Preliminary Programme

From their inception in the nineteenth century, the “utopian” and “scientific” strands of Marxist thinking gave birth to alternative conceptions of sexual modernity. To what extent was an alternative modernity in evidence in the East German government’s understanding of the sexual valence of the “socialist personality” during the 1950s? In other words, did officials seek to articulate a vision of gender and sexual norms that was markedly different than or remarkably similar to mores that prevailed on the other side of the Iron Curtain? Despite the vituperative nature of Cold War propaganda, there were often more similarities than differences in evidence. It was, however, in part because of the lingering influence of earlier conceptions of socialist sexual modernity that some ordinary East Germans sought to challenge what they perceived to be an excessively circumscribed—or overly permissive—official sexual imaginary. On the one hand, epistolary correspondence between officialdom and the citizenry and internal governmental documents reveal efforts to decriminalize and destigmatize same-sex sexual relations involving men, for instance, and to advocate for extending official recognition to non-marital heterosexual partnerships. On the other hand, there is also ample evidence of resistance to the institution of no-fault divorce as insufficiently punitive towards marital sexual indiscretions and to the government’s claim that children born out of wedlock would not be in a disadvantageous legal or societal position. It is thus not possible to speak of a single East German sexual modernity, whether “alternative” or otherwise, but instead of a multiplicity of “modern” and “reactionary” conceptions of sexual “normality.” Yet in the absence of an unfettered civil society, this diversity of viewpoints remained largely hidden from the officially sanctioned public sphere. (Show less)

Czechoslovakia in the first postwar decade was a site of communist remodeling of society that was happening across the region. When did the communist rhetoric take hold? How did expertise (medical, legal, demographic) feed into governmental policies? In this paper, I will focus on two discursive shifts: the first one from immediately postwar measures that were to be taken in the realm of the family and sexuality to the communist rise in power (1945-1950), and the second one of experts advising the government reconsidering the policies and expertise of the 1950s (turn of the 1950s/ 1960s).
In the first postwar government, communists presented rather modernist policies, such as simplification of divorce or equalizing the status of children born out of wedlock, while other governmental parties objected and suggested keeping the laws favoring the traditional family. The government discussed bills proposed by population experts advising to introduce mandatory eugenic screening before marriage. Public discourse shifted after the communist takeover in 1948. By 1950, the laws were introduced that reshaped the family to be headed by equal spouses, supported women’s inclusion in the labor force, simplified divorce. The state tried to collectivize housework, build nurseries and kindergartens, and banned the Eugenics society. Medical experts promoted women’s health which contributed to the legalization of abortion in 1957.
Towards the end of the decade, a body of expert knowledge on population began to solidify. Headed by demographers, a State Population Committee was created as an advisory body. The statistics they collected were closely studied and experts discussed measures to prevent population decline. Abortion policies were fine-tuned, maternity leave assessed, taxation and family benefits recalculated with the aim of promoting more children being born. The discourse changed in the early 1960s as experts revised the utopian approach of the long 1950s that had wanted to dramatically change society and family life.
This paper draws on archival sources from the National Archive of the Czech Republic (materials from governmental bodies and committees, testimonials by medical and other expert organizations), legal codifications (family law, abortion), medical and demographic journals, and demographic data. (Show less)

The awkward fragment that is the title of this abstract is from a poem that appeared in a women’s magazine in Hungary in 1950. It is brought to illustrate the eminent importance of fertility in Stalinist Hungary’s discourses of sexuality. This paper will address this process of sexuality ending up in the womb in the early 1950s with two related stories. One is that of sex education and it will point to the radical changes in the access to and production of sexual knowledge after the Communist takeover in 1948/49. The expeditious centralization of public communication channels and the silencing of dissenting voices strongly affected the discussion of sexuality-and the pronatalist swerve shifted attention from formerly important issues like marriage, STIs or masturbation. Official propaganda was trying to create the image of a hard-working, sexless individual, whose libido was put into “production” in sexual matters as well. To illustrate the importance of expeditious and sweeping changes and a quest for total control I will tell a second story, that of the institutionalization of childbirth. In 1949 only 30% of births took place in a hospital or in a birth home, this ratio jumped to 65% by 1955 and there is a 1953 Council of Ministers Resolution that explicitly called for a 100% ratio by the end of 1957.
Why was it so important that women give birth in institutional settings? How was this related to contemporary sex education and its emphasis on motherhood? What kind of sexual normality was sought for in Stalinist Hungary and how did it relate to pre-1945 images of appropriate sexualities? These are the questions the paper will address, using contemporary women’s magazines, educational books, films as well as Health Ministry reports on childbirth-related policies as sources. (Show less)

The proposed paper will present historical evidence about the existence of ‘lists of homosexuals’ compiled for official state use from the early 20th century. Historical recollections of same-sex desire were often sporadic and piecemeal, reflecting the desires of men over women, whose same-sex identifications and practices left few detectable marks in the public realm. The official or semi-official lists of male homosexuals that were compiled in Budapest since at least the 1920s point to the fact that same-sex desires have been both recognised and misrecognised already during the first half of the 20th century, and these processes did not discontinue at all in the rest of the best part of the century. For example, in 1942 a list of 995 alleged homosexuals was annexed to the correspondence between the State Security Centre and the Minister of Defence contemplating the possibility whether or not to use homosexuals as forced labourers within the wartime Labour Service System. The practice of special state surveillance on homosexuality seemed to subsist after the communist takeover. In fact, compiling ‘homosexual inventories’ providing potential blackmail victims to be coerced into becoming police informers was part of regular police work in urban areas and especially in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary – according to documents I have found at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security.

The empirical base of the proposed paper includes archive research and document analyses focusing on 20th century legal changes concerning the social consequences of homosexual behaviour; in-depth interview material conducted with elderly people who had homosexual experiences before 1989, and homosexuality related documents of court cases and police procedures mainly from before 1961, when consensual homosexual acts became decriminalised in Hungary. (Show less)