‘ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE SHOWN IN DEED THAT THEY ARE IN FAVOR OF SOCIALIST SELFGOVERNANCE CAN ENGAGE IN WRITING AND TEACHING OF HISTORY’ – THE RISE AND FALL OF ‘VOJVODINIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY’ (1968-1993)

Author(s): Mihael T. Antolović / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This study examines the phenomenon of the so-called ‘Vojvodinian historiography’ which flourished in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina from the late 1960s until the early 1990s as a special kind of party historiography. The paper focuses on the ‘Vojvodinian historiography’s’ institutional framework, theoretical and methodological features and general ideological profile as well as its outcomes. As a result of its close ties with the ruling Communist League of Vojvodina, the political collapse of the Vojvodinian communists marked the disappearance of this extremely ideological kind of historiography.

‘Our Girl’ Ideology and Start’s ‘Sexual Swashbucklers’:

Women and War in the Only Yugoslav Men’s Magazine (1969–1980)

Author(s): Iva Jelušić / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The Croatian magazine Start, “a misbehaved child of the sexual revolution of the sixties”2 was created in 1969. Its visual identity has been marked by nude women throughout its existence. The magazine’s editorial board sometimes presented it as ideological opposition to socialist puritanism, especially exemplified in so-called ‘our girl’ ideology and, therefore, as contributed to women’s emancipation. In order to explore how (some) Yugoslav men reacted to and repackaged the socialist gender agendas, this paper will examine the magazine’s contents through a gendered lens. It will particularly focus on their approach to the imagery of the People’s Liberation Struggle. It will examine a number of articles dealing with the Yugoslav theatre of the Second World War and women’s participation in it. By taking into account textual contributions as well as their visual representations, this paper will study how Western influences participated in the portrayal of the women’s emancipation project, as well as the Yugoslav gender order, during the 1970s. It will highlight how it validated the journalists’ adherence to tradition-bound gender hierarchies, which they mapped onto their supposedly liberal discourse of sexual liberation.

‘Scientific Atheism’ as an Ideological Construct and Educational Project (1950s-1980s)

Author(s): Marianna Shakhnovich / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

The main goal of this article is to identify the socio-historical context of the emergence of the ideologically loaded concept of ‘scientific atheism’, constructed in the USSR in the 1950s-1980s during the period of the announced transition from socialism to the construction of communism. The article uses the method of the historical sociology of concepts, which makes it possible to identify the connection between semantic contexts and institutional practices and to show how the conceptual category around which the corresponding discourse was formed became an instrument that produces socially significant meanings used in the practice of ideological production. The classics of Marxism did not consider atheism as a separate doctrine from materialism; despite this in the late 1970s, scientific atheism in the Soviet academic space turned into a separate science with its own subject of research. At the same time, scientific atheism was opposed to all other forms of atheism as the most consistent and the only true one.

‘Soviet Spirituality’: The Phenomenon and its Research Possibilities

Author(s): Solveiga Krūmiņa-Koņkova / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

‘Soviet spirituality’ is one of the problematic concepts for which it is difficult to find an unambiguous definition. Authors of the articles published in this issue of the Reliģiski-filozofiski raksti (Religious-Philosophical Articles) attempt to understand this concept with the help of a seemingly better-explored concept – atheism. Soviet spirituality grew out of Soviet atheism, and they crossbred each other in their mutual relations. However, as our readers will see, just as there are different understandings of Soviet spirituality, there are also different understandings of atheism because both concepts have significant historical, regional, and cultural differences. [...]

‘When Someone came and started to sing, the others sang too, Accompanying Him on the Violin’ – Living and Working Conditions in the onetime Roma Colony in Oradea and its Liquidation in the 1970s

Author(s): Zsuzsa Plainer / Language(s): English

Roma in the Romanian state socialism are a rare subject in present-day Romany studies. Thus, to fill in the blank, this paper recalls and analyses an important moment in the recent past: living and working conditions in a one-time Roma colony in Oradea as well as its liquidation by the communist policies of urbanization in 1977 and 1978. In doing so, I try to investigate whether the widely shared scholarly belief on the relatively high living standards of the Roma during socialism does stay for this particular case. As empirical data show, winding up the Roma colony and forcing its inhabitants to move into blocks of flats did not significantly improve housing conditions of the group; nevertheless, it destroyed their previously existing socio-cultural environment and cut them off from a series of resources. In opposition to the official discourse of communism, living standards after the removal were not raised but lowered, which - in lack of coherent urbanization policies in the post-socialism - turned the place into an urban ghetto by the 2000s.

