Project description

Postsocialist transformation and globalization radically changed the labor markets in Central and Eastern Europe. The project interrogates the question as to what extent and why the newly formed, skilled industrial “elite” workforce is attracted by right-wing, populist ideologies and political forces in contemporary Eastern Germany and Hungary, and what factors can explain the experience and perception of social and political inequalities, which can account for the support of extremist political parties in this stratum of the workers, who can be deemed opinion-leaders at the shopfloor.

The project grew out of my decade-long research on postsocialist transformation in Eastern Germany and Hungary, with a focus on the working-class experience of the new, capitalist regimes and the collective memory of socialism. While workers’ shift to the right can be observed also in Western Europe, the project contends that in Central and Eastern Europe, more attention should be devoted to the unique legacy of the state socialist experiment and the collective working-class memory of neoliberal “transition”.

Short Bio

Eszter Bartha is a habilitated Associate Professor at the Department of Eastern and Central European History and Historical Russistics at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. She has published extensively on labor history under state socialism and beyond, including her book Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary. In 2023, she co-edited a volume State Socialism in Eastern Europe: History, Theory, Anti-capitalist Alternatives.