Communism Unwrapped

Communism Unwrapped is a collection of essays that unwraps the complex world of consumption under communism in postwar Eastern Europe, featuring new work by both American and European scholars writing from variety of disciplinary perspectives. The result is a fresh look at everyday life under communism that explores the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, exchanged and assessed goods. These phenomena, the editors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived and experienced in its widely varied contexts in the region. Consumption pervaded everyday life far more than most other political and social phenomena. 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 builds on a new field of study. It brings dimension and nuance to our understanding of the communist period and a new perspective to our current analyses of consumerism.

Paulina Bren is Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College. Mary Neuburger is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

- 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