This paper represents a reading of communism from the perspective of corporality. The essay aims at discussing the excessive communization of the human body during communism. This communization brought about a vulgarization of corporality, its uniformization, and hyper-egalitarianism between genders. It also resulted in a mechanical treatment of the human body in order to place it at the disposal of the body politic. This work aims to demonstrate that one of the major mistakes of communist ideology, at least in (...) its Romanian form, was the fact that it tried to control and to interfere with human needs such as nourishment and sexuality. (shrink)

The paper investigates how formal/informal networks of scientists, while facilitating the scientific West-East transfer in the Cold War context, shaped the scientific field of sexology by imposing personal scientific credos, in a particular national context. The paper shows that in the Cold War context, sexual science was present in Communist Romania, but neither as imitation of the regional scholarship, nor as a simple reproduction of western advancements in the field. The post-war Romanian scholarship in the field of sexology (...) was the result of scientific interests of Stefan Milcu – long time party protégée and respected member of the international scientific community – and of its personal circle that included remarkable personalities such as Victor Săhleanu or Tudor Stoica. Presenting the public with information about sexual and re­productive functions, and sometimes even elaborated descriptions of sexual techniques, certainly was never meant to enhance the individual gratification or provoke any form of sexual revolution. The Romanian production of sex/educational manuals and of sexology works was part of a state policy towards a better, stable, family life, aiming for collective and social happiness. (shrink)

This article attempts to explore the relations between the Romanian Communist Party and its “international” cadres after the end of the Second World War and its accession to power. Beyond a simply descriptive exegesis, the present study tries to capture the evolution of those relationships, and especially how the power relations between the two entities unfolded in the context of a paradigm shift: the legalisation of the party, its transformation into an important force of the political scene and, (...) finally, its accession to power. Those transformations imposed a structural reorganisation of the movement, forced to centralise its entire diffuse network of activists, many of them spread across Europe. After 1945, the Communist Party pursued a consistent policy of repatriating activists, whether they were in the Soviet Union or in Western European countries. But, as we will detail later, the party sought to control that infusion of “qualified personnel” through strict selection and nominal repatriation. Similar efforts were made to control and subordinate this political corpus of “internationals” to a party leadership that did not have flawless legitimacy. Within and as a result of those tangled interactions, complex relationships would emerge and develop between individuals and groups who disputed an informal primacy and whose claimed legitimacy had distinct origins and evolutions. (shrink)

Some Romanian feminist scholars argue that welfare policies of post-communist states are deeply unjust to women and preclude them from reaching economic autonomy. The upshot of this argument is that liberal economic policy would advance feminist goals better than the welfare state. How should we read this dissonance between Western and some Eastern feminist scholarship concerning distributive justice? I identify the problem of dependency at the core of a possible debate about feminism and welfare. Worries about how decades (...) of communism have shaped citizenry feed feminists' suspicion of the welfare state and fears of paternalist policies. I criticize the arguments in favour of neoliberal policies and I suggest a crucial distinction between legitimate, universal forms of human dependency and dependencies that result from particular social arrangements. (shrink)

This article discusses some current research claims on gender and state socialism in Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989. It raises questions about claims by Revisionist Feminist Scholars that official state socialist women’s organizations were ‘agents’ on behalf of women, or women’s movements, perhaps feminist, and not ‘transmission belts’ of communist parties. State socialist policies are described as ‘friendly towards women’ and ‘pro-women’. In contrast, the author claims that these organizations both were and were not agents on behalf (...) of women, and also prevented women’s agency. Meaningful women’s agency is not actually shown to occur intermittently throughout their history, but in two contexts – before 1955 or in moments of political rupture. Scholars do not distinguish the who, when, and what – Who could be agents? When could they be agents? And what kind of agents could they be? State policies, the author claims, were also at one and the same time ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’ towards women, sometimes harming women. The author explores why this research is happening now, discussing research on Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Democratic Women’s Organization of Germany, the Democratic Association of Hungarian Women, later renamed MNOT, the Romanian National Council of Women and the Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Women’s Organization. (shrink)

The idea of gender equality has been and still is an exogenous concept in Romanian culture. Initially introduced and institutionalized by communist ideology after World War II along with other utopian egalitarian principles, gender equality remains to this day a somewhat alien concept in practice for the majority of the Romanian population. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century, with renewed economic growth and more liberal governance in Romania, the gender equality debate has intensified, and (...) multiple advocacies now compete on the political and social arenas. The most notable actors shaping current attitudes toward women in Romania are the Orthodox Church, political parties, feminist organizations, and the media. (shrink)

During Socialism, the “women’s issue” was among the key state policies in Albania. The emancipation issue followed a pattern similar to other socialist countries, called the “women’s emancipation model”. It was part both of the state rhetoric and the general need to include women in the “socialist transformative processes”. This involved policies that supported women’s participation in the productive labour force, as well as the introduction of new laws that promoted the equality between men and women. A reconfiguration of (...) class='Hi'>gender roles and the gender division of tasks occurred during socialism. In Albania, this process had two distinct phases. From 1944 onward women’s emancipation was thought of in terms of their participation as an additional force in the post-war reconstruction effort, even though sporadic and aligned with the primary political needs of the regime. The second phase occurred during the ‘60s following the Party’s directive “For the complete emancipation of women”. This phase was considered strategic as it coincided with the efforts to industrialize the country and to eventually fully centralize the control over the territory. This paper aims to investigate the entanglements between gender propaganda and gender practices. For this purpose, we analyse various party speeches and policies as well as examples of “heroines” and propaganda movies. A thorough analysis of State Archives and other documents was undertaken to substantiate this investigation. (shrink)

