How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“You are trained to fear change, so that when change eventually begins to take place, you are suspicious, because every change you have experienced was always for the worse. I remember that my own first reaction to my colleague’s news, besides happiness, was fear, as if I were experiencing an earthquake. Much as I desired the collapse of the old system, the ground was shaking beneath my feet.” 

Drakulić establishes that communist mindsets may seem foreign or surprising to her readers. Instead of straightforward celebration of the Berlin Wall’s fall, her reaction is born of decades of conditioning, perhaps even programming. The old system, much as she loathes it, was predictable and stable. She compares political change to a natural disaster, and it is not clear what the shape of her new world will be. 

“But Tanja was wrong in one thing: she believed it would go on forever like that—the same newspaper, the same faces, the same cold climate of fear and silent accusations, the immobility of the system—forever the same. What communism instilled in us was precisely this immobility, this absence of a future, the absence of a dream, of the possibility of imagining our lives differently.” 

Drakulić uses repetition to emphasize the implacable steadiness of communism’s inhumanity. Her denounced friend cannot imagine a new job, or new friends, or a more humane political system, and all of these problems are bound up together. In spiritual terms, communism is empty, and it produces only one more absence: Tanja’s death and Drakulić’s deep sense of loss, grief, and betrayal. 

“She was not a religious person. In fact, she was an atheist. But in the last moments of her life nothing else was left to her, and she turned to the Bible. For months afterwards all I could think of was the bunch of fresh daisies and the Bible. I wonder if the people who wrote that ‘explanation’ ever think about her? Her death was wrong, it was useless, and only today can I see the full absurdity of it. Perhaps communism is collapsing, but what is the price? How many more victims like Tanja will it claim—not big heroes, political prisoners, or dissidents, but people who just couldn’t stand it anymore?” 

Here, Drakulić presents communism as dangerous and spiritually arid. It left Tanja with so little that in her last moments she turned to a religion she did not believe in. Drakulić also points out that some of those the system destroys are likely forgotten, even by those who denounced them. For her, the system’s collapse offers little consolation, as her friend remains dead, and there may be no final tally of its victims. While many may think of those figures who achieved notoriety for struggling against the system, Drakulić makes a plea for remembering all of the ordinary lives communist regimes made more difficult.  

“One might easily conclude that this is what Poles probably like the best, or why else would it be in stores in such quantities? Prune compote was what they had, not what they liked. However, the word ‘like’ is not the best way to explain the food situation (or any situation) in Poland. Looking at a shop window where onions and garlic are two of the very few items on display, what meaning could the word ‘like’ possibly have? Slowly, one realizes that not only is this a different reality, but words have a different meaning here too. It makes you understand that the word ‘like’ implies not only choice but refinement, even indulgence, savoir-vivre, in fact, a whole different attitude toward food.” 

The essay on food establishes how little the economic system Drakulić lived in could address personal wants and needs. She takes on the role of tour guide or anthropologist, explaining to her readers that the explanations they might consider obvious no longer apply. Poles do not, in fact, have an unwavering affinity for prunes—the wide availability of some products is a story of unmet, even unexamined, wants, in favor of simply producing what is available and achievable. The greatest shift across borders is not only material, but mental— preferences involve ‘indulgence’—they are luxuries, not to be taken for granted. 

“To be heedless—to behave as if you are somewhere else, where everything is easy to get—is a sin not against God, but against people. Here you have to think of food, because it has entirely diverse social meaning. To bring a cake for dinner—a common gesture in another, more affluent country—means you invested a great deal of energy to find it if you didn’t make it yourself.” 

Drakulić connects food to morality, and its unique meanings in communism. To behave as if one lives in abundance is to both deny reality and potentially harm others, or at least to fail to recognize one’s privilege. Even simple social gestures acquire weight and meaning, as buying a cake is more like having undertaken a grand exercise—it takes ‘energy’—it requires many steps rather than a single intention. 

