Everyday Life: From Non-Conformism to Dissent

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Recent tendencies in historiography have drawn our attention away from the top-down, state-level actors driving geopolitical currents to people's every day experience of life under Communism. This can take the form of studies of consumer culture, design, labor history, popular entertainment, or associational life as it was shaped by its participants. By the early 1960s, aesthetic and lifestyle choices that differed from the norm were already seen as a deliberate choice to be nonconformist, but after the events of 1968 these gestures were even further politicized and registered (in East and West) as dissent. In this module, we will look at a wide range of practices, from folk culture to street fashion to patterns of consumption and entertainment, to understand how every day life itself could be an act of resistance from a hegemonic political culture.

Handbook

Folklore Revivalism and Ethnography: Alternatives to Everyday Culture / Bernadett Csurgó, Csongor Jánosi, Katalin Juhász, Vladas Sirutavičius, Corneliu Pintilescu

Video

Readings

Compulsory

Bolton, J. (2012). Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, the Plastic People of Theuniverse, and Czech Culture Under Communism. Harvard University Press.
Kemp-Welch, K. (2014). Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence Under Post-Totalitarian Rule, 1956 -1989. Tauris.
Pence, K. (2015). Antipathy and Attraction to the West and Western Consumerism in the German Democratic Republic. In R. Bavaj & M. Steber (Eds.), Germany and “The West” (1st ed., pp. 277–292). Berghahn Books. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qctj1.21
Apor, P., Horváth, S., & Mark, J. (Eds.). (2017). Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe. Anthem Press.
Cazan, R. (2011). Constructing Spaces of Dissent in Communist Romania: Ruined Bodies and Clandestine Spaces in Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days” and Gabriela Adamesteanu’s “A Few Days in the Hospital.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 39(3/4), 93–112. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41308346
Major, P., & Mitter, R. (Eds.). (n.d.). Across the blocs: Cold War cultural and social history. Frank Cass, 2004.
Wciślik, P. (2017). The Rubber Waistband and the Resistor: Solidarity Radio and Media Fantasies of Emancipation under Late Socialism in Poland. Acta Poloniae Historica, 115, 175. https://doi.org/10.12775/APH.2017.115.07
Bren, P. (2010). The Greengrocer and His Tv: The Culture of Communism After the 1968 Prague Spring /. Cornell University Press,.

Recommended

Kenney, P. (2002). A Carnival of Revolution Central Europe 1989. Princeton University Press,.
Furst, J., & McLellan, J. (Eds.). (2017). Dropping Out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc. Lexington Books.
Pence, K. (2015). Antipathy and Attraction to the West and Western Consumerism in the German Democratic Republic. In R. Bavaj & M. Steber (Eds.), Germany and “The West” (1st ed., pp. 277–292). Berghahn Books. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qctj1.21
Klimke, M., & Scharloth, J. (2008). 1968 in Europe: a history of protest and activism, 1956-1977. Palgrave Macmillan.
Richter, P. (2015). Dance House Under the Socialist Regime in Hungary. Studia Musicologica, 56(4), 407–415. https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2015.56.4.8
Mitchell, T. (1992). Mixing Pop and Politics: Rock Music in Czechoslovakia Before and After the Velvet Revolution. Popular Music, 11(02), 187. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000004992
Yurchak, A. (2005). The True Colors of Communism: King Crimson, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd. In Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (pp. 207–237). Princeton University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fgx18.9
Mattson, K. (2001). Did Punk Matter? Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s. American Studies, 42(1), 69–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40643156
Dyck, K. (Ed.). (2017). The History of White-Power Music in Eastern Europe. In Reichsrock (pp. 76–103). Rutgers University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ffjrmp.7
Hayton, J. (2017). Ignoring Dictatorship? Punk Rock, Subculture, and Entanglement in the GDR. In Dropping out of socialism (pp. 207–232). Lexington Books.
Kraszewski, C. S. (2007). The Harmonic Bell-Jar: Wierzyński, Barańczak and the Poetics of Anti-Heroic Dissent. The Polish Review, 52(2), 193–214. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25779665
Wciślik, P. (2017). The Rubber Waistband and the Resistor: Solidarity Radio and Media Fantasies of Emancipation under Late Socialism in Poland. Acta Poloniae Historica, 115, 175. https://doi.org/10.12775/APH.2017.115.07

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Encyclopedia

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External Links

Further Sources

Fortepan Photo Archive

Assignments

In-class or short-term assignments

1) Think of all the areas of everyday life that were impacted by the political, economic, and cultural policies of the socialist state in Eastern Europe. Can you think of any that weren't? What areas of life that we think of as private or personal were genuinely unaffected, if any?

2) Divide the class into two groups (not based on gender!). Based on the primary and secondary sources described in the module, what information can each group find about women's everyday lives and men's everyday lives, respectively? Can we find images from external sources, like fortepan.hu, which highlight these differences? in what way were women's and men's lives made more similar by socialist policies?

Offsite, longer-term assignments

Longer essay assignment: how did the educational system under state socialism and access to knowledge affect people's everyday lives? what kinds of choices were available to young people finishing primary school? finishing secondary school? After doing some basic research on the opportunities and limitations of the educational system, think again about the resources we have available to research people's everyday lives under socialism, and the role that education played.

Discussion

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