Abstract
The mainstream discourse on the communist regime, which imagines that people could only have experienced suffering, converges with liberal ‘end of history’ narratives that celebrate the unique virtues of capitalism and liberal democracy and are relatively silent about growing inequalities and the dismantling of social benefits. Looking at the everyday lives of women and men as Jill Massino does in Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania, building a narrative from their experiences and understanding other aspects of what it meant to live under communism—to go to work, have a family, go to parties, enjoy holidays and genuinely connect with other human beings—does not mean that one ignores lived injustices, disregards people’s suffering, or legitimises the communist regime.
This book does not follow the path of the dominant historical investigations and public discussions of the communist past. The author asserts that such an approach generates ‘a dichotomous view of state and society’, one ‘that neglects the fluidity and interconnection between the two, while glossing over the complexity of human behaviors, beliefs, and relationships’ (p. 3). Her central claim is that: examining the oppressive alongside the emancipatory, the monotonous alongside the joyous, the ordinary alongside the extraordinary—and all that falls between these extremes—yields not only a fuller, more nuanced portrait of state socialism and everyday life, but is a historical necessity. This is particularly true of Romanian women whose lived experiences are often interpreted through the prism of pronatalist policies and are overshadowed by heroic narratives of (mainly men’s) struggles against a brutal regime. (ibid.)
Ambiguous Transitions explains how gender shaped policymaking and how women responded to these policies. It examines gender in its plural and diverse manifestations in both public and private life, from legislative measures and media depictions to family roles and workplace relations. Analysing women ‘as objects of state policy and agents who made choices, albeit under limited and at times highly restrictive circumstances’ (p. 4, emphasis in the original), it does not attempt to answer the long-debated question of whether socialism liberated women or if feminism and communism are contradictio in terminis. It simply seeks to carefully interpret women’s complex lived experience under communism.
Methodologically, the book draws on rich historical primary sources, both archival and ethnographic. Some sources were produced during the communist period, including legislation, statistics, print media, film and social science research. The author uses official sources—documents from the archive of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party—ranging from meeting minutes, official reports and debates to correspondence from foreign dignitaries and ordinary Romanians. This correspondence offers insight into people’s understanding of the regime and its decisions. It is valuable to understand how women engage with different decisions of the state, and previous analysis of archives has revealed that in Romania, when the 770 Decree banning abortion was adopted in 1966, women wrote letters highlighting that it is unfair for men to legislate an experience that only women have and that will force women to have illegal abortions (Popa, 2006, pp. 110–113). Alongside these official sources, the book incorporates more than one hundred oral histories that the author has collected in Romania since 2003. The interviews were conducted with women and men of varying socioeconomic, educational, ethnic, religious and professional backgrounds from two major urban areas (Brsaşov and Bucharest).
Each chapter focuses on a particular topic that usually structures individuals’ lives (e.g., work, marriage, family life, leisure and consumption), and examines each topic through the lenses of policy, propaganda and women’s recollections of their lived experiences. Work was both a right and a duty. Work is the basis upon which, according to Marxist theory, women will achieve full liberation. At the same time, Massino brings to the fore through her accounts and analysis of the everyday lives of women under communism that women’s liberation, irrespective of the political regime, is a story of multiple intersecting aspects of life. As far as marriage is concerned, there were diverse gender practices, meanings and significant changes of socialist legislative provisions, especially in the 1954 Family Code, which recognised equal personhood within marriage; however, it is often challenging to understand how substantially these changes affected everyday interactions. Massino meets this challenge by examining how the expansion of education and the emphasis of socialist propaganda on women as workers also reduced women’s economic dependence on men and broadened their roles and aspirations. She also delves into how, by the 1960s, when spousal relations received increased attention in socialist media, educational policies reflected state support for more egalitarian marital roles and relationships, and how state policies aiming to codify new conduct and gender equality practices in the household were negotiated differently by each couple.
Massino repeatedly emphasises the ambivalence of the Romanian socialist regime, where modern representations of behaviour coexisted with traditional ones, and progressive policies joined hands with others that were restrictive and brutal. Nicolae Ceauşescu, the totalitarian and nationalist president of Romania from 1965 to 1989, distinguished Romania in the communist bloc through his gendered state policies. The race towards equality in the family and household was lost by the socialist state, and so was it also lost for many women in their everyday lives. Calling attention to the culture of silence surrounding sex and sexuality under a regime that drove pronatalist policies, Massino clearly presents important insight into the personal and collective drama of many women. During the socialist to postsocialist transition, Romanian women experienced economic and social uncertainties as part of a larger, global shift to a neoliberal paradigm. These uncertainties reminded many women that while many socialist policies were harmful, other socialist policies enhanced their quality of life, from childcare to guaranteed employment and universal healthcare and education.
Massino is an accomplished Western scholar who is fluent in Romanian and has spent a significant amount of time in the country. Her book is an important contribution to scholarship on gender, state-making and modernisation in the twentieth century, and also to a gendered analysis of Eastern Europe under communism. As a Romanian scholar and professor, I am grateful for the book as it offers me a powerful way to engage more profoundly with my students about the complex political and social fabric under communism from the viewpoint of women’s complex experiences. The book shows the complexity of ordinary human life during extraordinary times. As I write this review during the pandemic lockdown, I am reminded by the book that even in dark times (illiberal regimes, even pandemic regimes), human beings have an extraordinary capacity to find joy and to experience complex human interactions and emotions. Massino tells the history of communism and post-communism through the voices of women themselves. Neither romanticising nor demonising her subjects, she tells their stories in all of their richness. Her book is a meaningful reflection on the everyday lives of Romanian women who have experienced oppression but have also practised what James Scott (1992) has called ‘the arts of resistance’ across two centuries and two political regimes.