James Mark, University of Exeter; Josie McLellan, University of Bristol
25.03.2013, Exeter, UK
Bericht von:
Marcel Thomas, Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristol
E-Mail: <marcel.thomas.2012@my.bristol.ac.uk>
In the last two decades, historians have produced a rich literature on
the spatial history of the Eastern bloc.[1] A wide range of studies has
shown that the physical spaces of socialist Eastern Europe 'had
politics' and were crucial to regimes' attempts to intervene in the
everyday lives of their citizens.[2] However, space remains a highly
complex notion and historians have also used it to conceptualise a wide
range of interactions and power struggles between different actors in
society.[3] The workshop 'Spaces of Late Socialism' held on March 13,
2013 at Exeter University set out to explore the different ways in which
social groups, activists and socialist regimes conceptualised social
space and its relationship to political conformity or opposition between
the 1960s and 1989.
In a short introduction, JAMES MARK (Exeter) stressed that the workshop
was designed to revisit the historical debates about socialist spaces so
far and explore future directions for a spatial history of the Eastern
bloc. As all six papers discussed a different country, the workshop
provided an opportunity to compare the politics of space across
socialist Eastern Europe and analyse whether transnational patterns can
be detected in the use of space by activists or regimes. Moreover, the
participants aimed to discuss the role of an 'imaginary West' and
examine whether it would be justified to speak of 'parallel histories of
space' in East and West in the postwar era. Finally, the workshop was
designed to develop new thoughts about chronologies in the spatial
history of socialism. With its focus on the last three decades of the
socialist era, it tried to explore the role of spaces in the
transformation of Eastern bloc societies and the eventual collapse of
the regimes.
JOSIE MCLELLAN (Bristol) presented a conceptually challenging study of
the role of space in the political self-understanding and activism of
gays and lesbians in East Berlin between 1968 and 1989. She introduced
'scale' as a concept which is fundamental to an understanding of the
ways in which individuals imagined their own place in socialist society.
Although scale has long been an enormously important concept for
geographers, it has so far hardly been used by historians. Understanding
the world as scaled - with scales ranging from the body, the local and
the neighbourhood to the national and the global - provides us with a
sense of power relationships, size and hierarchy. McLellan pointed out
that the gays and lesbians of East Berlin used a wide range of scalar
notions to position themselves in relation to the regime and socialist
society. For example, gays and lesbians often used the scale of the body
to 'come out' or playfully turned the home into a political space when
they used it to meet and cross-dress. In some cases, they also
intentionally took their protest to the public scale of the
neighbourhood and the city when they participated in the May Day parades
in East Berlin. As McLellan stressed, these different scales were not
isolated, neither in real life nor in the thoughts of the activists.
Instead, the 'play of scale' employed by East German gays and lesbians
is key to an understanding of their activism in a socialist
dictatorship. Therefore, McLellan demonstrated that scale can help us to
understand the 'geographies of everyday life' and the complex ways in
which individuals imagined their own role in socialist society.
JAMES MARK focused on spaces of dissent in Hungary between 1965 and
1975. Due to the lack of a Hungarian '1968', the literature on 1960s
activism in Hungary is sparse. However, Mark stressed that activism did
exist, but mostly within institutional spaces provided by the state.
Communist youth reformers advocated local grass-roots power and had
quite specific demands to put their ideals of communism into practice.
However, they did not challenge the authority of the party and rather
saw themselves in a dialogue with the regime. Some - such as reformers
within the Communist Youth movement - categorically rejected public
protest and were often suspicious of the Prague Spring. As Mark pointed
out, these reformers were supported by the state because the regime
wanted to channel youth activism into official spaces and build
socialism on a day-to-day basis (the so-called 'revolution of the
everyday') to avoid another escalation of protest like 1956.
Nonetheless, there was also a small number of orthodox Marxist activists
who expressed political protest outside these official spheres. For
example, in 1965 they organised the first public demonstrations since
1956 to express solidarity with North Vietnam and attack the regime for
having abandoned the revolutionary path. These activists started to
organise themselves as an underground party and tried to gain the
support of the workers, but their protest was brought to an end by their
arrest and trial. Mark highlighted that some Hungarian activism revealed
a similar development to 1960s protest in the West, as activists at
first unsuccessfully tried to change politics and later successfully
changed everyday life instead.
DAVID CROWLEY (London) examined the role of socialist architects in
Eastern bloc societies and their relation to power and dissent. Focusing
on the relationship between opposition and architecture, Crowley
explored the question whether architecture in the Eastern bloc could be
seen as a form of dissidence. Central to his analysis was the notion of
'paper architecture', architecture in which the expression of certain
ideas is more important than the actual realisation of buildings.
Drawing on examples from Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union, Crowley
pointed out that architects could express criticism in their work
despite their proximity to the regimes. He outlined three different
types of criticism put forward by architects in the Eastern bloc:
kritika or samo-kritika, 'licensed critique' (for example the criticism
of housing plans that would not improve the housing situation) and
dissent. Moreover, he pointed out that the state did not have a monopoly
on construction, as for example the most ambitious architecture in the
Eastern bloc was produced by the Church. Eventually, Crowley stressed
that more research is necessary to determine whether critical
architecture could really be called 'protest' if it was officially
approved by the regime.