“I sprinkled Eastern Europe with tampons on my travels; I had already left one package of napkins and some tampons, ironically called ‘New Freedom’ in Warsaw (plus Bayer aspirin and antibiotics), another package in Prague (plus Anais perfume), and now here in Sofia…After all these years, communism has not been able to produce a single sanitary napkin, a bare necessity for women. So much for its economy and its so called emancipation, too.” 

Drakulić’s use of the word “sprinkle” evokes a shower from above, perhaps even a sprinkle of magic dust: making feminine hygiene products appear in Eastern Europe is a providential act, not merely a courtesy for friends. The problem is not specific to any one country, but rather to the wider economic system common in Eastern Europe—the only variability is what other gifts Drakulić includes, like perfume or sanitary napkins. As in her other discussions of communism’s failure, she singles the problem out as persistent and dire. Drakulić points out that this undercuts the regime’s broader political claims, not only to fulfill human needs but to emancipate women in ways capitalism does not. 

“For me, they are the most beautiful in the world because I know what is behind the serious, worried faces, the unattended hair, the unmanicured nails; behind a pale pink lipstick that doesn’t exactly go with the color of their eyes, or hair, or dress; behind the bad teeth, the crumpled coats, the smell of their sweat in a streetcar. Their beauty should not be compared with the beauty that comes from the ‘otherness.’” 

Drakulić regards her fellow women with tenderness and care. While others might see only their imperfections, she sees their labor and the care they take with their appearance. She argues that communism should have its own beauty standards, akin to its separate economic system. Where others might judge them by capitalist standards, she argues that the emotional labor they take matters more than the aesthetic outcome. 

“‘But they don’t live alone, there is an older person. See the black woolen dress, still dripping? Perhaps she is a widow.’ She taught me to observe, to look carefully at things around me, however small and unimportant they might appear to be, so I could learn more about people. In that way, she told me, ‘In time everything will be revealed to you.’ Maybe because of her, today I am not tempted to buy a dryer. I think I will always hang my clothes outside for the sheer poetry of it, so I can take them down from the line and feel the smell of wind. In fact I think this is the only way to smell the wind—with your face buried deep in freshly dried sheets.” 

In this anecdote, Drakulić establishes her grandmother as an observer, a kind of social detective who can determine who lives in the neighboring apartments by decoding the laundry hung up to dry. This is one story where the absence of consumer goods is nevertheless productive: It creates kinship between family members, and invites Drakulić to both domestic labor and observation of the human condition. Drakulić honors this tradition into adulthood, as she considers that buying a dryer would be a loss as much as a luxury. She would lose the special experience of “smelling the wind,” a connection to her family and to nature.

“I think it was the security I wanted to feel once more, as I stood there in the fleamarket in West Berlin, on a foggy Sunday morning, holding a doll again after so long. The world I knew was falling apart. We are all traveling toward the unknown—wanted, but unknown, maybe too beautiful to live in, like my doll, which was too beautiful to play with. I wonder—this feeling of insecurity, of vulnerability, of having the carpet pulled out from under one’s feet, this fear in the face of the desired but unknown—is this the price that we have to pay to reach toward a future that is constantly escaping us?” 

Drakulić finds herself longing for childhood security in times of political upheaval, and a connection with her past, which, however materially deprived, was predictable and familiar. The future has no clear promises, no guarantees—it is sought after, but perhaps always out of reach, a dream that may always lie ahead. Further, these dislocations are a “price”—they are taxing, they take energy, they are not in themselves an unmitigated good. As much as Drakulić does not mourn for communism as an economic system, she is open about the emotional dislocation she experiences—she feels, perhaps, more like a child than like a prepared and capable adult.

“It was the younger generation that became its enemy. They simply were not ready to accept a deteriorating standard of living in the name of an ideology they didn’t believe in, whose symbol was Golub. This was how the communists lost: when the first free elections came, in May 1990, the entire younger generation voted against Golub, against shortages, deprivation, double standards, and false promises. In the whole of Eastern Europe they didn’t vote so much for Democrats or Christians or liberals—or whatever the winning parties are called—as against the communists.” 