This article explores the impact of the VASKhNIL conference upon the cultural policy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and Italian communist biology, with particular attention to the period between 1948 and 1951. News of the Moscow session did not appear in the Italian news media until October, 1948, and for the next three years party biologists struggled over whether to translate the official transcript of the proceedings, The Situation in Biological Science, into Italian. This struggle reveals the (...) complex efforts of the PCI to confirm the ideological and political connection with the Soviet Union, without completely alienating significant milieus of the democratic and antifascist culture in Italy. The apparent impossibility of doing both is indicated by the fact that the project was finally abandoned in March-April, 1951. The article is divided into three sections, each focused on different actors and their response to Lysenkoism. The first section outlines the features of the PCI's pro-Lysenko campaign, with particular regard to the intellectual militancy and organizational commitment of Emilio Sereni, head of PCI's Cultural Commission between 1948 and 1951. The second section analyzes the reaction of the three most important figures in Italian communist biology during this period, Massimiliano Aloisi, Franco Graziosi and Emanuele Padoa. The third section interprets the decision not to publish a translation of The Situation in Biological Science as a consequence of the conflicts between PCI cultural program and the editorial policy of the left-wing publishing house Giulio Einaudi Editore. (shrink)

This article examines a case study of international Communist propaganda during the Cold War. The Institute of Historical and Socio-Political Research, a historical propaganda organization affiliated to the Romanian Communist Party, succeeded in penetrating the Iron Curtain by distributing its works through a social network provided by the Italian Liberation Movement Institute, and in publishing its works in Italy, with the help of the Gramsci Institute, as well as publishers like Editori Riuniti and Nicola Teti. The ISISP (...) established a mutually beneficial partnership with various Italian actors: ISISP and the regime succeeded in publishing international propaganda; the Italian publishing houses were paid by ISISP to print and distribute their edited volumes, with the double advantage of keeping political ties with the RCP while also protecting their own limited finances. (shrink)

The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) first coined the united-front policy in 1921, representing a promising effort to bolster Communist influence in the workers’ movement of that country. As the first part of the article shows, the KPD recruited large numbers of new members and significantly improved its electoral returns as a result. Despite this success, however, the party only pursued the united-front policy in two phases (1921–3 and 1926). As illustrated in the second part of the article, (...) the KPD bid farewell to the united front as ‘Stalinisation’ began to set in during the Weimar Republic’s final years – with lethal consequences, as its abandonment decisively abetted the victory of German fascism. (shrink)

This article explores the impact of the VASKhNIL conference upon the cultural policy of the Italian Communist Party and Italian communist biology, with particular attention to the period between 1948 and 1951. News of the Moscow session did not appear in the Italian news media until October, 1948, and for the next three years party biologists struggled over whether to translate the official transcript of the proceedings, The Situation in Biological Science, into Italian. This struggle reveals the complex (...) efforts of the PCI to confirm the ideological and political connection with the Soviet Union, without completely alienating significant milieus of the democratic and antifascist culture in Italy. The apparent impossibility of doing both is indicated by the fact that the project was finally abandoned in March–April, 1951. The article is divided into three sections, each focused on different actors and their response to Lysenkoism. The first section outlines the features of the PCI’s pro-Lysenko campaign, with particular regard to the intellectual militancy and organizational commitment of Emilio Sereni, head of PCI’s Cultural Commission between 1948 and 1951. The second section analyzes the reaction of the three most important figures in Italian communist biology during this period, Massimiliano Aloisi, Franco Graziosi and Emanuele Padoa. The third section interprets the decision not to publish a translation of The Situation in Biological Science as a consequence of the conflicts between PCI cultural program and the editorial policy of the left-wing publishing house Giulio Einaudi Editore. (shrink)

This article explores the representation of motherhood and womanhood in the Romanian communist magazine Femeia and the extent to which this publication was a mere vehicle of the official pronatalist policy of Ceausescu’s regime. Two phases have been identified, overlapping both the evolution of the magazine itself and the Party’s ideology. The author metaphorically designates them as follows: 1966–1971/1972, Almost the ‘Eternal Feminine’ and 1973–1978/1979, The ‘Steel Woman’ and the ‘Maternal Glory’. Drawing on discourse analysis and social history, (...) the article examines each of these. (shrink)

The article reveals ideological-theoretical, methodological, and politico-ideological basic principles for an adequate analysis of the specifics of modern Chinese (Sinicized) Marxism. The attributive features of modern Chinese Marxism (Marxism with Chinese specifics (the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese Context, Sinicized Marxism), as the most effective version in world history for correcting and modernizing the axiomatics of the Marxist-Leninist theoretical model of social development, as well as improving the ideology of the ruling Communist Party in order to increase the (...) effectiveness of its domestic and foreign state policies, have been characterized by means of concrete-historical and systematic comparative analysis of the ideational grounds and basic socio-philosophical postulates, political and ideological prescriptions of the program documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China. Within the framework of this study, special attention has been paid to highlighting the essence and features of the Soviet and Chinese strategy of socialist construction, created to implement Marxist socialist and communist projects, as well as revealing the scientific evaluation of the differences between the political doctrines of the CPSU and the CPC in the interpretation of objective logic (the duration of stages, goals, and objectives of fundamental economic, social, political, and cultural transformations) of the process of constructing high-level development socialism ("developed socialism") and the further progressive movement of such a society to the phase of communism. (shrink)

