Historiography of East, West Frameworks on Eastern European Women During Communist Era Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction

The history of women in Europe was an invisible story. Especially the history of women during the communist era is very scant. Particularly there is a major paucity of European feminists who may have documented the women’s social, political, and economic situation during the communist era. So whatever work that has been done on women during this time has mostly been dominated by western thoughts. Though there are extensive and promising works, being present in the post-communist era (e.g. Wolchik (1994)) but there exist definitive works on women’s history in the communist era in Eastern Europe. Here it must be made clear as to what I mean by Eastern Europe. By Eastern Europe, I mean, following Andrea Peto, the erstwhile Soviet bloc (Peto 2004, 173). This paper tries to trace the trend of historiography in women’s studies in East Europe in the communist era. The paper is first trying to ascertain the existing works and the viewpoints of the researchers on women’s history and then try to ascertain if there exists any difference between the Eastern European and Western European historian’s points of view. Then I will discuss the present situation of the field of study and the future direction of research that is required in the area. First, I discuss the contributions and developments in feminist research in Eastern European countries.

Women’s Studies in East Europe

According to Peto women’s history in the communist East Europe had been “crippled not only by institutional and disciplinary boundaries but also by national hegemonies and overarching frameworks of history writing” (Peto 2004, 174). This is indicative of the “crippled” situation women’s history is in today. While discussing women’s roles in the communist era of the Eastern Europe, Peto shows that in the post-communist there developed a feminist side of history, but before which history was grossly dominated by patriarchal views (Peto 2004, 174). Peto also identifies that unlike Eastern Europe, the change in the history’s outlook in North American and Western Europe occurred due to immense pressure from the political and feminist groups (174). Further, Peto states that the nature of feminist history writing was positivist in nature, implying that there was counter-argument presented in the history of women presented by academicians during the communist era (175).

Feminist historical accounts were subjugated by communist authoritarian government. An argument has been presented regarding feminist history in the communist era, that it had been subjugated by the authorities (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004, 83). They believe that the communist regime accused feminism of encouraging “hostility between women and men instead of fostering cooperation between them” (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004, 83). That is why most historical account of feminism shows that women came to view any form of totalitarian regime be it Soviet Union or Nazi Germany with enmity and men were seen as their “humble partners” (Siklova 1997, 77).

Agnieszka Majcher studied feminism and its development in Poland in the last fifty years (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004). She also studies the current state in economic research of women in the Polish communist era. According to her study gender equality was enshrined in the country’s constitution, it was taken for granted at societal level, but women became “objects of political manipulation, and the rise of a genuine feminist discourse was severely restricted” (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004, 85). According to her, this was mainly because researchers were unable to enter into dialogue with the institutions, mostly because there was lack of political will as well as lack of initiative by feminist groups:

Researchers and women’s activists were unable to enter into a dialogue with, or articulate criticism of, the state or other social institutions. For the most part researchers and women’s activists were unconcerned with the developments in feminist research that took place in the West, particularly from the 1970s onwards. This gap was the result of the repressive ideology of communism, the precarious situation of feminist scholars and activists, and a certain selectivity in accepting new ideas, a self-censorship that continues to this day. (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004, 85)

This neglect by political institutions was also indicated in the work of Anna Loutfi (2005), who studies the Civil Marriage Law in Hungary in the communist era. Her study shows that the privilege that has been provided to women during this era was actually an “illusion” of security and did not provide and legal stability (Loutfi 2005, 14). Historians of the era have shown that this law provided gender equality in a society that was essentially patriarchal in nature and high degree of gender inequality (Loutfi 2005, 15).

The reason for this lack of academics concern on feminism in the communist regime is due to the removal of sociology from universities as it was labeled by communists as a “bourgeois science”. The reason for paucity in the feminist studies as criticism in political and social life of people was considered to be a “taboo” in the communist regime. Thus, the feminist studies during the era are controversial. As argued by Majcher that “the number of publications on women’s issues during the communist period is impressive, even though the subject continued to have only marginal status in economic, sociological, or historical research and many of the publications were just brief articles published in various socio-cultural magazines.” (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004, 86) Apart from these, she also identified a few limitations in the women’s studies in the communist era: (a) inappropriate definition of “gender” and a distinction between “gender” and “sex”, (b) lack of reflection on feminist theory, (c) lack of feminist realization which led to non-identifying of women’s group interest, and (d) the research approaches which were followed were the conventional approaches, which were considered politically acceptable and was rather narrow in framework (Majcher, Majoros and Peto 2004, 86). These problems were also identified by Peto (2004).

