Abstract
Reviewed by: Florentina C. Andreescu, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC, USA
In Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania the author, historian Jill Massino, directs her attention towards the transformation of the often-trivialized plane of everyday life and the complexities of women’s lived experiences in socialist Romania. Consequently, in this book both gender and everyday life function as methodological approaches as well as subjects of study. This is a genuinely unique take, allowing the study to stand out when compared to the established literature on Romanian socialism. The author makes a valid claim that because of the socialist state’s efforts to engineer and control all aspects of human existence, an analysis of everyday life is especially illuminating. Furthermore, instead of generalizing a shared female experience in socialism, Massino prefers to place subjectivity and women’s agency at the core of her analysis, highlighting the various meanings that women attributed to their experiences in socialist Romania.
Massino employs a sophisticated triangulated approach, juxtaposing official sources with unofficial ones, government sources alongside personal ones, as well as documents and narratives pertaining to socialism alongside post-socialist ones. The book makes ample use of primary sources, both archival and human. For example, she makes references to an impressively diverse array of socialist sources, including legislation, statistics, print media, films, and social sciences research. In addition, Massino analyses meeting minutes and official reports from the archive of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. She engages with these official sources in juxtaposition with more than one hundred oral histories that she has collected in Romania. Even though such personal stories are often dismissed as expressions of nostalgia, the author engages with them as reflections of an authentic lived reality, weaving women’s experiences into the broader political and social fabric.
Massino organizes her book in chapters dedicated to what she considers to be fundamental aspects of human existence, such as childhood and schooling, work, marriage and family life, leisure and consumption. The book concludes with a chapter exploring the Romanian revolution and a brief meditation on the complexities of its transition to capitalism and democracy. Massino argues that ideologically Romania attempted to move away from the notion of gender complementarity, emphasizing women’s biological and psychological difference from men. It did so through socialist modernization and women’s mass employment. The author specifies that in socialist Romania, women were glorified for their capacity to work like men and at the same time were celebrated for their willingness to sacrifice themselves for others. In this manner, rather than viewing the role of mother and wife as incompatible with that of a highly productive socialist worker, women were encouraged to perform all three roles.
One of the chapters discusses Romanian socialist youth. This is an important theme, as the communist party focused significant attention on young people, as the main resource for creating oameni noi (new persons). While indeed seen as sources of hope, young people were also seen as potential threats. In this context, Massino refers to the state’s institutionalized discrimination against children from families with unhealthy social origins (such as those considered bourgeois or reactionary). Furthermore, as the state placed industrialization above all other priorities, family life suffered consequences. For example, parents were forced to live apart from their children or to return from work late in the evening, leaving children to take care of themselves, generating the often-encountered phenomenon of latchkey kids (copii cu cheia la gat), referring to the large number of Romanian children who returned from school to an empty home where they were expected to take care of themselves. Despite these shortcomings, Massino also acknowledges the impressive extension of girls’ education under socialism, especially at secondary and university levels. This was the case as Romanian education law promoted science and engineering while encouraging especially women’s participation in these strategic academic fields. Another way in which socialist society challenged gender stereotypes, was through progressive magazines for young people and the Pioneer Organization, which engaged with youth as a general category and did not segregate according to gender.
Massino brings further attention to work as a crucial commonplace in socialist ideology, where it is generally conceptualized as both a right and a duty, a basic determinant for socialist citizenship and a vehicle for women’s full liberation. She delves into an exploration of different meanings that people associated with this commonplace. Namely, work is indeed understood as a policy initiative and propaganda tool, or a pragmatic response to economic need and to low wages, but also a personally fulfilling endeavour, often experienced as a source of personal satisfaction. As such, several women interviewed described their work performed during socialism as a basis upon which their self-identities were fashioned and a community was formed.
When directing her attention to investigating family life in socialism, Massino finds that despite the progressive ideological guidelines, many Romanian men retained domineering roles, adhering to traditional beliefs whereby women were expected to assume primary responsibility for the household and children. The state reinforced these traditional views to a certain extent through several of its policies, such as tightened divorce laws and its pro-natalist legislation.
Massino associates the drastic changes taking place in women’s everyday life with Nicolae Ceausescu’s cultural revolution, inspired by his visits to North Korea and China in 1971, which implemented policies leading to a gradual reversal from earlier cultural liberalization. In addition, Ceausescu chose to rapidly pay off the country’s debt, invoking the need to free the country from Western loans and Western influence. Consequently, in Romania, women’s everyday life became riddled with anxieties, as even the most basic foodstuffs were either in short supply or wholly non-existent by the mid-1980s, facilitating the pervasive spread of barter and the black market.
Delving deeply into explorations of these important themes, the book is a valuable analysis of women’s experiences of everyday life in socialist Romania, especially because of its sophisticated combination of elements of official state discourse with women’s personal narratives. It is a must-read for those of us interested in understanding life in the unique context of Romanian socialism. As a Romanian woman who lived during this period, I found the book engaging and illuminating. It is worth mentioning however that even though the title promises a study of Romanian transition and its consequent radical social changes, the book offers limited space and attention to this complex process. The chapter dedicated to the Romanian revolution and transition merely sketches the complexities of this segment of Romanian history. Hopefully the author will be inspired to continue her feminist investigation of this equally intriguing part of history. With that said, overall, this is a key and much welcomed contribution to the literature on Romanian socialism.