In the PhD panel in the afternoon, AGÁTA DRELOVÁ (Exeter) explored the
relationship between the state and the churches in Czechoslovakia
through the notion of 'memory spaces'. In particular, she focused on the
St Methodius festival of 1985, which was co-organised by the state and
the Church and attracted up to 150,000 people. The regime tried to
hijack this religious event to both strengthen its bond with the
official Church and combat the secret Church. Drelová pointed out that
this intervention of the regime represented the culmination of a
fundamental change in its policies towards religion. The original
position of the communist leaders had been characterised by an official
disinterest in religion on the one hand and sustained efforts to
suppress the memories of Catholic nationalism on the other. However, the
regime's disregard for apolitical spaces enabled the Catholic Church to
successfully recruit among students and organise the first mass
pilgrimages in the 1970s. Drelová showed how the state reacted to the
rise of Catholic activism in postwar Czechoslovakia and especially in
the 1980s began to use religious identification for its own cause, which
led to a 're-Christianisation of national narratives'.
ANNA KAN's (Bristol) contribution analysed the physical spaces that were
used by young members of a rock band in Leningrad in the 1970s and
1980s. As Kan demonstrated, the rock scene in Leningrad was heavily
influenced by Western ideals. Young people tried to recreate Western
rock music with simple means and also followed Western ideals in their
desire to discover a new way of life. They appropriated the cafés,
squares and parks of Leningrad to their own ends and thus gave them new
meanings as spaces of the sub-cultural scene. Although fears of the
police and the regime constantly influenced the group's actions, they
cannot be said to have gone underground. Many of the spaces they used
were open public spaces, such as parks or the courtyard of St Michael's
castle in Leningrad. Kan also highlighted that there was an interesting
dynamic between the singers and their crowd, as both knew each other and
in fact acted as members of one group. Together, they were increasingly
able to use public spaces for their alternative life styles and thus
quite literally reclaimed urban spaces from the regime.
LJUBICA SPASKOVSKA (Exeter) examined the conflicting understandings of
socialist citizenship among the youth of late socialist Yugoslavia. In
particular, she explored the 'youth infrastructure' of Yugoslav society
as a space of activism and dissent. Youth centres for example provided
real spaces for self-expression and offered opportunities to create a
counter-cultural 'parallel world'. As Spaskovska emphasised, public and
media spaces were used by young people in similar ways. Numerous youth
magazines published themes similar to Western magazines and provoked
with their radical cover photos. A new generation of young people in the
late socialist era succeeded in 'hijacking' youth media to publicise
their own beliefs and express social critique. Moreover, this also
caused what Spaskovska called a 'spill-over effect', as members of the
counter-culture began to occupy public spaces as well. For example, a
square in Ljubljana was taken over by young punk activists and publicly
renamed 'Johnny Rotten Square' in 1981. Spaskovska argued that for these
youth activists the expression of personal freedom was the only thing
that mattered and she thus opposed the common interpretation of their
actions as standing for bigger ideas like nationalism.
In the concluding debate, the participants agreed that youth movements
had emerged from the conference as a common and prominent space for
self-expression across the Eastern bloc. Mark highlighted that the
emergence of new alternative spaces in the 1970s and 1980s which did not
necessarily have to be seen as oppositional constitutes another linking
theme in the history of socialist Eastern Europe. However, he also
pointed out that more research on the diverse motivations of activists
and the actors involved will be necessary to confirm this observation.
Reflecting on more conceptual issues related to the notion of 'space',
Crowley reminded the participants that space immediately seems to 'leak
out' into other concepts and thus also poses a number of challenges to
the historian who uses it to conceptualise power struggles in socialist
society. Eventually, the workshop demonstrated that all over the Eastern
bloc the reconquest of different spaces by the people in the 1970s and
1980s lay at the heart of a deep-rooted transformation process in state
and society. To what an extent this development can be linked to the
collapse of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe will have to be
explored further. Therefore, the workshop showed directions for further
research and revealed how a spatial history of the Eastern bloc can help
historians to understand the changing relationship between the state and
the individual in late socialist Eastern Europe.
Conference Overview
Introductory Remarks
Josie McLellan (Bristol): To scale? Gay and Lesbian Spaces in East
Berlin, 1968-1989
James Mark (Exeter): Where to Be Political? Activism and the Use of
Space in Hungary, 1965-75
David Crowley (London): Architecture at the Limits of Critique in Late
Socialism in Eastern Europe
PhD Panel
Agáta Drelová (Exeter): Re-producing the 'Underground' in Post-Communist
Catholic Memory
Anna Kan (Bristol): How Leningrad Became a City of Rock
Ljubica Spaskovska (Exeter): 'Pockets of Freedom' - Subversive Youth
Institutions and Narratives of Freedom in Late Socialist Yugoslavia
Closing discussion
Notes
[1] See, for example: David Crowley / Susan E. Reid (eds.), Socialist
Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, Oxford 2002; Anders
Åman, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era:
An Aspect of Cold-War History, Cambridge 1992.
[2] David Crowley / Susan E. Reid, Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday
Life in the Eastern Bloc, in: David Crowley / Susan E. Reid (eds.),
Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, Oxford
2002, pp. 1-23, p. 2.
[3] See, for example: Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as
Civilisation, London 1995; Breda Luthar / Marusa Pusnik, The Lure of
Utopia: Socialist Everyday Spaces, in: Breda Luthar / Marusa Pusnik
(eds.), Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist
Yugoslavia, Washington 2010, pp. 1-35.