The paper aims at tracing a collective portrait and the trajectories of a group of about forty women active in the communist movement after Poland had regained independence, and after the Second World War. I explore the relations between gender, communist activity, and the changing circumstances of the communist movement. I argue that interwar activities shaped women communists as radical, uncompromising, and questioning traditional femininity political agents, accepted as comrades at every organisational level. This image and (...) identity, though, contributed to the creation of the gender division of political work after the war, when women were assigned specific roles as guardians of revolutionary past. The post-war situation of state socialism with the communist party as the ruling party assigned women mainly to invisible, secondary positions. (shrink)

Music is an inescapable part of social, cultural and political life, and has played a powerful role in mobilising support for popular movements demanding social justice. The impact of David Bowie, Prince and Bob Dylan, for example, on diversity awareness and legislative reform relating to sexuality, gender and racial equality respectively is still felt; with the latter receiving a Nobel Prize in 2016 for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. The influence of these (...) composers and performers reached far beyond the concert hall. Conversely, musical propaganda has been a common feature of many dictatorships, most notably Nazism’s Adolf Hitler and Communism’s Joseph Stalin, and is still instrumental in the election campaigns of political parties. US President Donald Trump’s winning retro classic rock campaign playlist conveyed an idealised version of the past which aligned with the tastes and interests of his core constituency, and evoked feelings of nationalistic pride and patriotism. The eclectic selection of upbeat music effectively masked the underlying capitalist initiatives, corporate greed and allegations of financial impropriety that characterised both the Democrat and Republican campaigns. Although unable to impart meaning with the same level of precision as language, music has a potentially broader semantic capacity due to its greater elasticity. It constitutes a common language which has the ability to create a community of people that sings, speaks, reasons, votes and even feels the same way. Accordingly, this article explores the symbiotic relationship between music and law, identity politics and social justice, via the lens of musical semiosis. (shrink)

This article explains the methodology behind our PhD thesis, that describes how five Southern European Communist parties2 reacted, through their party press, to the events that took place in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1991, such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the deposition of the Romanian dictator in December 1989 or the Soviet Coup d’etat in August 1991. We describe an interdisciplinary methodology which combines elements of history of the present, historiography of Communism (...) and communication sciences. We will summarize our study, after explaining our methodology and adapting the framing party press for the purposes of this work. Finally, we’ll draw the conclusions after presenting one specific case: the interpretations provided by each party following the parliamentary elections of June 1989 in Poland. (shrink)

Karsavin's social ideas in many respects determined his relation to the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik order. In full accord with his theory of the symphonic person, the broad and mass character of the processes that brought the Bolsheviks to power and enabled them to hold on to it was for Karsavin a sufficient reason to recognize the historical justification of the new order and to expect positive fruits from it. Of course, he never abandoned the standards of Christian ethics (...) in his evaluation of the practice of bolshevism; he was quite harsh in his denunciations of murders and persecutions. Nor did he descend to "Change of Landmarks" capitulationism, stressing more than once: "To understand the truth of what is happening does not mean to 'change landmarks' without qualification and, having lost face, to become appendages of the Communists." Although he was willing to allow, together with the "Change of Landmarks" people, that the Bolsheviks preserved Russia and its statehood from total collapse, he, in contrast to them, firmly asserted that what was needed was not submission to bolshevism but determined quests for a valid strategy to overcome it. Nonetheless, of all our religious thinkers, it was indisputably he who went further than anyone else in accepting and approving Bolshevik policy, who was inclined to believe in the fruitfulness of the Soviet experiment. This far-reaching acceptance was already clearly expressed in a short chapter on revolution that Karsavin appended to his Philosophy of History [Filosofiia istorii]. This acceptance was later intensified and actively defended in articles and public speeches, and it achieved its absolute apogee in the period of the philosopher's participation in the Eurasian movement. (shrink)

The author presents the changing role of women and of the attitudes towards them in the PWP and the PSP in a midsize industrial town in Central Poland in the years 1945-1948. During the war, women of the PWP were promoted to the highest positions in the party structures, however, due to the quick reaffirmation of gender roles in the post-1945 period, they were relegated to lower posts. Their political influence was thereafter limited solely to the care sector which (...) was considered their natural domain. In turn, the PSP gained importance in the post-war period only after A. Tomaszewska, a woman and an influential prewar labour organizer, took charge of it in 1946. Under her leadership, the Socialists renewed their ties with women workers of the town’s main textile factory and challenged the Communist party. (shrink)

Since the 16th National Congress of Communist Party of China (16th NCCPC) in 2002, more and more private entrepreneurs have appeared on the political arena in China. The article first describes the state of the phenomenon, and analyzes the reasons and the related ethical issues of private entrepreneurs participating in politics. For this purpose, the article begins by suggesting a framework of analyzing the ethical analysis of corporate political actions, then applies it to a case study of the phenomenon, (...) and finally, makes some policy suggestions to the government for regulating the practice of private entrepreneurs' involvement in politics. (shrink)

For a better understanding of the present situation in Romania it is necessary to go beyond the limited political approach, i.e., to seek the germs of contemporary conflicts in the history of that country — especially in the history of the Romanian Communist Party. We have to mink about the origins of Romanian communism in 1921, when the Socialist Left split into a strong and active radical minority and a “reformist” traditional Social-Democratic wing. The situation of the (...) Left in Romania was further complicated by an ethnic syncretism. Because of the incorporation of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and North Bukovinaand the subsequent national, social, economic, and cultural claims of the Hungarian, German, Jewish, Ukrainian, and Russian minorities, the ethnic problem became an obsession during the inter-war period. (shrink)

