Introduction

Part V of this Handbook is about the reconstructing of gender as Central-Eastern European and Eurasian (CEE&E) societies have moved away from Leninist interpretations of communism and developed a variety of economies and political regimes in new relationships with Europe, Russia, neighbors, and more distant parts of the world. Pointing out similarities to other regional contexts and using different analytical lenses such as postcolonialism, some scholars suggest that postcommunism should no longer be the guiding framework for analyzing gender. Chapters in this Part demonstrate the possibilities arising from, and the challenges discovered in, situating the study of gender in CEE&E within and beyond the differentiated, but shared legacy of the communist experience and postcommunist transitions. Moving past the unanswerable questions as to whether the political–economic transitions were better or worse for women than for men, Part V embraces ambiguity as an analytical tool.