How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed

Rating:
Summary: A book for everyone ... would that it were read by everyone!
Review: A fascinating collection of poignant vignettes on being a woman in communist Yugoslavia (with stories of the author's friends and acquaintances in other Eastern European countries.) Ms. Drakulic shares with the West the reasons whereby 40-plus years of communist-engendered habits and viewpoints and tendencies cannot undergo an overnight "attitude adjustment". This book is a must for anyone who seeks to begin to sympathize and understand the thoughts and roots of people (especially women) who were born and raised in Eastern Europe. I bulldozed through it, and am now reading her "Cafe Europa". Eye-opening!

Rating:
Summary: Reader, beware...
Review: I have read Drakulic's later book Balken Express, and thought this book far better. Drakulic's book is a series of essays about the difficulty of life in Eastern Europe from a woman's perspective. Communism collasped because it could not satisfy the demands of the population. Drakulic details many of those shortcomings in her book. Not only did Communism produce poor paint and bad toilet paper, it did not even produce tampons or other products for women. That is why Communism failed. Few history books will detail this perspective, but from a humanistic point of view, it is true.
The other perspective Drakulic tries to point out is that of a journalist pointing to the failures of both Communist and Western society. Drakulic portrays the homeless of NYC with the fact that in Communist society everybody is poor but not homeless. These perspectives are needed as well, because some aspects of Communism were indeed noble.
A good book about the failure of Communism. This book was a short informative read about a doomed political system.

Rating:
Summary: Essays on life in Communist Eastern Europe from a woman
Review: I have read Drakulic's later book Balken Express, and thought this book far better. Drakulic's book is a series of essays about the difficulty of life in Eastern Europe from a woman's perspective. Communism collasped because it could not satisfy the demands of the population. Drakulic details many of those shortcomings in her book. Not only did Communism produce poor paint and bad toilet paper, it did not even produce tampons or other products for women. That is why Communism failed. Few history books will detail this perspective, but from a humanistic point of view, it is true.
The other perspective Drakulic tries to point out is that of a journalist pointing to the failures of both Communist and Western society. Drakulic portrays the homeless of NYC with the fact that in Communist society everybody is poor but not homeless. These perspectives are needed as well, because some aspects of Communism were indeed noble.
A good book about the failure of Communism. This book was a short informative read about a doomed political system.

Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading for all women's studies classes!
Review: I read this book while I was living in Prague. Living in Eastern Europe does not automatically ensure an understanding of the people or the culture, and this book was very helpful. The position of women in Eastern Europe (and of course, the world over) is consistently marginalized, so this book is important in that it finally brings the woman's perspective and experience in Eastern Europe out into the open.

The other thing that makes this book extremely worthwhile is that it continues to bring home the difference between Eastern Europe and the West. As a woman from the US, it was impossible for me to conceive of and understand these women's experiences, and where those experiences have brought them today. It becomes very easy, in the interests of simplification, to essentialize the experiences of all european women, or all white women. This book shows us that it is not that simple, or easy, or fair, to do so.

Rating:
Summary: A life-changing experience
Review: I was assigned this book in a second-year women's history class when I was an undergraduate...thanks, professor Whitney! Drakulic's attention to the impact of big events on small things, like toilet paper, makeup, and pizza, makes for a startlingly up-close examination of life in post-communist eastern Europe. Ever since that history class, this book has been a touchstone for me. I've passed it along to friends and to both of my parents. It insists that you rethink your ideas about what's "good" and "bad" for feminism, and focuses your attention on the connection between the political, the material, and femininity. Fascinating, wonderfully written, a must-read. I've learned my lesson about lending out my copy...my best friend moved to Texas and took it with her. Of course I must buy another...I just can't be without this book.

Rating:
Summary: powerful and beautifully-written
Review: I will read this eye-opening book again and again. Historical accounts of communism can't paint the picture that this book has painted. This reads like poetry and is real.

Rating:
Summary: Reader, beware...
Review: I would have given this book three and a half stars if I had the option; but I don't, so I am giving it four, all on account of its good narrative and occasional wit.
I keep hearing and reading about what an "eye-opener" this book has been for readers in Western countries. That is all well and fine; many of the things she describes are valid information.
The problem is that this book, by empathizing (and rightly so) with the everday noodle-and-darning plight of "sisters" in other so-called Communist regimes (all of whom had a MUCH harder time than we in the former Yugoslavia ever did) tends to blur not only the HUGE political and social nuances and distinctions among the various "Communist" countries, but also inside ex-Yugoslavia itself. In short, the so-called Communist "block" was never really a "block" - it was a tapestry of many nuances and textures, depending on the country.

Admittedly, I belong to a different generation than Ms. Drakuliæ. Furthermore, I was born and grew up in the northern part of the country, called Slovenia (now, an independent state), which was, incidentally, the "richest" part of Yugoslavia. (And BTW: I don't recall any of her interlocutors in the book being a Slovene... Why not? Maybe because the situation in Slovenia wouldn't fit in with the utterly dismal picture that she is painting?)
Here are some facts: often, there were (usually short-term) shortages of different things: sugar, bananas, chocolate, detergent... I even remember a shortage of toilet paper, once. But never all at the same time, and never for very long. We never queued, like the unfortunate peoples of the Soviet satellite states. I for one DID have dolls, very pretty ones (no, NOT rag dolls) - 18 of them! If there ever was a shortage of tampons (I never use them), I certainly don't remember any shortage of sanitary towels. We were always nicely dressed and made-up; and if the clothes on offer in our own country didn't suit us, we'd make a 2 hour trip to nearby Italy, where we could buy more trendy attire. (Nobody in my family ever did that, BTW.)