In her essay on toilet paper, Drakulić establishes that such a simple object can reveal multitudes about the society that produces it. Toilet paper even becomes part of a generational divide, as younger people reject poor quality toilet paper so decisively they usher in a new political era. She even suggests that the names and ideologies of new parties are irrelevant compared to the scale of disgust with communism and its deprivations. Though her personal memories are about Yugoslavia, Drakulić argues that this disgust was a regional phenomenon and a response to shared ideology and its consequences. 

“Apartments for us were mythical objects of worship. They were life prizes, and we still regard them as such. Once you get one, it is all you can expect for the rest of your life. We seldom changed it, as we didn’t change our job or the city where we lived. We were stuck with it, it became a part of our destiny, a reason for our fights and divorces, for our neuroses and fears of overcrowding, for our closeness with our parents and relatives. True, our babies profit from it. They have their babies to take care of them. But we suffer, thinking if we only had our own place, life would turn around. More than that—an apartment was a metaphysical space, the only place we felt a little bit more secure. It was a dark cave into which to withdraw from the omnipotent eyes of the state.” 

Drakulić establishes later in the collection that she is an atheist, but in her essay on apartments she showcases what communist citizens worshiped instead of a deity. They prized personal space above all things in this world rather than an afterlife. She presents the housing crisis as a structure that determined virtually everything else—the use of “destiny” suggests inevitability and the power of the state to shape its citizenry. She argues forcefully that privacy is an essential human right, since its absence produces so much “suffering” and social division, including the breakdown of marriages. 

“Asking for the right to privacy meant you had something to hide. And hiding something meant it was forbidden. If it was forbidden, it must have been against the state. Finally, if it was against the state you must have been an enemy. Or at least a suspect person—the logic of the post office was the same as the logic of the state. But with that simple, if not original, idea of the yellow or red line, the president introduced privacy as a public category, in this way transforming a mass of individual people into citizens.” 

In discussing public services, Drakulić reintroduces the concept of communism as its own intellectual universe, with its own moral rules. Privacy is a sign of political and moral failure because political allegiance equates with morality. Croatia’s new president is trying to introduce a new universe of meaning, through paint on a post office floor. For citizens, privacy is a morally neutral right, and the new citizens can see this any time they set foot in a public building. 

“It seems it’s the same the world over, but there is a difference here, because every such talk finishes with the system that shapes our lives. Sometimes it looks like a Minotaur, a monster we throw sacrifices to in order just to stay alive, a force larger than life, mythological and real at the same time, controlling us, dividing us, eating us up. That is what is uniting us in these kitchens, beyond the men, above them, this feeling of helplessness.” 

Drakulić acknowledges that struggles between men and women have a universal element, even as she notes that politics determines much of its shape in Eastern Europe. She evokes Greek mythology and monsters to illustrate just how powerful the state is for herself and her friends. They are not active agents, but subjects in danger of consumption, desperate to cling to life. She presents politics as more of a shared identity than gender—it is not femininity that creates cohesion, but a uniformity of ideology.

“There is a deeper reason why the poverty sticks to us, why we recognize beggars, homeless people, bums, petty thieves, the sick junkies, why we take it all so personally, why it hurts us. It’s because we have a communist eye. Like a third, spiritual eye placed in the middle of one’s forehead, this eye scans only for a certain type of phenomenon; it is selective for injustice. Even if the socialist states have fallen apart, the ideals of equality and justice haven’t.” 

In journeying to New York, Drakulić deepens her recognition of communism as a state of being more than a political system. While in other essays she describes the indifference of political elites to ordinary people’s needs, ordinary citizens like herself are different. Confronted with capitalism, they see human need more acutely, where others do not. Drakulić presents these ideas as more enduring than the political system that endorsed them. While communist states failed to produce consumer goods, they did produce an enduring moral legacy.

