Gender, Generations, and Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond

Anna Artwińska is a Junior Professor of Slavic Literature and Culture Studies and Chair of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Her main research interests are the memory of communism, postcatastrophic representation of the Shoah, the concept of generation, auto/biographical writing and gender, and postcolonial studies.Agnieszka Mrozik is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN) in Warsaw, Poland. She is affiliated with two research teams, The Centre for Cultural and Literary Studies of Communism, and the Archives of Women. Her main research interests are communism and gender studies, cultural history of women and women’s movement in Central and Eastern Europe, women’s life writing and literature, critical analysis of media discourse and popular culture.

• Introduction; Part I: The Logic of Gender and Generation(s): Theoretical Approaches; 1. Generational and Gendered Memory of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe: Methodological Perspectives and Political Challenges; 2. Acting and Memory, Hope and Guilt: The Bond of Generations in Arendt, Benjamin, Heine, and Freud; Part II: Generations and Gender in Historical Contexts: Comparative Case Studies; 3 Communism, Left Feminism, and Generations in the 1930s: The Case of Yugoslavia; 4. Communisms, Generations, and Waves: The Cases of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Cuba; 5. Generations of Italian Communist Women and the Making of a Women’s Rights Agenda in the Cold War (1945–68): Historiography, Memory, and New Archival Evidence; 6. The Making of Turkish Migrant Left Feminism and Political Generations in the Ruhr, West Germany (1975–90); Part III: Women’s Biographical Experiences and Communism; 7. "Old" Women and "Old" Revolution: The Role of Gender and Generation in Postwar Polish Communist Women’s Political Biographies; 8. Biographical Experience and Knowledge Production: Women Sociologists and Gender Issues in Communist Poland; 9. Without Tradition and Without Female Generation? The Case of Czech Artist Ester Krumbachová; Part IV: Aesthetic Representations of Gendered Generations in Communism and Beyond; 10. Girls from the Polish Youth Union: (Dis)remembrance of the Generation; 11. "We’re Easy to Spot": Soviet Generation(s) After Soviet Era and the Invention of the Self in Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets; 12. Entering Gray Zones: Questions of Female Identity, Political Commitment, and Personal Choices in Jiřina Šiklová’s Memoir of Life Under Socialism and Beyond; 13. Gender, Generational Conflict, and Communism: Tonia Lechtman’s Story; Conclusion: From "Communism as Male Generational History" to a More Inclusive Narrative

"The strong points of the volume include a variety of sources and analytical approaches sensitive to their critical usage, the ability to develop a productive comparative and transnational frame, an embeddedness in relevant historiographical debates, and the still creative potential of 'generation' as a concept for exploring communism in 'Central and Eastern Europe, and beyond.' Gender, Generations, and Communism certainly provides an excellent interdisciplinary contribution to the growing historiography on women’s activism and organizations in the region and proves the analytical potential of a gender-centered approach to the history of communism from the interwar period to the end of the Cold War."Ivana Michaela Žimbrek, East Central Europe 48 (2021)