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WOMEN AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF EASTERN EUROPE Continuation What more, the erosion of Soviet totalitarianism has also generated a deep distrust of women, women’s leaders, and feminism in general .6 The Left, including the communist parties, had always supported its version of women’s emancipation and promoted the careers of at least some women. All social democrats have histori cally espoused the rights of workers and the rights of women and most were genuine in their convictions. But as many reformers, they felt that their convictions place upon them both the duty and the knowledge to speak on behalf of the workers and of women. Women have been used, often willingly, to help build communist societies that promised them equality. Especially in the first years of communist regimes the gains of women in opportunities of employment and education, as well as in equality in law have been significant. But the reality of the communist political system negated these rights in practice. In effect, therefore, for women in Eastern Europe equality meant a double burden: work outside the home to earn the salary necessary to keep the fam ily alive, and work in the home in a paternalistic society in which consumer goods were scarce, the economy subject to centralized planning that did not take any women’s or family needs into consideration, Marxism, as all democratic approaches, defines women in the terms of its own ideology, which — while purporting to be sex/gender blind, was nonetheless formulated by males and is, essentially, male oriented. Klara Zetkin’s March 8 Day of Women celebration became one of more meaningless political hoopla for the overworked Soviet and East European woman. Most Soviet and East European women feel that it was the feminists’ insist ence on equality of women that was responsible for the double burden of work heaped upon them .7 Part of the problem lies in the women themselves. The articulate ones wrote in the language into which they had been socialized, the conventional language of history and politics. Their training, upbringing, and expectations did not predispose them to forge a new language, a new mode of conceptualizing their own “condition humaine.” Forced into constructs not of their own making, divorced from power, when they did ven ture to conceptualize the place of women in the world they could not find the necessary words and were dis missed as extraneous feminists .8 Extraneous because, as most East European writers would argue, feminism is a ’’Western im port” of no relevance to East European women who already enjoy all the equality and recogni tion they could want .7 To recreate the history of women in Eastern Europe we must turn from the political picture and look at the functioning of society. The shift from states to societies makes us aware of community efforts to self-preservation and for a more comfortable life. It suggests that the strategies historians of women have devised to integrate the women’s component into history provides us with a more nuanced view of Eastern Europe, since the study of the communities, of the civic society, provides us with a fuller picture of Eastern Europe. Within the Soviet Union, too, the power of demo cratic nationalism is rising, drawing the geo-political mass closer to the European continent. The differences between Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire, or its successor, the Soviet Union, appear to be those of chronology and of degree, rather than of substance. The border between Eastern Europe and the Russian state appears to be porous and the problems facing the two areas quite similar. Chief among them are the inability or the unwilling ness of the central government to provide for or to ena ble the creation of economic opportunities to raise the standard of living of the population. The lack of eco nomic development, or simply economic backwardness in the area is reflected in the failure of effective social mobility of the population and in the failure of economic and social integration. The authoritarian governments in the area, if not expansionist, pursued policies of cen tralization detrimental to the population and blind to its long term needs. In modern times these states were also marked by integral chauvinist nationalism intolerant of others and blatantly anti-semitic that gave all national ism a bad name. The pervasiveness of the problems confronting the area, the inability of the various regimes to provide long term solutions and the powerlessness of women in both parts of the area justify my fusing East Europe and Rus sia in this analysis .12 Furthermore, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation itself is composed of different ethnic groups which the Russian governments have vainly tried to fuse into one. Russia’s seeming success in the endeavor makes us overlook the fact that in the long run Russia is as incapable of moulding the na tionalities into its own image and likeness as the East ern European states were. We read into the topic accepted categories of our thought, or worse yet, per petuate the categories others may want us to use. In the case of Eastern Europe we tend to focus on the state and gauge success in the degree of its centralization;
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