How we survived communism and even laughed

“Democracy is not like an unexpected gift that comes without effort. It must be fought for. And that is what makes it so difficult.”

I started reading this book almost on a whim. I first heard about it through Goodreads and seeing an update about it, but I just put it on my to-read list and went my merry way. A few days ago, I saw it on my e-reader and decided to just read through a bit of the first few chapters. I’m not sure how much my consciousness was attuned to current events at that point, as it just started getting crazy, but this has certainly been an appropriate read this week.Slavenka Drakulić is an underrated journalist and writer who in this book gives the reader an extremely intimate and personal view of post-Communist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. At that stage, communism was gone, but the specter still lay over the people… and of course civil war was on the horizon. Drakulić doesn’t get too caught up in politics or wars, though, because her purview here is much more interesting: the daily life of people, particularly women.

“The reality is that communism persists in the way people behave, in the looks on their faces, in the way they think. Despite the free elections and the celebration of new democratic governments taking over in Prague, Budapest, and Bucharest, the truth is that the people still go home to small, crowded apartments, drive unreliable cars, worry about their sickly children, do boring jobs — if they are not unemployed — and eat poor quality food. Life has the same wearying immobility; it is something to be endured, not enjoyed.”

The chapters deal with different topics, whether it is an old doll, doing the laundry, or engaging with ignorant (no matter how well-meaning) westerners. The anecdote about the American scholar asking about what the Yugoslavian feminists were thinking or doing about a particular thing was pretty humorous; I think they’ve got bigger things on their plates than critical theory. One thing that pervades the book is the poverty and scarcity that is like a scar of communism—no matter where you look, the attitudes and living situations and all else are shaped by this scarcity.

“There may be neither milk nor water, but there is sure to be a bottle of Coke around. Nobody seems to mind the paradox that even though fruit grows throughout Poland, there is no fruit juice yet Coke is everywhere. But here Coke, like everything coming from America, is more of a symbol than a beverage.”

This book was definitely an eye-opener for me. I’ve never lived in a post-Communist country, and certainly didn’t spare particular attention on the lives of women in these areas. The author visits and tells the story of different women that she encounters, and though they are all ‘ordinary’, their stories are nevertheless fascinating and reach out to a shared sense of humanity. Though the events we see through the author’s eyes, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Velvet Revolution and the first free elections in Yugoslavia, are still in living memory for many, it is harder and harder to justify the significance of memorizing and recalling these events, especially for my generation (who was born afterwards). Right now the world is in crisis mode, and nobody feels it more strongly than people in post-Communist countries.I don’t want to discuss the book too much because it’s a captivating read, with Drakulić’s style being quite readable but also elegant. There were a few moments towards the end where she tends to wax on a bit more abstractly, but that may just have been my inability to focus on things at the moment. Overall, this book was an important one to read, and I will be adding Drakulić’s other works to my list. But you really should just go ahead and read this yourself, since it’s a fairly ‘quick’ read (but it’s well worth letting the words settle in your mind and go through it a bit slowly, because it definitely hits hard). In a modern world where we see suburban upper-class teens and young adults idolize communism and see nothing wrong with the actions of the former Soviet Union/modern Russia, Drakulić’s work is more important than ever so that we do not forget the true effects of communism.A few of my favorite quotes:

“This is it, I thought, the erasing of memory begins right here, right on this spot near the Potsdamer Platz, right when Goering is reduced to a very famous person , and the Wall to tiny bits of painted concrete selling for 5 Deutschmarks, when the whole history of this nation is reduced to souvenirs and fame.”

“I sprinkled Eastern Europe with tampons on my travels…”

“It took me time to see that any kind of ideology could reduce us to poverty and emotional suffering.”

“It was only in the late seventies that toilet rolls became a normal thing, together with regular washing of hands, brushing of teeth, and bathing - but not using a deodorant. In other words, our hygienic habits slowly but surely changed for the better, and one didn’t die immediately upon entering a crowded streetcar - only a little later.”

“For myself, I concluded, it’s easier to give than not to give. It’s easier to believe them. Then I don’t have to fight my conscience, prove to myself that I don’t need to give, which seems to be as hard as to make sure you gave money to the ‘right’ person - because there are no ‘right’ people.”

“The ‘iron curtains’ will stay with us for a long time: in our memories, in our lives that we cannot renounce, no matter how difficult they were and how hard we try.”

“Talking to them always makes me feel like the worst kind of dissident, a right-wing freak (or a Republican, at best), even if I consider myself an honest social democrat. For every mild criticism of life in the system I have been living under for the last forty years they look at me suspiciously, as if I were a CIA agent (while my folks, communists back home, never had any doubts about it — perhaps this is the key difference between Eastern and Western comrades?) But one can hardly blame them. It is not the knowledge about communism that they lack — I am quite sure they know all about it — it’s the experience of living under such conditions.”

“‘You’d be surprised, my dear, to know that people have to live and survive during wars, too. Besides, how do you think we survived communism?’”