“This is what the Iron Curtain is made of: many facets of a different reality, of different ideals and meaning we were brought up with and truly believed in. The Iron Curtain is hidden in the feeling Evelina and I have as we walk down Fifth Avenue, knowing we are here and at the same time not here because reality has another meaning for us. In the middle of New York we are enclosed by a different reality principle. It’s good to come here and see; for a prisoner, it is worth it for the sake of traveling itself. But it becomes clear that the instant ‘translation’ into another culture, into another way of life and values—and that is what people in Eastern Europe expect to happen—is impossible.”

Drakulić invokes Winston Churchill’s famous phrase about the division between the capitalist democracies of Western Europe and the communist systems to their east. But, unlike Churchill, she does so to illustrate distinctions that emphasize capitalism’s moral bankruptcy rather than to condemn Stalinism, as he did. Instead, the Iron Curtain is a mode of being that sets Drakulić apart. She supports freedom of physical movement, and does not regret her journey, but it cannot transform her entirely. She does not, it seems, wish for the cultural Iron Curtain’s eradication or condemn it—it is, instead, a kind of inheritance she still carries with her. 

“Sitting in her office at the university, with a shelf full of books on Marxism, feminism, or Critical Theory within reach, B asks me about discussion on ‘essentialism’ in Yugoslavia. I can imagine her, in her worn-out jeans and fashionable t-shirt, with her trimmed black hair, looking younger than she is (aerobics, macrobiotics), sitting at her computer and typing these very words that—when I read them on a streetcar in Zagreb ten days later—sound so absurd that I laugh even more, as if I was reading some very good news.” 

Drakulić’s mental image of her American colleague establishes a stark distance between them. Marxism is a matter for one’s library, not a lived reality. Her colleague has access to material luxuries Drakulić mocks, like an exercise routine and a specialized diet. She has clothes she has presumably chosen for herself. Drakulić finds herself reduced to laughter when she tries to imagine using Western academic jargon in her own life. Here, the Iron Curtain of ideological difference is personified, and the reader sees that Drakulić has no reverence for Western academics, just as she feels entirely free to critique capitalism. 

“So we discover that a feminist is not only a man-eater here, she is an enemy of the state. Some of us received threatening letters. Some got divorced, accused of neglecting their families. A man broke into my friend’s apartment; (convinced he could understand her!), a writer wrote a porno story about two of us, feminists. Women themselves accused us of being elitist. A man wanted to chain me in the main square; someone spat on my door every night, for years…” 

Drakulić vividly illustrates what feminism costs, and how poorly it is understood in Eastern Europe. Not only is it equated with political subversion, but it has tangible costs in daily life. Women lose safety, they lose their partners, and even their homes are not safe. Patriarchy produces vulnerability and insecurity, and sexualization. Even women do not support the cause or the work. This catalog is vivid and concrete, in stark contrast to the philosophical abstractions Drakulić’s American colleague brings up in her letter about feminism. 

“A fur coat, whether old or new, is a visible symbol of wealth and luxury everywhere—the only difference is that in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe wealth and luxury were for a long time illegal (and they become illegal every time the country sinks into a deep economic and political crisis, when, for a moment, post-revolutionary egalitarianism replaces a real solution). And even those who would like to believe in egalitarianism must ask themselves why we have to be equal only in poverty.” 

While in earlier essays Drakulić discusses communism and poverty, here she discusses the ways in which comfort is politicized. Luxury is illegal, for ideological reasons, but more as a matter of political expediency—the regime persecutes luxury every time it faces a crisis. Thus, this is not a matter of pure moral conviction, but a reactionary and defensive posture. Drakulić critiques communist ideology in concrete terms, rather than philosophical abstractions—she questions the premise of socialist egalitarianism because it denies citizens things they want. 

“For obvious reasons, Castro didn’t mention fur coats in his interview, but the idea is the same, particularly because the ecological way of thinking has been forced upon Third World people—in this case, women—in the name of ‘higher goals’ a very familiar notion in the communist part of the world. And I can hardly think of anything more repulsive than that. So, what are women supposed to do, when they see it as just an old ideological trick? Before they give up fur coats, they certainly want to have them, at least for a while; and I’m afraid that no propaganda about poor little animals will help before fur coats have at least become a choice.” 

