This volume brings together a diverse set of scholars to address the long theoretical, conceptual and political debate on the interpretation of actually existing socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. While the major paradigms totalitarianism, neo-totalitarianism, revisionism, post-revisionism, modernization, and the world-system analysis are well known in the Western (English-language) literature, the concept of state socialism, which has strong theoretical roots in Hungary (going back to the works of György Lukács and István Mészáros) received less international attention. This book contributes to a productive discussion about viable alternatives to capitalism by introducing and theoretically elaborating on the concept and practice of state socialism, highlighting the historical significance of Hungary's experiment with the new economic mechanism of 1968. It generates a common point of reference for various generations of anti-systemic thinkers, scholars, and activists to move beyond Cold War simplifications and ideological divides, and contributes to the discussion about anti-capitalist alternatives, which are relevant today for the global left.

The chapter Dance Around a 'Sacred Cow': Women's Night Work and the Gender Politics of the Mass Worker in State-Socialist Hungary and Internationally is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Provides a comprehensive overview of the concept of state socialism through Hungarian and East German case studies Includes studies on gender and labor history under state socialism Critically analyzes system change, privatization and the legacy of the failed anti-capitalist alternatives

Autorentext

Eszter Bartha is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She has published extensively on the state socialist era and the working class.

Tamás Krausz is Professor Emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. He is an internationally renowned scholar of the Soviet and Russian history in the 20th century, with a special focus on the history of left-wing ideas.

Bálint Mezei is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. The main subjects of his publications are the interparty relations of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, Eurocommunism and studies based on oral history.

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part I: A third road in Eastern Europe?.- Chapter 2. The interdependence of socialist Hungary's external and internal balances: The bridge model and the consolidation of the Kádár era ( Tamás Gercs and András Pinkasz ).- Chapter 3. The neoliberalism as a legal project in state socialist Hungary ( Attila Antal ).- Chapter 4. Dance around a sacred cow: Women's night work and the gender politics of the mass worker in state-socialist Hungary and internationally ( Susan Zimmermann ).- Chapter 5. Emancipated or excluded?: Women workers and the gender regime in state socialist Hungary (Eszter Bartha).- Part II: System change and the alternatives.- Chapter 6. System change and property relations: On Soviet perestroika's historical experiences ( Tamás Krausz ).- Chapter 7. The rise and fall of red Halas, 19442019 (Chris Hann).- Part III: The new canon.- Chapter 8. Imagining state socialism in Slovakia after 1989: Public discourse and history education practices (Slávka Otenáová).- Chapter 9. Between goulash Communism and dictatorship: The image of the Hungarian state socialism in secondary school textbooks (published after 1990) ( Bálint Mezei ).- Part IV: Concluding Essays.- Chapter 10. The socialist transition in the materialist view of history and the state socialist systems ( György Wiener ).- Chapter 11. State socialist experiments Historical lessons ( Péter Szigeti ).