Customer Reviews

How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Drakulic is a journalist by trade, and as such has a no-nonsense writing style: stark, factual. She interviewed women of various countries and captured stories of what they endured mentally and physically under communist rule. This is one of my favorite books, one I will read again and again, and which I have given copies of to my friends.

Slavenka explores the perplexing lives of Eastern European women living in Communism through her short essays. There is nothing funny about these stories. The author displays how Communism failed its people, and how it failed its women. A visit to Yugoslavia in the 1980's, opened my eyes to the trials these women faced. I lived like these women. I brought with me stockpiles of medicine, sanitary napkins, soap and detergent. These items were impossible to buy and if you could find these items they were outrageously expensive. I washed my clothes by hand, scrubbed them in the basins Slavenka talks about. I walked around with the same fear, the same hopelessness for the future. Live for today, survive today. No bother to worry about tomorrow. This book should be a part of all woman studies programs, it gives insight to the lives of women living in Eastern Block countries. It gives insights to the trials they face and the fear of the future that goes along with it.

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. Drakulić. 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. Drakulić 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.

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.

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!

This book is a poignant portrait of personal resistance to the hardships of the Communist era. It was required reading in graduate school, so I expected it to be informative, but it is so much more than that. It makes the reader question not only the Communist regimes of the not-so-distant past, but also one's very notion of what femininity and feminism are. Drakulic tells these personal stories with humor and empathy. Unlike many "feminist" books, it's actually accessible to men, maybe because of the quotidien details that make each story so real. I've had overnight guests pick it up to read themselves to sleep and then find themselves still up late into the night because they can't put the book down!

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.

Slavenka Drakulic's writings are to be savored. Read her collections of essays in chronological order. She is amazingly perceptive and her ideas evolve with every new year of experience.

This book is a reality check and an eye-opener to a lot of people, I've asked several of my friends to read it. My mom and I both cried when we read it. My mom's family is from eastern Europe and I had only heard little bits and pieces of stories from my grandma. This book helped me see things a lot better. If you have any interest in eastern European culture, history or the modern history of feminism and human rights, and you like reading about more personal accounts, then this would be a good book to read. Because of the cold war and American/Western attitudes towards this area of the world (whether those are right or not is another story for another book), there is a lot that happened that we don't know about during this time period. It's interesting to see things from a different POV and Slavenka does a great job showing us what it was like to be there.

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.