In her citation of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Drakulić demonstrates that some aspects of communist logic are truly global, especially the insistence on austerity and material deprivation as a matter of principle. Her use of the language “Third World” is a further rhetorical attack on ideas of communist progress—while this term has largely been replaced in current social science, Drakulić uses it to invoke how far behind communist countries are from others, for all of their rhetoric of advancement. She argues that women see through this appeal and will likely demand fur coats anyway—ecology is no match for decades of unmet need. 

“Only now do I realize there isn’t one single flag in the whole street, and this is where my feeling of falseness comes from: if this is a historic moment, as they were trumpeting from different political sides, how come on this sunny sleepy Sunday morning nothing is reminiscent of a holiday? As if, deep inside, we are ashamed of doing this in the face of the communists who are still in power. As if we are traitors.”

Drakulić’s description of her first free elections highlights that the transition to a new system is far from immediate. She must vote against the communists while they still hold power, and while they no longer have her allegiance—and never truly did—this makes her uneasy. There are no signs of festivity around her—nothing to impart the day with the political meaning others might assign it. The use of the word “traitor” reinforces that communist Yugoslavia still exists on an emotional level, even as Drakulić participates in a process to replace it with something else. 

“Every public space is like a billboard, with messages from the collective subconscious of the nation. There one can read passivity, rage, indifference, fear, double standards, subversion, bad economy, a twisted definition of ‘public’ itself, the whole Weltanschaung—an entire range of emotions and attitudes accumulated and expressed. We behave as if the public place belonged to nobody. Or even worse, as if it belonged to the enemy and our sacred duty is to exhaust him. Public space begins outside the apartment.” 

Like fur coats and toilet paper, Drakulić uses public spaces to analyze deeper political attitudes. The emotional universe of communism is largely bitter and cynical—there is anger, rage, and a distaste for anything public, along with an economic system that is failing. Public space equates with danger because only apartments mean safety from the eyes of the state. The state is in a dysfunctional, perhaps even abusive, relationship with its own citizens, as they assault public space like a battlefield rather than treat it as a common good. 

“Now the new governments are again changing the names of streets and squares, destroying old monuments and replacing them quickly with new ones, taking history and memory as their own little playground. But the cities are remembering and showing it, and the people, too. The nostalgia and hopelessness of the East European soul, its sadness and cynicism—the inner sepia, if you wish—all stems from this. So I guess we are something else after all, something visibly different.”

Here Drakulić underlines that the transition to a market economy or democratic elections has not produced automatic alignment between the population and the regime. Indeed, the governments treat the recent past like a “playground,” and resemble children in their desire to supplant the communist past with their own imagery. In contrast, the landscape and its occupants hold on to their memories, and their complex emotions of nostalgia. This, too, sets Eastern Europe apart—the contest between past and present creates another kind of Iron Curtain.

“As kids we all read in textbooks that brotherhood and unity were the greatest achievements of the communist revolution in Yugoslavia, learning by heart ‘bro-ther-hood-unity, bro-ther-hood-unity’ and shouting it at mass meetings on May 1 or Republic Day, on squares and streets, repeating them endlessly these words as if they were some magic formula for our survival. We children didn’t understand it; our elders perhaps didn’t believe in it; nevertheless we were supposed to stand up for it. In the ten years since Tito’s death nationalism has started boiling in this country, like a steam kettle, which is now whistling loudly, becoming our only reality.” 

Drakulić recalls the slogan of her youth—meant to evoke the integrity and meaning of the single Yugoslav nation rather than the supremacy of any nation within it—as a kind of background noise. It was celebrated and memorized, and she likens it to a kind of magic spell, perhaps the substitute for real conviction. But the words themselves are not enough, as the loss of a powerful dictator and national hero has brought nationalist divisions back to the forefront. The “steam kettle” has drowned out communist-era slogans, and shaped reality more definitively than any replacement of monuments could have. The transition to nationalism is more successful than the transition to a market economy—with dire consequences.