Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe

by Paulina Bren, Mary Neuburger

Overview

Communism Unwrapped reveals the complex world of consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, exploring the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, assessed and exchanged goods. These everyday experiences, the editors and contributors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived in its widely varied contexts in the region. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume brings dimension and nuance to understandings of the communist period and the history of consumerism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199827671
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 5.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Paulina Bren teaches at Vassar College and is the author of The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring.

Mary Neuburger is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria and Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Contributors

Introduction, Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger

I. Living Large: Introduction
1. Tuzex and the Hustler: Living It Up in Czechoslovakia, Paulina Bren
2. Utopia Gone Terribly Right: Plutonium's "Gated Communities" in the Soviet Union and the United States, Kate Brown
3. "Knife in the Water": Competitive Consumption in Urbanizing Poland, Kacper Poblocki

II. Quality Control: Introduction
4. The Taste of Smoke: Bulgartabak and the Manufacturing of Cigarettes and Satisfaction, Mary Neuburger
5. Risky Business: What Was Really Being Sold in the Department Stores of Socialist Eastern Europe?, Patrick Hyder Patterson
6. Material Harmony: The Quest for Quality in Socialist Bulgaria, 1960s-1980s, Rossitza Guentcheva

III. Kitchen Talk: Introduction
7. Eating Up Yugoslavia: Cookbooks and Consumption in Socialist Yugoslavia, Wendy Bracewell
8. Grounds for Discontent? Coffee from the Black Market to the Kaffeeklatsch in the GDR, Katherine Pence
9. From Black Caviar to Blackouts: Gender, Consumption, and Lifestyle in Ceausescu's Romania, Jill Massino

IV. To Market, To Market... : Introduction
10. The "Socialist Bourse": Alcohol, Reputation, and Gender in Romania's Second Economy during the 1980s, Narcis Tulbure
11. The Extraordinary Career of Feketevágo Ur: Wood Theft, Pig-killing, and Entrepreneurship in Communist Hungary, 1948-1956, Karl Brown
12. Keeping It Close to Home: Resourcefulness and Scarcity in Late Socialist and Post-Socialist Poland, Malgorzata Mazurek

V. Constructive Criticism : Introduction
13 Kids, Cars, or Cashews?: Debating and Remembering Consumption in Socialist Hungary, Tamas Dombos and Lena Pellandini-Simanyi
14 The House that Socialism Built: Reform, Consumption and Inequality in Postwar Yugoslavia, Brigitte Le Normand
15 Shop Around the Bloc: Trader Tourism and its Discontents on the East German-Polish Border, Mark Keck-Szajbel
Index

Editorial Reviews

"[Bren and Neuburger] provide a valuable and detailed backdrop to a history of places where sausage stands for abundance and bulldozed parmesan symbolises crushed hopes for freedom."—Contemporary European History

"The essays are consistently readable and insightful, and the editors' introductions to each section help guide readers along the contours of the book's major themes. Highly recommended."—CHOICE

"This rich collection of essays offers a unique look at post-1945 Eastern Europe. Departing from the Cold War narrative of endemic shortages and the gloominess of daily life under communism, the essays highlight the everyday creativity and agency of ordinary people. We follow Eastern Europeans to hard-currency stores and gated communities. We see them cross borders to shop in better-supplied neighboring countries and navigate complex social networks to obtain goods and favors. Situating these stories in the context of transnational modernity rather than a totalizing party state, the book offers a rare combination of new research and a compelling theoretical insight."—Malgorzata Fidelis, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Consumerism in Eastern Europe has become a fertile field for exploring the dreams and delusions of state socialist politics, as well as the agency and resourcefulness of its citizens. Bren and Neuburger's pioneering volume brings together a range of rich and surprising case studies from across the whole region, significantly enriching our understanding of Eastern European social history during the Cold War."—Paul Betts, University of Sussex

From the Publisher