During the late 60s and the beginning of the 1970s, the changes within the Communist Party which followed the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the former Secretary General, led to a certain openness for culture and arts, from an ideological point of view. The so-called ideological “thaw” would not last more than 6 years, but it was needed all along in order for the new nomenklatura system of Ceauşescu’s generation to take over the rule of the state and of the (...) party. This is the broader context in which the relationship between the theatre repertories, the audience and the politics would develop further in a very insidious way. Facing a massive “peasantization of the working class” due to the regime’s investments in the industrial sector, the configuration of the urban population in Romanian cities had changed significantly. The inflow of poorly educated persons had a strong negative impact on the efforts to educate the urban population in the working-class socialist ethics. In this study we are profiling the beneficiaries of the cultural policies of the regime: What were their cultural background and their expectations regarding theatre and why did the authorities intervene in regulating the theatre market? (shrink)

This paper analyses the history of the South American Secretariat of the Communist International. The objective is to carry out a critical study of the policies and strategy of the Secretariat, considering how its relationship with the Comintern and the South American Communist Parties changed over time. Our hypothesis is that during its first years of existence (1925–8) the Secretariat developed a policy based on the United Front. This changed during a transition period (July 1928–July 1929) in which (...) it developed a stagist programme of bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the implementation of its front tactics was increasingly questioned. From 1929 to 1934, the organisation abandoned all concrete alliance tactics in the workers’ movement and electoral politics while nevertheless proclaiming its advocacy of the ‘United Front from below’. This paper is based on an analysis of primary sources, including the Secretariat’s publications, correspondence, and internal documents. (shrink)

After years of progress in terms of gender and sexual rights, since 2012 Europe is facing a so-called gender backlash – opposition directed to issues related to reproductive policies and abortion, violence against women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) rights and gay marriages, gender mainstreaming and sex education at schools as well as antidiscrimination policies. In this article, firstly, by taking the anti-gender developments as point of reference, I examine the emergence of anti- (...) class='Hi'>gender movement in Europe via the use of what I call troll science. Troll science is based on (distorted) scientific arguments moulded into populist discourse, creating an alternative narrative on the conceptions of gender equality. Similar to troll accounts posting provocative, superfluous and even off-topic messages on social media to start arguments and quarrels aiming to distract, troll science, I argue, creates an alternative narrative opposing the scientific facts and discourses (i.e. climate change, evolution, vaccination and gender theory). Later, I discuss the emerging conservative troll-scientific discourses and the gendered public normative order of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP; Justice and Development Party) government, under the New Turkey. I previously argued that New Turkey and the society under the party’s rule perpetuated by a new set of standards create an alternative narrative on the conceptions of gender equality through troll-science narratives. I concluded by showing how such ideological discourses help create emotional echo chambers – enabling its fast distribution and acceptance by the ideologically conservative groups. Contribution: This paper contributes to the Special Collection Gender Justice, Health and Human Development with the theory of troll-science it introduces to discuss the alternative and anti-gender scientific discourse that is dominating academia. (shrink)

The paper questions some of the premises in studying academic spin-offs in developed countries, claiming that when taken as characteristics of ‘academic spin-offs per se,’ they are of little help in understanding the phenomenon in the Eastern European countries during the transitional and post-transitional periods after 1989. It argues for the necessity of adopting a path-dependent approach, which takes into consideration the institutional and organisational specificities of local economies and research systems and their evolution, which strongly influence the patterns of (...) spin-off activity. The paper provides new findings and original arguments in support of Balazs’ seminal theses (Balazs 1995, 1996) about the emergence of academic spin-offs during the early transition. It reveals key economic and policy mechanisms bearing on academic entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe, such as the tensions between economic and political nomenclatures of former Communist Parties, where the dismantling or preservation of the power of political nomenclature resulted in different patterns of development—rapid reforms in the ‘first wave’ of EU accession countries or the establishment of rent-seeking and assets-stripping economies in countries like Bulgaria and Romania, making the transition period especially difficult. In the latter, a specific economic environment emerged, unknown in Western Europe and in the ‘champions’ of transition—such as suppression of the authentic entrepreneurship in a number of economic sectors, disintegration of corporate structures, etc. Thus, the paper reveals the common ground behind the two conflicting tendencies in post-socialist academic spin-offs, partially outlined in other research (Simeonova 1995; Pavlova 2000): as an authentic form of academic entrepreneurship grasping the opportunities opened up by the economic crisis and compensating failures in science and technology policy on the one hand, and as specific rent-seeking strategy draining valuable public assets on the other (the latter, in turn, boosting the negative attitudes in local scientific communities). The paper provides new findings about the evolution of the academic spin-offs in Bulgaria along the two polar trends and their positive and negative repercussions on parent research institutions. The results were achieved in the PROKNOW Project, EC 6th Framework Program. (shrink)

This article investigates the distribution of power in Poland’s drug reimbursement policy in the early 2000s. We examine competing theoretical expectations suggested by neopluralism, historical institutionalism, corporate domination, and clique theory of the post-communist state, using data from a purposive sample of 109 semi-structured interviews and documentary sources. We have four concrete findings. First, we uncovered rapid growth in budgetary spending on expensive drugs for narrow groups of patients. Second, to achieve these favorable policy outcomes drug companies employed two (...) prevalent methods of lobbying: informal persuasion of key members of local cliques and endorsements expressed by patient organizations acting as seemingly independent “third parties.” Third, medical experts were co-opted by multinational drug companies because they relied on these firms for scientific and financial resources that were crucial for their professional success. Finally, there was one-way social mobility from the state to the pharmaceutical sector, not the “revolving door” pattern familiar from advanced capitalist countries, with deleterious consequences for state capacity. Overall, the data best supported a combination of corporate domination and clique theory: drug reimbursement in Poland was dominated by Western multinationals in collaboration with domestically based cliques. (shrink)

