Negotiating Normality Everyday Lives in Socialist Institutions [Paperback]

This book is about state socialism, not as a political system, but as an ecosystem of interactions between the state and the citizens it sought to control. It includes case studies that demonstrate how the major ideological principles of socialism translated into motives guiding people's lives.

This unique post-revisionist study focuses on people's lives and experiences rather than political systems. The studies are grouped around three common elementssocialist labor, the new socialist man, and the socialist way of life. Using first-hand accounts, the authors find minute deviations from the norms that eventually lead to renegotiation of the norms themselves. Focusing on routines, not extremes, they present socialism in its normal state.

The volume demonstrates different national strategies for dealing with the past in the post-socialist world. Studies of the socialist past may strive to be objective, but their messages tend to be complex. Rather than arriving at one truth about the nature of socialism, this volume explores the many ways people have survived the system.

Introduction
Socialist Normality: Euphemization of Power or Profanation of Power?
Daniela Koleva

1. Living and Working Together : Formal and Personal Relations Between Workers of the Polish State-Owned Farms
Ewelina Szpak

2. Women Workers in Hungary: Identities and Everyday Lives (Microhistorical Analysis of Life-Story Interviews)
Eszter Zsofia Toth

3. Yesterday's Heroes: Spinning Webs of Memory in a Postsocialist Textile Factory in Slovenia
Nina Vodopivec

4. Negotiating Spare Time: Magic at Work in the Everyday Life of a Bulgarian Socialist School
Nadezhda Galabova

5. Contested Normality: Negotiating Masculinity in Narratives of Service in the YugoslS.