ABSTRACT
The communists promised people equality in the first place and, while they did better in this area than their Western rivals, they did not do so well when their achievements were measured against their own standards and professed goals. Moreover, insofar as the communists legislated such things as promoting women in education, establishing the principle of equal pay for equal work, and, in most countries, legalizing abortion (though not in Ceauşescu's Romania), the unintended consequence of the way in which these policies were implemented was to disempower women, turning them into recipients of the benefits of state socialism rather than allowing them to build and strengthen their own agency. While the advocates of revolution, seeking an end to communist rule, hoped for improvements in many areas of life, including the freedom to travel, a better standard of living, and such mundane matters as better consumer supplies and a better variety of foods at the supermarket, it was freedom that enchanted those who celebrated the end of rule by communist parties. For some, the principle of religious freedom loomed largest in their minds. For others, economic freedom – the freedom of the marketplace and an end to central planning and production targets set by the authorities – was what mattered most; indeed, economic transformation had begun even before the Revolutions of 1989 (not completed until later). For many, freedom in the cultural sector was hugely important – the freedom to write what one wanted, to compose music without risking punishment from cultural tsars, to paint “crazy” things, to perform in ways that challenged audiences. And, inevitably, the new freedom meant an abandonment of the idea of planned and centrally promoted gender equality. Initially, this meant the abandonment of gender quotas in politics – although under communism/state socialism, there were quotas for various groups of people, including also for young people, industrial workers, and peasants. Gender quotas would be restored later in much of the region. Freedom in the sector of gender relations also meant a strengthening of patriarchy as various countries in the region immediately after the collapse of the communist systems in 1989–1991 and, especially Hungary after 2010 and Poland after 2015, undertook to promote a conscious retraditionalization of society. Along with this, in most of the region, feminism came to be equated with socialism or communism and, by that virtue, seen, ironically, as something to be avoided, overcome, or banished.