Abstract:Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964) is best-remembered for her autobiography, The Rebel Girl (1955). This classic text of labor history recounts Flynn’s her early career as a socialist soapbox speaker, her work as an “agitator” for the Industrial Workers of the World, and her defense of political prisoners during World War I. Despite its iconic status, The Rebel Girl has been subject to little historical analysis. This article examines how Flynn developed her narrative identity as the “Rebel Girl,” contextualizes the production (...) of her autobiography within the Cold War, and argues that Flynn’s membership in the Communist Party from 1937 until the end of her life prevented her narrating her life story beyond 1926, foreclosing discussion of a same-sex relationship, and her feminist activism within the Communist Party. Thus, the muted memory of “Red Feminism,” may be traced to the political priorities of communist women themselves, as well as anti-communism, and dominant paradigms in U.S. women’s and gender history. Flynn’s long career demonstrates the impact of gender on women’s leadership in leftist social movements, and provides an opportunity to examine how she renegotiated the relationship between the personal and the political in light of shifting sexual mores and changing political imperatives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface This issue of Feminist Studies includes a cluster of essays that demonstrates new approaches to life writing, with special attention to unconventional women’s autobiographies. Lara Vapnek describes the historical inhibitions that shaped the self-presentation of pioneering American labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in the early twentieth century such that she omitted her sexual relationships with both women and men from her autobiographical writings. Overlapping with Vapnek’s historical focus, (...) Nora Doyle’s essay takes a new look at Gertrude Stein’s bestknown and most accessible work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, seeing it as Stein’s clever reworking of the women’s genre of domestic fiction in its pairing of a domesticated wife with a “genius” husband. In her examination of Kamala Das’s Balyakala Smaranakal (Memories of childhood), Sharmila Sreekumar discusses how the memoir’s depiction of self-deferral rather than self-realization unsettles autobiographical conventions through its troubling of the relationship between “self,” “life,” and “writing” that is constitutive of the genre. In Olga Zilberbourg’s short story, two women are baffled as they contemplate a friend’s suicide: what does it say about their own accomplishments and losses? Attention to the visual aspects of women’s lives and to their embodiment is highlighted in Estelle Carol’s memoir about her time spent as a member of the Graphic Collective of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in the 1970s. Corey Hickner-Johnson’s lyrical essay describes the first-person I of the poem as pushing herself to a physical extreme. Her autobiographical crisis-moment, depicted in acutely visceral and visual terms, wills into relief life’s underlying colors against a backdrop of otherwise drab monotony and disappointment. Feminist graphic artwork is discussed in Hillary Chute’s review essay on the newly popular genre of graphic novels by women. Alexandra Ketchum’s “‘The Place We’ve Always Wanted to Go But Never Could Find’: Finding Woman Space in Feminist Restaurants and Cafés in Ontario 1974–1982” and Samantha Pergadia’s “Geologies of 8 Sex and Gender: Excavating the Materialism of Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler” shift our attention away from individual life trajectories to broader sweeps of space and time. Ketchum’s history of feminist restaurants and cafes in Ontario, Canada, in the mid 1970s to early 1980s encourages us to consider the importance of space to the formation of feminist solidarities and political organizing, while Pergadia’s analysis of the geological understandings that undergird the work of both Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler invites us to rethink the temporalities through which gendered and sexed subjects, as well as academic disciplines, are formed. In closing, Ashwini Tambe reflects on the #MeToo movement and how we might fashion a more responsive public reckoning with sexual coercion. The issue leads off with Vapnek’s essay, “The Rebel Girl Revisited: Rereading Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s Life Story.” As Vapnek details, Flynn, an activist in the Industrial Workers of the World, chronicled her life only as far as 1926. Although she envisioned women’s emancipation as an integral component of the socialist revolution, her self-censorship reveals “how communism as well as anticommunism has limited our knowledge of the feminist past.” Flynn remained committed to socialism and women’s rights and continued to agitate for social change, but her efforts to narrate her later life were stymied by internal inhibitions and external forces. For a decade she lived with another woman at a time when leftists were not open about same-sex relationships. Nor did she wish to reveal her sexual relationships with a number of men or the psychological breakdown she suffered in 1926. Joining the US Communist Party in 1936 re-energized her career as a labor organizer and resulted in her being sent to prison from 1955 to 1957 during the period of the Red Scare in the United States. By her middle age, she had experienced not only nonconventional personal relationships but also a dramatic change in her appearance: rather than the slim girl pictured on the cover of songs designed to encourage the labor movement, she was a stout, matronly woman. Inhibited from revising her autobiography to account for her later life... (shrink)

Feminist scholars challenge ahistorical conceptions of the patriarchal state and emphasize the importance of power struggles across class, race, and gender lines in transforming state gender policies. They also unintentionally downplay the ideological power struggles among race- and class-homogeneous patriarchal institutions, especially in relatively monolithic political contexts with little or no independent feminist movement. Our historical case study of the transformations of Polish abortion laws and selected economic policies geared toward women explores how these changing policies were used (...) in, and shaped by, the ideological power struggles between two homogeneous, powerful, male-dominated institutions: the Communist Party and the Catholic Church. We argue that one cannot understand patriarchal state practices without considering the ideological power struggles between patriarchal institutions in homogeneous social contexts as well as in those of a more heterogeneous nature. (shrink)