“Communism Didn’t Touch My Kids Like Me.” Images of Communism in a Family Perspective

Author(s): Petra Schindler-Wisten / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The target of this study is to introduce one particular life story and on the basis of its content analysis to focus on the narrator’s connection with the period of so-called normalization era in Czechoslovakia. Based on oral history interviews with one narrator during the longitudinal oral history project, the author focuses on whether the memories of a given period change over time and how the narrator reflects on his memories. The author maps the narrator’s family background, the extent to which it shaped him and how he evaluated it as a thirty year old man and now, when he is fifty years old. The core of our narrator’s life story stays the same in principle; he did not change it after twenty years. The reason is that the narrator’s experience and the memories have sunk in and are consistent. What changed in the narrator’s story is the amount of self-reflection that was reflected during the last interview. It was confirmed that shifts in the reflection are a common phenomenon and that some variability may not be conscious. Interpretations and evaluations of life can change, but the experiences themselves do not change.

“Have We Not Lived In Darkness?”: An Epistemological Dimension of ‘Soviet Spirituality’ in Latvia (1964–1991)

Author(s): Māra Kiope / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

The title of the article uses a paraphrase of the lyrics of a popular Latvian song of the late Soviet-era. It tells that the life of the people during the Soviet era took place in spiritual darkness, but in spite of that, resistance was burning in Latvian culture. To a large extent, this has been determined by the European cultural heritage, which was characteristic of the pre-war Latvian state. During the Soviet regime, it allowed to escape identification with the Soviet civilization. Unlike many studies on Soviet reality in the fields of economics, politics, history, ideology and sociology, the project currently carried out by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the University of Latvia (LZP-20202_0058) which includes this article focuses on the study of ‘Soviet spirituality’. A serious research problem is the definition of the concept of ‘Soviet spirituality’, as Soviet science has never explained the concept of ‘spirituality’. In the 1960s, in order to distance itself from the old Stalinist totalitarianism, the Communist Party began to pay special attention to spiritual values. However, ‘Soviet spirituality’ cannot be reduced to the everyday manifestations, to some research in psychology, or to ideology, because it is undoubtedly related to the realities that fall within the competence of theology, religious studies, and philosophy. Namely, the creation of a new Soviet man who would have abolished the constant human anthropological nature, the conversion of a priori religiosity into idolatry, the use of feelings and emotions to create a controlled mood in society, rituals and initiation practices to legitimize the existing power structures. The article proposes cognitive theory as the most appropriate methodological tool for describing the phenomenon of ‘Soviet spirituality’. Thus, cognitive theory provides an approach to understanding spirituality, and allows explaining the resistance of Latvian culture to Soviet identification. Theoretical equipment is applicable to case studies, as they clearly reveal the nature and contradictions of ‘Soviet spirituality’ in Latvia.

“He Who Leads – Controls!”

Corporate Management and Rigours of “Socialist Control” in Czechoslovak Enterprises in the 1980s

Author(s): Tomáš Vilímek / Language(s): English Issue: 6/2018

The study deals with issues of corporate management and pitfalls of the “socialist supervision” in Czechoslovak enterprises in the period of late socialism. Using documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the State Security, period texts and specialized publications, it shows how party organs and state authorities were unsuccessfully trying to make supervisory mechanisms and audits a functional tool of the implementation of the ruling party´s economic policy. The author analyzes the supervisory and audit mechanisms that were used, and outlines basic reasons of the almost fatal failure of supervisory activities of the system which was, in a way, obsessed with supervision and control. He explains the systemic 216 Czech Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. VI conditionality of the supervisory system which socialist managers often and in many respects bent to suit the needs of the enterprises they were in charge of; such situation naturally did not match the needs of the society as a whole. Using many specifi c cases as an example, the study graphically shows that members of the Czechoslovak corporate management community in the 1980s were fully aware of systemic, political and social limitations of the supervisory system which they managed to modify, fairly successfully, to suit intra-corporate conditions. The result was a situation in which the party leadership was reacting to increasingly obvious symptoms of the “agony of the centrally planned economy” by adopting various directives and guidelines to make the supervisory process more effective and to consistently promote the “whoever manages – supervises” principle. However, the anticipated effect did not materialize and, at the end of the day, the non-functional supervisory mechanisms made a substantial contribution to the collapse of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

“HE WHO SINGS, THINKS EVIL!”: CHANT “MARJANE, MARJANE” IN THE LAST DECADE OF COMMUNIST CROATIA

Author(s): Stjepan Bekavac,Ivica Miškulin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

In this paper authors analyze the prosecution of the widespread chant “Marjane, Marjane” during 1980’s in Socialist Republic of Croatia. Widespread version of the chant regime has proscribed, declaring it a form of hostile or anti-state act. Individuals who would sing any of prohibited versions would be mostly subjugated to political felony procedure and sentenced to prison.

