Labor in State Socialist Europe, 1945-1989

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, challenging accepted notions of East European "transitions" and "transformations." 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 specific categories of work, workers, and industry 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' rights, safety, and protests; working women's politics and the double and triple burden; 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.