Urban Chinese today do not appear to trust foreign countries. Why are they so suspicious? Over the past quarter century, the Chinese Communist Party has utilized its educational and propaganda systems to produce historical narratives of imperial China's beneficence towards its East Asian neighbors, and of an early modern at the hands of foreign powers. Qualitative analysis of Chinese social media today suggests that these narratives are tied to widespread popular distrust of China's East Asian neighbors and the West (...) today. Interrogating a 2012 survey of urban Chinese, this paper explores the sources of international attitudes quantitatively. It first examines whether Chinese today do indeed distrust foreign countries. It then tests two hypotheses about the drivers of Chinese distrust towards the world today. A socialization hypothesis holds that political and/or social pressures shape the international attitudes of the Chinese people. A psychological hypothesis, by contrast, holds that individual differences like age and gender shape Chinese attitudes. We find substantial support for the former: more years of education are associated with levels of dis/trust in foreign countries in the socially or politically appropriate ways. However, we also find that individual differences in subjective interest in international affairs interact with socialization processes like education and media exposure in shaping the international attitudes of urban Chinese today. The prevalence of public discourses of distrust towards foreign countries does not bode well for Chinese foreign policy in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Malgorzata Fidelis in her bookWomen, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Polandsets out to examine gender policies during Stalinism and their transformation under the subsequent ‘Polish road to socialism’. She shows that the relative political liberalisation in the late 1950s was also accompanied by the abandonment of policies favouring women and the return to conservative prewar gender hierarchies. The essay finds that the book is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the vicissitudes of gender struggle during Communism (...) in Poland. It also makes a contribution to the understanding of how the principles declared by the Communist Party were modified in response not only to economic necessities but also to local cultures and popular struggles. In this way it sheds light on the process of the legitimation of the Communist regime in Poland and beyond by accommodating demands from below. (shrink)

Zaolian refers to courtship or dating among young people in elementary and secondary school systems. In today’s China, it is regarded as a serious social problem related to minors/adolescents. To safeguard their moral, hygiene and promising future, it is believed that zaolian should be prevented and controlled by school regulations, family pressures, and even state laws. This paper attempts to provide a historical explanation to origins of this specific juvenile delinquency in China’s long twentieth century. Firstly, it offers a critical (...) discussion on current scholarships, which dismiss zaolian either as a Freudian sexual repression by the Chinese Communist regime since 1949 or as a product of this regime’s social control efforts in the early 1980s. Unconvinced by these explanations, it then presents a new approach to examine “moral, ideological and structural” origins of zaolian. The moral and ideological origins include traditional Confucian patriarchy and its sexual norms, a new regime of western medical sciences, and the sexual repressive regime of the Chinese Communist Party, and all of them could be traced at least in the early 20th century. Lastly, it turns to the more crucial structural origins, or the three institutional-buildings responding to globally circulating discourses since the early 20th century: modern marriage against zaohun, family planning policy against zaoyu and modern educational system. Zaolian as a social problem was fledged in the 1980s when the three institutions had been well-established in China. (shrink)

This paper examines the profile of the Albatros Publishing House in Bucharest (specialising in youth literature) and the activity of its director, writer Mircea Sântimbreanu. He held this position for almost two decades and recounted his experience in a volume of memoirs. I tried to explore these memoirs mainly in parallel with accounts from archival documents and secondary literature. The Albatros Publishing House was a micro-universe for assessing the impact of successive ideological offensives by the Romanian Communist Party (...) on book production and on the youth in general (mainly the July 1971 Theses and the other party directives of the 1970s, as well as the Mangalia Theses of 1983). By the 1980s, the regime’s propaganda had acquired ultra-nationalistic nuances. This paper will also exemplify such developments by discussing the scandal generated by the 1983 publication of Saturnalii by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a volume of poems with strong antisemitic tenor. Using mainly diaries, journals, secondary literature and archival documents, this article also analyses the strategies deployed by the communist regime in order to coerce the young generation – through the agency of publishing houses – to assume the new literary-political ideology of revolutionary humanism (the Socialist Realism of the Ceaușescu era). (shrink)

Drawing on stakeholder theory and the evolutionary approach to institutions, this paper investigates the channels through which corporate social responsibility (CSR) is developed in post-communist economies by focusing on the employee background factors that shape the employees' expectations with regard to corporate socially responsible behaviour. We identify three channels through which exogenous and endogenous CSR are developed: employees with work experience in multinational enterprises (MNEs) (leading to exogenous CSR), employees with CSR knowledge (leading to exogenous CSR) and employees with (...) experience of the socialist system (leading to endogenous CSR). Furthermore, we argue that the interactions between these channels lead to hybrid CSR in transition economies. We use a questionnaire-based survey with employees of domestic and MNEs in Romania and we conduct regression analysis. We find that employees with work experience in MNEs act as channels for exogenous CSR, while employees with experience of the socialist system act as channels for endogenous CSR. Furthermore, employees with experience of the socialist system and CSR knowledge or work experience in an MNE act as channels for hybrid CSR in transition economies. Based on our results, we put forward implications for theory, managers and policy makers. (shrink)

Drawing on stakeholder theory and the evolutionary approach to institutions, this paper investigates the channels through which corporate social responsibility (CSR) is developed in post‐communist economies by focusing on the employee background factors that shape the employees' expectations with regard to corporate socially responsible behaviour. We identify three channels through which exogenous and endogenous CSR are developed: employees with work experience in multinational enterprises (MNEs) (leading to exogenous CSR), employees with CSR knowledge (leading to exogenous CSR) and employees with (...) experience of the socialist system (leading to endogenous CSR). Furthermore, we argue that the interactions between these channels lead to hybrid CSR in transition economies. We use a questionnaire‐based survey with employees of domestic and MNEs in Romania and we conduct regression analysis. We find that employees with work experience in MNEs act as channels for exogenous CSR, while employees with experience of the socialist system act as channels for endogenous CSR. Furthermore, employees with experience of the socialist system and CSR knowledge or work experience in an MNE act as channels for hybrid CSR in transition economies. Based on our results, we put forward implications for theory, managers and policy makers. (shrink)

