Content warning: childhood trauma, abortion, poverty.
I have decided early on that I wouldn’t have children. “But why, you waste of a uterus that you are…” some strangers would quip. Well, I already have a child in me that needs attention, so why bring up more to the party? Besides, I am so stoked on my reproductive rights nowadays and I need to make full use of them, because just one generation before me they didn’t have those. The waste would be to not treat my uterus to a permanent vacancy, after my ancestors had to keep it working at overcapacity…
To give some context, let’s talk about kids and women’s rights in Eastern European communism! Some of the things I am talking about here I haven’t experienced directly – thank goodness – but I feel that talking about them is important for a better glimpse into the dynamics at the time, as these were issues that affected all our lives and our collective consciousness.
When you hear about Easter European communism you can probably quickly associate the lack of reproductive rights and abortion bans with it, all byproducts of a sick, but strong desire to populate the country and to create new generations of obedient minions that provide cheap labor.
What you don’t expect to find out is that parents will ultimately treat their kids the same way the government does – with a complete disregard to their feelings, and very much interest in their labor potential, even if that’s just around the house. Of course we could talk about the show-off potential, or the old age care aid potential, all important and equally dismissive of the human potential of a child.
When you have parents bringing up babies into the world unwillingly, there will always be a little sentiment of frustration that will dominate the relationship. Of course, some do want children (whether it’s their decision or influenced by society, that’s another story), but maybe not as many as they end up having. If they are lucky to be wanted, the first kids will be welcomed, the rest, welcomed reluctantly or abandoned. After all, who has money for all of them? The government provided free kindergarten and school so it’s not about major costs, but believe me, in communism, the cost of food and basics, as well as the availability of them were big enough issues. Ironically this exploited population produced plenty of food and put in work for the greater good, but the ‘greater good’ was exporting the food and starving the local population. If ye’r hangry, you are easier to control.
Illegal abortions still happened and put many women’s lives at risk. Old ladies and midwives operated home walk-in clinics (in their kitchens) and used questionable herbs and many popular tricks to induce abortions. You’d hear stories of women getting the mockup curette right on the kitchen tables, no sedatives, and god knows who actually performed those abortions, if they were real medical staff willing to do illegal procedures, but obviously a lot of these cases ended in death from infections and bleeding, because whisks don’t really make great medical equipment. You think you’re funny with your coat hanger jokes? Bitch please, communist ladies tried iron knitting needles and wooden rods wrapped in rags. Ancient medical equipment in museums was advanced technology compared to this. Sorry for the horror story, but reality is not for everyone.
Hi USA, how are your anti-abortion laws coming along?
When babies still happen, well, nobody ever says “I regret having my children” unless they are mentally challenged or angry, but let’s just say parental love is not exactly the same you’d experience from a western country where having children is a choice, and sometimes a pretty cool opportunity for gender reveal parties.
I still can’t reconcile the subliminal hate I felt all adults had for children with today’s supporting attitude towards them. It’s been only a few decades! Growing up, it felt like all adults despised the shit out of me, except a couple older relatives and my mom’s office colleagues who were always stoked to see me (read: treats). With children around, most adults found themselves in power positions – finally – so they used that power to get their kicks. Parents, neighbors, teachers, educators, doctors… You can imagine how mentally stable these adults were, exercising their frustration-born control tactics over little souls that instead needed love and support. A lot of us grew up to become adults that are unfazed by not being liked, and either end up needing a lot of external validation to make up for it, or none at all, because not being liked is kinda cool. We could grow up to be a new generation of angry communists but most of us choose to break the cycle.
And when everything fails, train ‘em to provide! Kids in communism were literally used for labor from an early age. Schools were facilitating this with programs of labor imposed by the government and the Ministry of Education. Kids used to work the fields, in factories, or help with cleaning in schools, take turns working the gardens, and literally doing work which in normal cases is usually reserved for janitors. Working the fields is called “practice” or “patriotic labor” and you’d go there to essentially be a farmer, doing proper heavy work – picking corn, potatoes, fruit. I never got to properly do this because I was too young, but I did get to do other lighter chores like cleaning and recycling.
You know what you don’t expect from a commie state? The curious case of unintended environmentalism. Well it looked like it, but it wasn’t exactly the result of some care for the environment (after all, hyper industrialization, deforestation and urban expansion were the shit). BUT when paper and bottles are recycled, meat production is low, water is rationed, electricity is forcibly saved – yeah, it looks like communists cared so much for the planet. The real reasons were poverty, and the absolute need of reusing materials, as well as the failing economy and the external debt that caused us to “save” resources as a nation. So we sat in the dark and cold for many hours daily, did our homework by gas lamps or candlelight (extra points for those who had gas stoves like me!), used hot water one hour a day (if any) and saved every paper and bottle we could get our hands on.
