing economic democracy through state socialism is Dr. Ambedkar's main objective was. He said that there should be a provision for socialism in the state constitution itself. Ambedkar had an opinion. On August 29, 1947, Dr. Ambedkar was elected as the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution. He said that even though he was against the incident, he could not incorporate state socialism due to the opposition of other members.He said that the heterogeneous caste system in India would not allow the creation of an egalitarian economy of landlords and industrialists. As Ambedkar was aware, his role was to ensure that it did not take long for the provisions of state socialism to be implemented for more than ten years after the implementation of the constitution.