Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945-1989

Contributions to a History of Work

Buch | Hardcover

450 Seiten

2020
Central European University Press (Verlag)
978-963-386-337-4 (ISBN)

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Labor regimes under communism in East-Central Europe were complex, shifting and ambiguous. This collection of sixteen essays offers new conceptual and empirical ways to understand their history from the end of the Second World War to 1989, and to think about how their experiences relate to debates about labor history, both European and global.
The authors reconsider the history of state socialism by reexamining the policies and problems of communist regimes and recuperating the voices of the workers who built them. The contributors look at work and workers in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They explore the often contentious relationship between politics and labor policy, dealing with diverse topics including workers' safety and risks; labor rights, and protests; working women's politics and professions; migrant workers and social welfare; attempts to control workers' behavior and stem unemployment; and cases of incomplete, compromised or even abandoned processes of proletarianization. Workers are presented as active agents in resisting and supporting changes in labor policies, in choosing allegiances, and in defining the very nature of work.

Marsha Siefert is Associate Professor of History at Central European University

List of Tables and Figures
List of Abbreviations

Marsha Siefert
Introduction

Finding Work, Making Workers

Natalia Jarska
Unemployment in State Socialism: An Insight into the Understanding of Work in 1950s Poland
Alina-Sandra Cucu
The Impossibility of Being Planned: Slackers and Stakhanovites in Early Socialist Romania
Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj
Finding Workers to Build Socialism: Recruiting for the Steel Factories in Bulgaria and Albania
Alena K. Alamgir
"Inappropriate Behavior": Labor Control and the Polish, Cuban and Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia

Workers, Rights, and Discipline

Malgorzata Mazurek
Dishonest Salesladies: On Gendered Politics of Shame and Blame in Polish State-Socialist Trade
Ulrike Schult
Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism: The Yugoslav Automotive Industry, 1965-1985
Eszter Bartha
"This Workers' Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had": Workers' Hostels, Social Rights and Legitimization in Hungary and the German Democratic Republic
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Discussing Women's Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia: Women Working in the Garment Industry

Workers, Safety, and Risk

Thomas Lindenberger
Governing the State of Emergency: Large Industrial Accidents in Communist East Germany
Adrian Grama
Labor's Risks: Work Accidents, the Industrial Wage Relation and Social Insurance in Socialist Romania
Marko Miljkovic
Nuclear Yutopia: The Outcome of the First Nuclear Accident in Yugoslavia, 1958

Workers, Protest, and Reform

Peter Heumos
Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1968: Systems Analysis and the Debate over the Causes of the Collapse of State Socialism
Susan Zimmermann
"It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, But a Lived Reality": Equal Pay, Women's Work, and the Politics of Labor in State-Socialist Hungary, Late 1960s to Late 1970s
Sabine Rutar
Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region During the Cold War: Action, Control, Legitimacy, Self-Management

Rory Archer and Goran Music
When Workers' Self-Management Met Neoliberalism: Positive Perceptions of Market Reforms among Blue-Collar Workers in Late Yugoslav Socialism

Toward an Inclusive History of Work

Anca Glont
Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World: Internationalism, Global Trends and Romanian Coal Workers

Erscheinungsdatum	10.05.2021
Reihe/Serie	Work and Labor – Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
ISBN-10	963-386-337-6 / 9633863376
ISBN-13	978-963-386-337-4 / 9789633863374
Zustand	Neuware