“I Knew about God, but I Didn’t Know That I’m A Believer”: Narratives about Coming to Belief in an Atheist Country

Author(s): Nadezhda Beliakova,Vera Kliueva / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

The article describes the spiritual quest of evangelical Christians during the Soviet period. The published memoirs and biographical interviews of the believers, who had an experience of religious life during the Soviet period, are the sources for the analysis. Important factors, which enabled the spiritual quest, are emphasized: the extreme life conditions, inner crisis; familiarizing with believers; the problem of choice between denominations; conflict with the external environment; the feeling of Divine influence.

“It Is Necessary to Draw a Lesson”. The Development of Political Structures of the Warsaw Treaty Organization between 1985 and 1989

Author(s): Matěj Bílý / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2020

The study analyzes the functioning of political structures of the Warsaw Treaty organization between the advent of Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the state socialist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe in the end of the 1989, which has hitherto been examined only superficially. Using results of research in Czech, German, and Polish archives and drawing from studies of published documents, it describes in detail the substantial changes in the day-to-day operation of political structures of the organization, which took place at that time. It attempts to clarify and evaluate the essence of these shifts, to assess them in the context of previous developments, and to outline their significance for the fate of the Warsaw Treaty after 1989. It shows that Gorbachev initiated fairly significant changes in the organization, but he rarely promoted their implementation in an assertive enough manner. However, the greater openness toward and incentives presented to the allies, which characterized the approach of the Soviet Secretary General, were only partly successful. On the one hand, the political structures of the Warsaw Treaty started working in a routine manner for the first time in the history of the organization since 1985, becoming a venue where information was shared and foreign policy viewpoints and initiatives of member states were presented, the deepening crisis of the Eastern Bloc notwithstanding. On the other hand, however, day-to-day problems in the operation of the political structures of the Warsaw Treaty persisted, reflecting the impasse the Eastern Bloc as a whole and the system of relations between its member states, built in the previous four decades, found itself in. Before 1989, the Warsaw Treaty organization was unable to strengthen itself sufficiently enough, and the collapse of the then existing political regimes in Central and Eastern Europe doomed it to an early demise.

“The Charm of the PRL”. Memory Culture, (Post)Socialist Nostalgia and Historical Tourism in Poland

Author(s): Agnieszka Balcerzak / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The article explores the mechanisms of memory culture and the commercialization of the socialist heritage from the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) (from 1945 to 1989) as a tourist destination, societal practice and cultural resource in today’s Warsaw. At the intersection of heritage studies, historical tourism and material culture, the ethnographic analysis focuses on three empirical case studies as examples of the commercial popularization of the history of the PRL. These are the communist heritage tours offered by WPT 1313 and the documentation of the socialist heritage at the Museum of Life in the PRL and the Neon Museum. These commodified products of Warsaw’s tourism and entertainment culture fill a gap in the tourist market, based on the prototypical, nostalgic longing of tourists for a sensual and emotional experience of the “authentic past”. This predominantly participant observation-based ethnographic study on the practices, spaces, images and agents filling this touristic niche, illustrates how they create sensual-emotive, aesthetic and performative fields of reifying, discovering and experiencing the socialist past. Finally, the paper focuses on how these polyvalent mechanisms shape the tourist infrastructure of Warsaw oscillating between critical distancing and entertaining appropriation of the socialist heritage.

“The Enemy Too Fights Heroically and With Dedication.” The Border Battles in the Southern Sector of the Eastern Front, 22 June to 2 July 1941

Author(s): Roman Töppel / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2021

On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union. Although the most important strategic targets were situated in the south of the USSR, the Army High Command believed that the campaign would be decided by the conquest of Moscow. Therefore, the focal point of the German attack was in the central sector of the Eastern Front. In the southern sector, however, the Red Army had gathered its strongest forces and offered particularly tenacious resistance. Despite heavy losses, the Soviet soldiers were able to considerably delay the offensive of Army Group South already in the border battles and thus thwart the German operational plans already in the first days of the campaign. Therefore, the border battles in the southern sector of the Eastern Front contributed significantly to the failure of Operation ‘Barbarossa’ and ultimately to the German defeat on the Eastern Front.

“To Believe or not to Believe…” Religious Policy, Spiritual Life, Family, and Youth in Soviet Latvia

Author(s): Inese Runce / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

The article deals with life and spirituality in Soviet Latvia. Youth and children, also families – in general – formed a fragile bond between their religious environment and family and the secular, hostile world in Soviet Latvia. Soviet schools were the place where these children of faith were least protected from the atheist propaganda and could possibly be identified, but children and youth of non–religious or atheist families learned the Soviet perspective about religion. Youth and families faced with this situation had their own responses and reactions to the reality of the double Soviet life.