Drawing on stakeholder theory and the evolutionary approach to institutions, this paper investigates the channels through which corporate social responsibility (CSR) is developed in post‐communist economies by focusing on the employee background factors that shape the employees' expectations with regard to corporate socially responsible behaviour. We identify three channels through which exogenous and endogenous CSR are developed: employees with work experience in multinational enterprises (MNEs) (leading to exogenous CSR), employees with CSR knowledge (leading to exogenous CSR) and employees with (...) experience of the socialist system (leading to endogenous CSR). Furthermore, we argue that the interactions between these channels lead to hybrid CSR in transition economies. We use a questionnaire‐based survey with employees of domestic and MNEs in Romania and we conduct regression analysis. We find that employees with work experience in MNEs act as channels for exogenous CSR, while employees with experience of the socialist system act as channels for endogenous CSR. Furthermore, employees with experience of the socialist system and CSR knowledge or work experience in an MNE act as channels for hybrid CSR in transition economies. Based on our results, we put forward implications for theory, managers and policy makers. (shrink)

During its first four congresses, held annually under Lenin, the Communist International went through two distinct phases: while the first two congresses focused on programmatic and organisational aspects of the break with Social-Democratic parties, the third congress, meeting after the putsch known as the ‘March Action’ of 1921 in Germany, adopted the slogan ‘To the masses!’, while the fourth codified this new line in the ‘Theses on the Unity of the Proletarian Front’. The arguments put forward by the first (...) two congresses were originally drafted by leaders of the Russian Communist Party, but the initiative for the adoption of the united-front policy came from the German Communist Party under the leadership of Paul Levi. This article explores the historical circumstances that turned the German Communists into the pioneers of the united-front tactic. In the documentary appendix we add English versions of two documents drafted by Levi: the ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany’ on the Kapp Putsch, dated 16 March 1920, and thekpd’s ‘Open Letter’ of 8 January 1921, which gave rise to the united-front tactic. (shrink)

The gendered assumptions embedded in the construction of the rational individual are well established in Western feminist thought but inapplicable to describe societies operating on different principles, such as East European state socialism. This article identifies the communist subject as the building block of communist political ideology and argues that this formulation was no less male biased than its counterpart, the rational individual under liberal capitalism. In state socialist Hungary this male bias came to be expressed differently: Women (...) were integrated into society through membership in a social group perceived as relatively homogeneous regarding interests and obligations and with gender-specific qualities and privileges. These qualities were considered inferior to men's since women—because of household responsibilities—were not capable of total devotion to the communist party. The author explores this construction of the female communist subject through a content analysis of classified materials from the archives of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. (shrink)

Violations of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are frequent all over the world. Women’s sexual and reproductive health is related to multiple human rights. The term ‘rights-based’ has become increasingly linked to the concept of a more comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive rights of women around the globe. The rights-based perspective is derived from the treaties, pacts and other international commitments that recognize and reinforce human rights, including the sexual and reproductive rights of women. We conducted an (...) extensive review of the guidelines, frameworks, research reports and published articles that have been cited as informing the rights-based approach. The findings of the review highlights what is meant by sexual and reproductive health and rights by the stakeholders, why this matter is important, and what can be done. It demands more partnerships with human rights, women’s and other civil society organizations, increased number of successful national policies, initiatives and/or legislative changes, increased budget and other resources at national and/or local community level, mass communication and engagement of men to promote and advance women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Achievement of gender equality is very crucial, because it is a human right that advances women’s empowerment; and is interlinked with sexual and reproductive health and rights. (shrink)

En Russie, après 1917, « la question des femmes » et la « la question sexuelle » ont fait l’objet de politiques publiques qui se voulaient éclairées par les sciences sociales. Après avoir été décrétées résolues sous Staline, ces questions ont pu être partiellement réouvertes avec le Dégel. Cet article explique comment, sur le temps long, ces sciences sociales supposées « socialistes » se sont distinguées des sciences « bourgeoises » moins par leur épistémologie que par la priorisation ou l’exclusion (...) de certaines problématiques, au gré des évolutions politiques du régime. Ainsi, les recherches sur la sexualité et le contrôle des naissances, avant-gardistes dans les années 1920, sont devenues relativement illégitimes après le dégel. Dans les années 1960-1980, c’était surtout la baisse de la natalité et le « double fardeau » – domestique et professionnel – des femmes qui faisaient problème. Les comportements familiaux semblaient étrangers à la logique de la planification, et les sciences sociales étaient travaillées par la perspective d’un art de gouverner d’orientation plus libérale. Il s’est alors formé un clivage qui est toujours d’actualité, entre une conceptualisation du changement social en termes de « modernisation » – démographique, sexuelle... – à accompagner, ou de « crise » à enrayer. (shrink)

The ministerial recruitment strategies in Communist Romania are a symmetric replica of the elite selection patterns in parliamentary democracies. Starting with the mid-60s, all the major traditional pathways to power formally mirror mechanisms of the elite selection and differentiation, which are commonly encountered in Western democracies. During the Communist regime, “atypical” credentials such as education, academia, and the economic experiences also increased the likelihood of a promotion in public office. Starting from the notable differences between the Romanian (...) elites and those in other Communist countries in the region, the paper argues that intertwined patterns of “Westernisation” and patrimonial-type credentials contributed to the consolidation of the Romanian Communist Party and hindered, in the aftermath of the regime change, the first attempts at elite renewal and democratisation. (shrink)

