UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Friday 17 February 2:30 – 4:00: Panel F1: The Excluded

Eszter Bartha (Central European University): ‘Good-bye Lenin?: workers in the new capitalist regimes in East Germany and Hungary’

The research is part of my dissertation entitled "Between the sickle and the hammer: Workers in Central Europe’s long transformation (1970-2000)", which aims to compare the development of working-class identities and consciousness in the late socialist period and the new capitalist regimes in East Germany and Hungary. The paper will present the results of an oral history project conducted in the Hungarian ex-socialist giant enterprise Rába and the East German Kombinat Carl Zeiss. The project involved 50-50 interview partners from the age-group 40-65, an equal number of men and women, half of them having lost their jobs and half of them still working in the factories. The aim of the narrative interviews, 2-4 hours in length was to explore experiences and ideas of the two systems and to identify the most important factors that impacted on the formation of workers’ identities and consciousness in the transition from socialism to capitalism.

The research has found that although the economic and socials costs of re-structuring affected the people more painfully in Hungary than in Germany, this negative experience of transition, which was reflected in the Hungarian "narratives of decline" did not challenge the capitalist order as such. People would, instead, typically argue that something went wrong with the implementation of the new system and support the ideology of a strong state and national capitalism. Quite the contrary, the negative experiences in East Germany (unemployment, growing inequalities) were interpreted as a consequence of the capitalist system rather than an aberration from it. The paper will argue that the different forms of inclusion in the global capitalist system have a different impact on the formation of working-class identities and consciousness, and what James Ferguson called "expectations of modernity" – the myths related to industrial development – seem to persist longer in the periphery than in countries that are closer to the core.