“What Ghosts are Haunting us Today?” Slavoj Žižek’s The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto in Post-Pandemic Capitalist Realism. The Revolutionary Subject and Work

Author(s): Vlad-Eugen Neagu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

However controversial a topic, Marxist thought still remains the most complex tool for the critique of Capitalism. Derrida calls Marxism “hauntological”, always reappearing as a spectre of the past, always quasi- present, but also as a potential lost future. After the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the relevance of The Communist Manifesto seemed to have slowly waned, in a world that adopted the tenets of Neoliberali sm partly as a defense against authoritarian regimes, and partly as a mean to converge toward the countries at the forefront of the global system, that had already accrued a massive lead in economic and social development. The Covid-19 virus has shocked the world to its core, but it remains to be seen whether it has brought about a paradigm shift or it has merely accentuated some of the past problems, while also triggering a kind of forced nostalgia for the apparent normality of a system that was already ridden with issues. Mark Fisher points out that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (Fisher 1), thus indicating the need for criticism and measures against a neoliberal monopoly on thought itself. As for Žižek’s The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto, it remains to be analyzed whether it can revive the interest in the original text, as to begin compounding a viable alternative for a post-pandemic global system that does not yet seem to fully grasp that it is running out of time.

“What Kind of Soviet Citizen Will You Grow into?”: Ukrainian Adventure for Adolescents in the Stalinist Epoch

Author(s): Daria Semenova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This article analyzes a number of Soviet Ukrainian adventure narratives written during the 1930-40s, including the novels “Lakhtak” (“Lakhtak,” 1934) and Shkhuna “Kolumb” (Schooner “Columbus,” 1940) by Mykola Trublaini, Shkola nad morem (A School by the Sea, 1937) by Oles' Donchenko, Hospodari Okhots'kykh hir (The Owners of the Okhotsk Mountains, 1949) by Ivan Bahmut, and several short stories. This entertaining genre was used to educate its young readers about their place and aims in the world, as well as about the boundaries of the newly-forged Soviet identity and its meaning. This period witnessed a radical change in the criteria for defining group identity, as proposed to young readers: ethno-national markers were substituted by belonging to an ideological community and by class affiliation. As a result, although anyone originating from outside the Soviet borders was perceived as a menace, some foreigners of a “correct political orientation” could be recognized as potentially belonging to “our” community. At the same time, this change implied that there were hidden “enemies” among alleged “in-group” members, which justified the mobilized state of the group identity. The adventure stories analyzed here also shed light on the fostering of a sense of Union-wide unity through the parallels they drew between the experiences of young Ukrainian readers and those of their counterparts in faraway regions of the USSR.

Јагош Ћуретић: Социјалистичка Југоатлантида (Службени гласник, Београд, 2005)

Author(s): Jovo Cvjetković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2006

Југославија у часописима Life и Time, 1943-1950.

Author(s): Sanja Lukić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2022

From the moment it first appeared on the pages of the established American weeklies Life and TIME, the image of Josip Broz and his Yugoslavia underwent constant changes, which tended to always somehow return to the starting point; the starting point being an image of Yugoslavia as the Other, the one that is alien to the West and its culture. Although the authors and editors often insisted on the uniqueness of its position, they were inclined to characterize that peculiarity as negative. This was predetermined by frequent and radical changes in the relations between Yugoslavia and the United States, which did not allow the creation of a constant in the narrative of this small communist state. No matter how close Yugoslav policy came to the one of America, the fact that it was headed by a communist regime was a persistent source of problems. While after Tito’s break with Stalin, American magazines tried to navigate a new discourse in representing Yugoslavia, their effort was still marked with biases and preconceptions.

Југословенски комунисти и норвешки лабуристи 1951–1956.

Author(s): Aleksandar V. Miletić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2022

The topic of this paper includes cooperation between the Yugoslav Communists and The Norwegian Labour Party in the first half of the 1950s, a period marked by turbulent events in Yugoslav foreign policy, from the crisis to the normalization of relations with the Eastern Bloc and the USSR. The research was mostly based on unpublished sources of Yugoslav provenance and relevant scholarly literature.

Чехословакия и Съветът за икономическа взаимопомощ

Author(s): Teodorichka Gotovska-Henze / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5-6/1998

The inclusion of Czechoslovakia in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) brought about drastic changes in the hitherto existing economic relations in the country. The industry built up in the Czech lands between the two World Wars lost access to the world markets and subjected to the new realities, gradually was losing the competitiveness of its goods. At the expense of the Czech industry, the newly built Slovak industry depended only on the import of Soviet raw materials. In the long run both industries, deprived of genuine competition, manufactured goods which did not meet the international standards, the productions lagged drastically in a technological respect. Besides that, CMEA functioned above all by the implementation of central decisions which were not of an economic but of a political character. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance remained above all a political and not an economic alliance, owing to which after the end of the Soviet Bloc came also the end of CMEA.