This attempt to interpret Communist society through the total social fact of the gift takes up Mauss's strategy, which attempted to explain social reproduction without written laws or state institutions. It was a culture of chronic revolution (‘revolution’ in the etymological sense), where the rules of the game changed with each party congress, institutions were in a state of permanent reform, science discovered new truths every five years, and yesterday's heroes became the traitors of today. The very concept of (...) living in a transitory society renders every social form temporary and unreal - starting with the proclaimed disappearance of the State, the family, and private property. (shrink)

Mihai Ralea was a university professor and prominent representative of the Romanian interwar literary intelligentsia. M. Ralea taught psychology, sociology and aesthetics, and was at the same time the director of a reputed literary magazine (Viaţa românească-Romanian Life). Ralea was also a politician, initially an important member of the National Peasant Party, representing its centre left wing. In his case, one may notice the contradiction between his moral arguments in public and his deeds after he reached positions of (...) power (Minister of Labour under the royal dictatorship, Minister of Arts under the pro-communist Petru Groza government, etc.). Ralea was also called “the moralist without morals”, and the compromises he made – manifested through his adherence to anti-democratic regimes – can be documented by numerous archival documents. Due to strong political connections, Ralea survived in the high ranks of cultural bureaucracy even during cultural Stalinism. He maintained important positions both at the University of Bucharest and with humanities research institutes of the post-1948 Soviet-style Romanian Academy of Sciences. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he also gained posi-tions of international cultural representation with the Romanian branch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNES-CO) and the Romanian Institute for the Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (IRRCS, the Romanian VOKS). His survival (as a professor of psychology after 1948) had a significant price – Ralea’s collaboration with the Stalinist regime. Using open sources and also newly declassified archival documents, the article is an attempt to approach M. Ralea’s case of survival in the high cultural bureaucracy in the East European context. (shrink)

What kind of rhetoric frames French reproductive policy debate? Who does such policies exclude? Through an examination of the “American import” of gender studies, along with an analysis of France’s Catholic heritage and secular politics, I argue that an unwavering belief in sexual difference as the foundation of French society defines the productive reproductive citizen. Sylviane Agacinski is perhaps the most vocal public philosopher who has framed the terms of reproductive policy debate in France, building an oppositional platform to (...) reproductive technology around anthropological assertions of sexual difference. This paper engages with Agacinski to examine rhetorical claims of sexual difference and how such claims delayed passage of France’s revised bioethics legislation that extends access of assisted reproductive technology (ART) to “all women.” Though the “PMA pour toutes” [ART for all women] legislation was eventually passed, such rhetoric motivated the explicit exclusion of all trans person from its extension, thus hardly permitting ART to all women. (shrink)

This study analyses several aspects of the relationship between communist censorship and literature, from the vantage point of literary sociology. Focusing on the issue of religious drama, the author intends to examine the transformations undergone by Romanian literature in the 1950s and 1960s, considering the impact of totalitarian communist ideology had upon it. What the study highlights is the game between prohibition and subversiveness, between misappropriation and reappropriation, which shaped the literary climate of that period. One of (...) the conclusions envisaged here is that despite unrelenting and excessive pressures exerted by censorship, literature resisted being turned into an ally of the Romanian Communist Party. (shrink)

This paper deals with the Romanian experience as a developer of projects and investor of resources in the countries of the Global South during the 1970s. It follows the country’s grand narrative in its Communist Party’s documents, as compared to that of the statements of the international meetings of the commu­nist parties in the 1960s and 1970s and to that present in the party’s newspaper Scinteia, and in contrast to documents of the political executive committee of the (...) class='Hi'>Romanian Communist Party collected from the Romanian National Archives and the Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. The purpose of this research is to analyse the Romanian solidarity messages in the party discourse, their degree of compliance with the solidarity messages of the rest of the countries in the socialist camp, actual actions of humanitarian assistance in the countries of the Global South, and how those actions and messages were filtered and transmitted to the Romanian readers of print press. The results indicate a discrepancy between public discourse and archival discourse on the one hand, and the nature of information disclosed to the public, on the other. (shrink)

The article discusses this intricate issue of women’s anti-Fascist/communist activism during World War II in Romania. I am particularly interested in the relationship that developed between the Romanian Communist Party and the women who joined the movement in the complicated context of World War II. The article is attempting to assess whether women’s increased involvement in the communist organization was due to the previous and continuous politics of the RCP, or it was a mere consequence of (...) unprecedented circumstances. The article also addresses issues related to the legacy of the anti-Fascist/communist women’s struggle during World War II, in their attempt to establish postwar public careers, but also the manner in which their efforts and activisms were recognized and/or recompensed after the war. (shrink)

This article intends to show the distance between work-life balance as a political and social issue at the EU and Romanian level, through the lens of the local gender equality policies following the process of EU accession. The article provides, in its first part, a brief presentation of the main theoretical axes structuring the available literature, followed up by the analysis of the occurrence of the work-life balance issue at the European level. Then the study examines the normative (...) dimension of work-life balance in post-communist Romania, seeking to understand to what extent work-life balance policies have been designed and implemented in the last 25 years. (shrink)

By analysing the policies and ideas of German social democracy, the British Labour Party and the Italian Communist Party, this article explores their attitude towards science and their imagination of the future in the 1950s. Deeply different, social democrats and communists shared a positivist attitude in favour of scientific progress and high modernity. This painted their attitude towards the space race, peaceful nuclear power and automation. Science was conceived as a neutral power to be supported, but it required political (...) guidance to harness it and turned it into social progress. Thus, their disagreement was over the political implications for capitalist societies experiencing growing prosperity. Science was also a powerful rhetorical argument to castigate the conservatives for failing the nation and allowing it to decline and fall behind its competitors. The article combines comparison and transnational history, innovating the latter by introducing the concepts of horizontal, vertical and antagonistic transnationalism. (shrink)