Kids were tasked with bringing recycling paper to school periodically and many were left scrambling, desperately scraping any remnants of newspaper from their homes, just to make their quota. There would always be some asshole kid who showed up with 10kg of paper for recycling, just because their parents could get it from their jobs or something. And then you were ashamed seeing how that kid was praised and given good marks, because their friggin’ parents did the work for them. If you ever wonder how we are taught anger with a penchant for justice, now you know.
Older kids who had some minimal body strength were assigned patriotic labor, which also came with quotas for the day. I bet some frustrated supervisor was on site directing the kids, as if they were slaves. Oh wait…I mean… a bunch of kids are loaded into old buses, taken to a farm, disembarked – regardless of weather conditions or facilities, and imposed a daily quota for the free work they did. Not slavery right? …Right??
Being kids, I heard they enjoyed the “field trip” out of class and some had fun being naughty as kids would be, but I also heard horror stories, like getting sick and not getting to be excused from work, their quota being rolled over for the next day. The funniest stories come from those of kids who had to work in factories, with duties like sticking new expiration date labels on expired cans of food. No waste in communism, except for human lives, lost to food poisoning. Better note my snarky remarks, or I’m gonna hear some privileged Canadian arguing that communists saved the environment by trying to prevent overpopulation.
Outside labor camps, school systems were built around communist organization models with inspirational names, and so the students were called “falcons of the homeland” (in kindergarten), or pioneers (through grades 2 to highschool). I still have a red scarf, part of the pioneer uniform. I remember the oath I had to take as a pioneer, to love my country and be disciplined and honor the red scarf and the flag. Spoiler alert – this didn’t last for long, the regime changed a couple of months after my ceremony. I have to admit I was pretty bummed, as I had just made “detachment commander” level, which was like one of the vice-presidents under the class chief. I was a good student you see, and on my way to becoming an obedient servant and frustrated communist adult. Knowing myself, I don’t think this would have lasted in my adulthood though. I was against bull-shit, and Suzy bringing in her parents’ paper for recycling.
Our school system largely borrowed ideas from China and North Korea and was meant to build obedient, dutiful citizens. Education was focused on building patriotism, love and respect for the communist party and the mighty leader. Not only did we have the dictator’s portrait up on the wall in front of the class, but we had to start our day singing the national anthem and praising the guy. You were told what to love, what to feel, and what to say. From what I’m saying here, you can probably understand that authenticity was discouraged and pretty much inhibited. There wasn’t a single soul that could literally be themselves, so you can imagine how much self-loathing that created in the general population. A self-loathing person is much easier to control with grand promises of socialist perfection.
The better times in schools were going to summer camp. One year in kindergarten, through some miracle that was probably just my mother being tired of caring for my ass through the summer, I was allowed to go to camp at the seaside. I remember being there with most of my class, with supervisors and our teacher. They were all horrendous controlling women, that I talked about at times in other posts (Mrs Tracy is still famous) but during summer camps they seemed to loosen up a little. At the beach, we all had to be buck naked, because they didn’t want to bother to wash our swim trunks or clean the sand off our ass. Body autonomy, privacy? fuck that. They would in fact punish us if we brought sand into the rooms. For some reason, sand was a big issue,… in a beach camp, nevertheless. One time, the cook aid, now amateur supervisor for the summer, called me into her room and mildly threateningly told me she “had found sand in my shoes and clothes” and I had to apologize excessively to get her goodwill back. I hope she is choking on the sand covering her grave right now.
They did make us choke too. In the evening, we all got to line up for the horror prophylactic practice of getting a throat coat of “methylene blue” in order to prevent colds, cause ain’t nobody got time for kindergarten pandemic. The taste was awful and the gag reflex strong. Everything was done so that the kids comfort would be sacrificed for that of the adult supervisor. I am surprised nobody thought of putting us on a leash and tying it to our beds.
Two things communism builds are thick skin and trauma. Child treatment improved since then – at least amongst the educated population. But communism left deep wounds that several generations are still feeling to this day. There’s a lot of unlearning and a lot of “wtf” but in the end kids at least have a better chance, and women have some sort of control over their bodies. We have our battles today, maybe not so different, but one thing’s for sure – don’t mess with an Eastern European woman. She had to keep sand off her ass at the beach, then carry heavy pallets of recycling newspaper at 8 years old, pick potatoes at 14 and then be told that her duty was to procreate. She doesn’t have time for debates on rights, she will get her rights, and you will hurt.
It's Okay, I'm Eastern European. 