Gail Kligman

The Politics of Gender after Socialism

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Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962

List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii Abbreviations xxi Introduction 1 Part I. Laying the Groundwork Chapter 1. The Soviet Blueprint 49 Chapter 2. The Village Community and the Politics of Collectivization, 1945-62 88 Chapter 3. Creating Party Cadres 150 Part II. Pedagogies of Power: Technologies of Rural Transformation Chapter 4. Pedagogies of Knowledge Production and Contestation 215 Chapter 5. Pedagogies of Persuasion 283 Chapter 6. Fomenting Class War 324 Part III. Outcomes Chapter 7. The Collectives Are Formed 369 Chapter 8. The Restratification and Bureaucratization of Rural Life 408 Conclusion 444 Appendix I. Project and Participants 461 Appendix II. Methodology 464 Appendix III. List of Interviewers and Respondents 472 Bibliography 477 Index 499

Abortion and International Adoption in Post-Ceausescu Romania

The situation of abortion an international adoption in post-Ceausescu Romania are reviewed. The legacy of that regime has been social fragmentation and dehumanization. Womens role was relegated to obligatory childbearing denial of rights policing by physicians of womens reproduction and fines for childlessness. Fertility control belonged to the states. Abortion was allowed under Ceausescu after 1966 only after having given birth to 4 live children and in 1985 to 5 children. Abortion became legal on December 26 1989 and July 16 1991 a new adoption law provided for institutionalization of orphaned children in order to curb the sale of infants and children in the adoption market. Between 1966 and 1989 9452 women died form illegal abortion. Many unwanted children were also born and abandoned. Legal abortion was a welcome relief so welcome that there were reports of 70-100 abortions/day performed in hospitals in 1990. By 1991 the ratio of abortions to live births was 3:1. Maternal mortality and the birth rate meanwhile declined. The need for family planning and health education was recognized by the government and nongovernmental organizations. Obstacles were the state control of mass media the propaganda that had been generated about the use of contraceptives and the lack of support from the Ministry of Education. AIDS is similarly ignored. Condoms are more easily available form tobacco shops; condoms pills and IUDs are less available from pharmacies and hospital clinics which are viewed with suspicion as places of illness. The cost of abortions was increased as a disincentive. The practice of international adoption was begun late under the Ceausescu regime in exchange for hard currency. Publicity about the humanitarian rescue of children and the village systemization plans led to adoption by the French and Belgians and later the international community. Adoptions increased from 480 in 1990 to 1451 in mid-1991. In July 1991 legislation was passed to stop private adoptions but requiring adoptions through institutional channels. Many children were Gypsies unwanted by the Romanians and coercion was sometimes employed in private adoptions which the patriarchal authority structure encouraged. The 1991 law will help to alleviate the abuse of children and women.

Poetry and Politics in a Transylvanian Village

This paper examines the differential symbolic manipulation of traditional poetic forms for purposes of proand anti-communist commentary. Data were collected in 1978-79 in a semi-cooperativized village in northern Transylvania. Rhymed couplets, traditional and improvised, generally constitute the primary mode of communication during ritual occasions. Though their content is seemingly determined by the event, they also point to loci of transcendent social concern, providing a forum for the expression of ideological transformation. Poetry is also utilized effectively in written form both formally as an educational, ideological tool, and informally for correspondence. For both Party and peasant, symbolic forms may be viewed as effecting and affecting social action.

How Communist Cadres Persuaded Romanian Peasants to Give Up Their Land

The collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet bloc caused millions of peasants to sign away their rights to land and join collective farms. How did Party cadres accomplish this extraordinary change? In this article, drawn from a large collaborative project, the authors present examples from Romania to describe one of the central techniques used: “persuasion work.” The authors focus on how the persuaders sought to create their authority with villagers, peasants’ and cadres’ reciprocal manipulations of kinship and gender, cadres’ disruptions of the accustomed spatial and temporal organization of village life and peasant responses to them, bargaining and negotiations between cadres and villagers, and more overt forms of “persuasive” coercion. Although persuasion was ostensibly about creating an inner state of belief—convincing peasants of the superiority of collective agriculture—the authors argue that it is more appropriately seen as a performative matter, in which peasants learned to perform the consent that was required of them, whether they believed in the virtues of collectivizing or not. Among the reasons was that Romania’s cadres were largely ill prepared for the job and were unable to be very persuasive. Thus, they both relied on force (thereby heightening peasants’ resistance to joining the collectives) and settled for villagers’ pro forma adherence rather than their active conviction.

Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism@@@The Politics of Gender after Socialism

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION Susan Gal and Gail Kligman 3 PART ONE: REPRODUCTION AS POLITICS 21 CHAPTER 1 Between Ideology, Politics, and Common Sense: The Discourse of Reproductive Rights in Poland - Eleonora Zielinska 23 CHAPTER 2 Reproductive Policies in the Czech and Slovak Republics - Sharon L. Wolchik 58 CHAPTER 3 Talking about Women and Wombs: The Discourse of Abortion and Reproductive Rights in the G.D.R. during and after the Wende - Eva Maleck-Lewy and Myra Marx Ferree 92 CHAPTER 4 Birth Strike in the New Federal States: Is Sterilization an Act of Resistance? - Irene Dolling, Daphne Hahn, and Sylka Scholz 118 PART TWO: GENDER RELATIONS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 149 CHAPTER 5 Changing Images of Identity in Poland: From the Self-Sacrificing to the Self-Investing Woman? - Mira Marody andAnna Giza-Poleszczuk 151 CHAPTER 6 Womens Life Trajectories and Class Formation in Hungary - Katalin Kovacs and Monika Varadi 176 CHAPTER 7 From Informal Labor to Paid Occupations: Marketization from below in Hungarian Womens Work - Julia Szalai 200 CHAPTER 8 Womens Sexuality and Reproductive Behavior in Post-Ceausescu Romania: A Psychological Approach - Adriana Baban 225 PART THREE: ARENAS OF POLITICAL ACTION: STRUGGLES FOR REPRESENTATION 257 CHAPTER 9 New Gender Relations in Poland in the 1990s - Malgorzata Fuszara 259 CHAPTER 10 New Parliament, Old Discourse? The Parental Leave Debate in Hungary - Joanna Goven 286 CHAPTER 11 Womens NGOs in Romania - Laura Grunberg 307 CHAPTER 12 Womens Problems, Womens Discourses in Bulgaria - Krassimira Daskalova 370 CHAPTER 13 Belgrades SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence: A Report - Zorica Mrsevic 370 CHAPTER 14 Media Representations of Men and Women in Times of War and Crisis: The Case of Serbia - Jasmina Lukic 393 CONCLUSION Susan Gal and Gail Kligman 424 CONTRIBUTORS 427 INDEX 429