No, I am not one of those short-memoried "nostalgics" who mourn the demise of the Titoist regime and the fallacy of the infamous "unity & fraternity" slogans of those days... In fact, I did every thing that I could to help erode it and bring it down.
I just resent history - ANY history - being "tailored" to suit the prefabricated expectations of foreign readers.

Had Ms. Drakuliæ decided to include a "girl talk" with a Slovene or two - who were even her "compatriots" in those times, after all - a picture slightly more complex would emerge. And maybe then people elsewhere wouldn't have been surprised by the news that Yugoslavia was falling apart... It already WAS - always had been - several different countries within one artificial structure.

In short: enjoy this book, for it tells the truth - and it tells it well! Just not the ENTIRE truth.

Rating:
Summary: A Provocative Look at How Communism Failed it's People
Review: This is not a great book. This is a pretty good book. It is an interesting book, but not an important book. Slavenka Drakulic, itinerant Croatian writer, gives us communism on the ground. There are no ideological struggles here, no discussions of the finer points of Marxist theology. Instead Drakulic demonstrates clearly that communism is empty, that it failed its citizens, its leaders, and itself. Forty-five years of communist leadership in Yugoslavia failed to produce livable apartments, affordable telephones, sanitary products for women, dolls for children. In short, communism failed because all along it was a massive shell game where the party members were haves and everyone else were have-nots. It failed because it generated fear instead of happiness.

Worse, communism continues. We in the West like to use 1990 as a pushpin year for "the end of communism", but Drakulic demonstrates that communism thrives, if not in the government ministries of eastern Europe, then in the hearts and minds and habits and fears of its inhabitants. The funereal atmosphere in Zagreb as Croatia held its first democratic elections in decades, the compulsive hoarding by a populace made wary by the unreliability of supplies of staples and everyday products, the resignation to lives no better than those of parents and grandparents. These sensibilities endure in eastern Europe, and they probably will go on for decades until a younger generation with no memory of communist economic planning and political oversight steps to the fore. "The end of communism is still remote because communism, more than a political ideology or a method of government, is a state of mind."

Finally, Drakulic shows us that the "trivial is political". That communism has successfully achieved it aim of raising the political consciousness of the masses, for when trivial acts such as buying toilet paper and making a phone call are made contingent on political decisions by faceless, scary bureaucrats in forbidding buildings, then every act and every person becomes politicized. Politicized in silent yielding opposition to authority, but not politicized to challenge the legitimacy of such an illegitimate regime.

Drakulic's essays are touching and humorous. They are as sad as the story of half the women in Poland suddenly sprouting red hair, because red was the only color of hair dye available. These essays bring us nose-to-nose with the unfortunates forced to endure in a political system whose strong point was always in theory and whose weak points were generation after generation of misery for millions of people in dozens of countries.

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Look at Ordinary Lives under Communism
Review: This is not a great book. This is a pretty good book. It is an interesting book, but not an important book. Slavenka Drakulic, itinerant Croatian writer, gives us communism on the ground. There are no ideological struggles here, no discussions of the finer points of Marxist theology. Instead Drakulic demonstrates clearly that communism is empty, that it failed its citizens, its leaders, and itself. Forty-five years of communist leadership in Yugoslavia failed to produce livable apartments, affordable telephones, sanitary products for women, dolls for children. In short, communism failed because all along it was a massive shell game where the party members were haves and everyone else were have-nots. It failed because it generated fear instead of happiness.

Worse, communism continues. We in the West like to use 1990 as a pushpin year for "the end of communism", but Drakulic demonstrates that communism thrives, if not in the government ministries of eastern Europe, then in the hearts and minds and habits and fears of its inhabitants. The funereal atmosphere in Zagreb as Croatia held its first democratic elections in decades, the compulsive hoarding by a populace made wary by the unreliability of supplies of staples and everyday products, the resignation to lives no better than those of parents and grandparents. These sensibilities endure in eastern Europe, and they probably will go on for decades until a younger generation with no memory of communist economic planning and political oversight steps to the fore. "The end of communism is still remote because communism, more than a political ideology or a method of government, is a state of mind."

Finally, Drakulic shows us that the "trivial is political". That communism has successfully achieved it aim of raising the political consciousness of the masses, for when trivial acts such as buying toilet paper and making a phone call are made contingent on political decisions by faceless, scary bureaucrats in forbidding buildings, then every act and every person becomes politicized. Politicized in silent yielding opposition to authority, but not politicized to challenge the legitimacy of such an illegitimate regime.

Drakulic's essays are touching and humorous. They are as sad as the story of half the women in Poland suddenly sprouting red hair, because red was the only color of hair dye available. These essays bring us nose-to-nose with the unfortunates forced to endure in a political system whose strong point was always in theory and whose weak points were generation after generation of misery for millions of people in dozens of countries.