Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
Im Auftrag des Osteuropa-Instituts Regensburg
herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz
Ausgabe: 60 (2012) H. 2, S. 285-286
Verfasst von: Mark Keck-Szajbel
„Schleichwege“. Inoffizielle Begegnungen sozialistischer Staatsbürger zwischen 1956 und 1989. Hrsg. von Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jerzy Kochanowski und Joachim von Puttkammer. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2010. 381 S. ISBN: 978-3-412-20561-4.
From 2006 to 2008, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jerzy Kochanowski and Joachim von Puttkamer fielded dozens of scholars working on “hidden paths” in state socialism, resulting in the present collection. They define “hidden paths” as unofficial contacts across borders, as everyday citizens’ conscious or unconscious attempts to penetrate the strict control of East bloc authorities through transnational travel and tourism. As they correctly assert, studies on tourism, consumerism, and life style have largely focused on the national level. The seventeen contributions here reveal a vibrant and understudied field of contacts between socialist citizens: from cookbooks to churches, Poles, East Germans, Romanians, and many others actively tested officially propagated notions of “friendship between peoples.” They traded on the black market, discussed taboo topics, and/or attempted to thaw cold war divisions through interpersonal exchange.
The majority of the contributions revolve around one of three themes: the interpenetration of the state apparatus and the individual, Alltagsgeschichte, and histoire croisée. The strongest papers engage more than one of these themes: Kochanowski, for example, provides a stimulating account of how engaging in illegal (or, at least, grey) activity became a necessity to individuals looking to travel abroad; currency regulations and customs agents’ stringency brought citizens to develop ways to avoid the apparatus. The grass-root self-organization entailed in trading and smuggling had, as Kochanowski provocatively suggests, very real consequences in Poland in 1980 (e. g. with the rise of Solidarity).
Underpinning most contributions is the assertion that one cannot clearly separate the official from the unofficial. On the one hand, attaining a passport involved inviting the state apparatus home, into the private sphere. On the other, whether on church-run camping trips in Hungary or exchanges between West Germans and Poles, Slovaks and Hungarians, official roles were necessarily filled by individuals with personal (and unofficial) motives. The collection hones in on an important internal conflict in current historiography. Many books on state socialism focus either on eigen-sinn – that is, the self-motivated (although usually unintentional) destabilization of the system – or open opposition. Authors in Schleichwege draw on the fact that, as Mateusz Hartwig puts it, “free spaces … were not to be equated with subversion.” If complicating black-and-white views of an all-embracing polity is one of the goals of the volume, the contributors do well to blend the colors into fine shades of grey. Borodziej’s article is one point of interest: analyzing Poland’s state-run international tourist organization, ORBIS, he explains how the “primary” state and “secondary” society inadvertently cooperated in negotiating standards and norms. The system’s major hindrance in creating a viable, ‘socialist’ tourist infrastructure was the system itself; when the state attempted to meet travel demands, it cut corners in order to assure its citizens got away, which aided and abetted the “secondary” society.
Readers will certainly notice some drawbacks of the volume. Due to the inherent nature of collected volumes, few of the authors reach beyond single case studies: papers on foreign tourists in southwest Poland, artist exchanges across the bloc, or guest workers in factories repeat common themes, and usually staying at the microlevel without interpreting macrostructures in state socialism. Some contributions seem misplaced in the volume. To give just one example, Błażej Brzostek’s genuinely fascinating article on grey-ness, ubiquity, and aesthetic survivalism in state socialism (Poland and Romania) draws on a wide variety of belletristic and journalistic sources. The author’s language is engaging and introduces the reader to the experience of state socialism in the 1950s and 1960s. But such a unique and conceptually delicious piece makes little attempt to tie into the general points of departure discussed in the introduction. Mechanically, the strength of some contributions is smoke screened due to language problems that, at times, leaves the reader wondering the intention of the author. Finally, the volume will not be inclusive enough for some readers: while a number of countries both within and without the East bloc make their appearance, Poland is the focus of the majority of articles.
These criticisms notwithstanding, the book is a strong example of how an edited conference volume can function as a readable and provoking monograph. As Akika Iriye wrote, think tanks are of necessity given the scale of transnational studies in heterogeneous regions. The editors did a wonderful job to include both a variety of topics and scholars (both established and to-be-established). This volume is an addition to the field, and, ironically, the result of encounters of (mostly) former socialist citizens.
Zitierweise: Mark Keck-Szajbel über: „Schleichwege“. Inoffizielle Begegnungen sozialistischer Staatsbürger zwischen 1956 und 1989. Hrsg. von Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jerzy Kochanowski und Joachim von Puttkammer. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2010. ISBN: 978-3-412-20561-4, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/Rez/Keck-Szajbel_Borodziej_Schleichwege.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)
© 2012 by Osteuropa-Institut Regensburg and Mark Keck-Szajbel. All rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact redaktion@osteuropa-institut.de
Die digitalen Rezensionen von „Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. jgo.e-reviews“ werden nach den gleichen strengen Regeln begutachtet und redigiert wie die Rezensionen, die in den Heften abgedruckt werden.
Digital book reviews published in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. jgo.e-reviews are submitted to the same quality control and copy-editing procedure as the reviews published in print.