One distinct example of communist manipulation of women is found in the work of Basia Nowak (2005) who studies the participation of women in the communist agitations and incorporating women into the party. The reason is shown by Nowak is to prevent women from talking and control women’s “talkativeness” in the name of bringing forth and enlightens the politically backward womenfolk (Nowak 2005, 502). And during the Stalinist era, incorporating women in the socialist ideologies was important because it was believed that “women’s talkativeness had the potential to harm the state” (Nowak 2005, 509).

Women’s history unanimously hailed restrictive policies regarding women as advantageous to women, where policies actually supported restricting women’s role to the family institution and reduced their participation in the workforce. A decline in the participation of women at work was hailed to be advantageous by academicians like Zofia Dach (1976) and Krystyna Knychala (1978). The present state of women’s study in the communist era is dominated by studies of pay gap, barriers to women’s career, pattern of women’s employment and family, model of incorporation of married women in labor force etc. apart from the economic and social status of women, their status in academia was also restricted and feminist research outcome was few. Thus, this leads to a “statist feminist” as was coined by Hana Havelkova which was indicative of the half-hearted policy of women’s emancipation and using it towards gender equality (Havelkova 2000). One reason which Havelkova points out is the lack of any woman’s issue which may have brought about a movement against the governing institution. She also believes that there is an increasing disparity between the feminism in East and West, as there was no feminism in East. The dominant discourse of controlling East European feminism was in its conjugation with western feminism, but there is no chance of comparison because of the impossible task to unify the cultural difference (Riley 2000, 176). In the post-communist era, some scholars have identified the difference between the feminism in West and East (Nikolchina 2002).

A contradictory view is provided by Barbara Einhorn and Charlotte Sever (2003) who believe that in the post-communist era there has arisen a myth that East European countries have rejected Western feminism due to the fall of socialism. But the authors argue that this rejection is oversimplified as the women in the eastern European countries have merely rejected the Western concept of feminism:

“…these analyses provide a simplistic and thus inaccurate picture of the period of transformation, which fails to take into consideration national and cultural differences. More substantively, they deny the actual existence of much grassroots activity both before and after 1989…The two ‘myths of transition’ have arisen partly from contesting notions of the position and project of feminist identities reflected in the continuing and difficult East/West feminist dialogue.” (Einhorn and Sever 2003, 165)

This has been pointed out by Duhacek too who states that “How do we speak of feminism which is other than Western feminism, if not as a feminism which is the other to it, which would presuppose Western feminism as the parameter?” (Duhacek 2000, 129). This demonstrates the disparity in the history of women in Eastern Europe.

Methodological Issue

The above discussion shows that the history of women in the communist Europe was essentially an account of “numbers” with very little stress given on the women’s perspective of the account. The statistics showed that there was high rate of women’s participation in the workforce, there were proper facilities provided to the working wives and they could avail paid leave as and when required, but all these studies failed to provide an account of the systematic exclusion of women’s voice from the history which could demonstrate the social aspects of these numbers. As identified by Nikolchina (2002), there was government support for women in workforce continued but the attitude of emancipation of the communist regime prevailed. So far the approach of most historians is restricted to numbers wherein the social aspects of the women’s history get lost. Number of research are being generated to understand the position of women in the communist era but the researches fail to show any social aspect or humane side due to lack of any primary or secondary reference source. The documentation in the communist regime was essentially by numbers, which predict no problem in the status of women whereby western standards they were equally well off. But the history fails to show the feminist perspective of the story. The history fails to account for the reason for prevalence of traditional constructs of feminity and masculinity. The histories of the time fail to address these issues as they are the essential womanist’s voice to history. So as history even today is based on these numbers published in the communist era grossly misrepresent women’s history.

The future of feminist research in the woman’s history of East Europe during the communist era must be based on a work of an archaeologist and not that of a historian. Peto identifies ways in which this problem of historiography of women’s history can be changed. First the oral history tradition of women must be utilized which remains the only source of identifying the social history of women in Eastern Europe. Then Peto argues that there is no “true” form of history, so Preto states “an archeological excavation is not an innocent activity after all because it is aiming to answer questions of representations but not of constructions” (Peto 2004, 178) as the right methodology for conducting research into women’s history of Eastern Europe.

Conclusion

History of women in Eastern Europe is dominated by controversies and contradictions. They believe that Eastern European and Western feminism is unlike each other and so Peto believes to bridge this gap between the approaches a more unified form of feminism needs to be developed (Peto 2004). Further, on discussion of the methodology of historical approach, the approach must concentrate more on the social aspects of women’s lives than on numbers of the communist era.

Reference

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