The Strange Case of Yugoslav Feminism: Feminism and Socialism in ‘the East’

Abstract

The text counters the prevailing idea that there was no feminism in the socialist Eastern bloc, carefully presenting a peculiar case of Yugoslav feminism which grew out of socialist political and cultural framework. Yugoslavia was the country where the organization of the singular feminist event in the Eastern world, the conference “Comrade Woman – The New Approach?” (1978), took place. The text traces the ideas on emancipation and liberation which appeared in Yugoslav scientific and literary journals, immediately after the “Comrade Woman” and until the late 1980s, before the proclaimed fall of the Iron Curtain. The written material is grouped into three sections, according to how the so called woman’s question was elaborated. By re-reading this material, the text examines if feminism was legitimized within the dominant socialist discourse, or whether it was purely translated as something externally Western. The aim of the text is to describe how scholars and activists portrayed emancipation and liberation at that very time: to see if they negotiated or failed to negotiate Western definitions and Eastern realities. In that sense, given material is not used to simply reinforce or refute the claim that feminism was an imported Western (i.e. capitalist) product that had no place interfering with the development. of socialism. It also urges us to re-consider the common knowledges we have, in order to see how they become situated as common