Slavenka Drakulić - How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

Drakulic, Slavenka, 1949

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SAN FRANCISCO

She is a writer and journalist whose voice belongs .to the world.

Gloria Steinem

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ISBN 0-393-03076-8 $22.95 USA

$27.99 CAN.

Slavenka Drakulic is a journalist and novelist whose voice belongs to the world. If the purpose of bringing down the walls of Eastern Europe had been only to let us hear it, that would have been reason enough.

Gloria Steinem

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

The Berlin Wall has fallen, the Iron Curtain has been torn asunderin a geopolitical instant Marxism is erased from the blackboard of history with little pain, minor cost. A delusion, of course, as Slavenka Drakulic, a leading Yugoslavian writer from Croatia, proves in this brilliant work of reportage filtered through personal experience. A price has been paid, a toll exacted by forty-five years of Communism: People are weary in body, mind, and soula fatigue that will not yield easily or quickly to the balm of democracy.

Among the nineteen essays in this collection are My First Midnight Mass, in which the author, daughter of a high-ranking military officer, evokes the mystification and cynicism that religious celebration engenders in a Communist country. In A Chat with My Censor, we see the leash of censorship tightened in the ugliest waywith a friendly

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How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

By the same author Holograms of Fear Marble Skin

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

W W Norton & Company New York London

947 D789h

Drakulic, Slavenka, 1949

How we survived communism and even 1992. cl99

Copyright 1991 by Slavenka Drakulic First American edition 1992

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

A Chat with My Censor was previously printed in the March 12, 1988 issue of The Nation.

My First Midnight >Mass was previously printed in the February 12, 1990 issue of

The Nation.

Manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Drakulic, Slavenka, 1949How we survived communism/Slavenka Drakulic.

p. cm.

1. CommunismEurope, Eastern. 2. Europe, EasternPolitics and government 194S- . 3. Drakulic, Slavenka, 1949

4. Authors, YugoslavBiography. I. Title.

HX36S.5.A6D73 1992 949.702'4'092dc20

91-43526

ISBN 0-393-03076-8

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WC1A 1PU

1 234567890

xi

CONTENTS

Introduction THE TRIVIAL IS POLITICAL YOU cant DRINK YOUR COFFEE ALONE PIZZA IN WARSAW, TORTE IN PRAGUE MAKE-UP AND OTHER CRUCIAL QUESTIONS I THINK OF ULRIKE THIS NIGHT IN NOVEMBER

ON DOING LAUNDRY

A DOLL THAT GREW OLD

FORWARD TO THE PAST

A CHAT WITH MY CENSOR

THE STRANGE ABILITY OF APARTMENTS TO DIVIDE AND MULTIPLY

OUR LITTLE STASI

THE LANGUAGE OF SOUP

12 A COMMUNIST EYE, OR WHAT DID I SEE IN

NEW YORK? 113

13 A LETTER FROM THE UNITED STATES - THE CRITICAL

THEORY APPROACH 123

14 SOME DOUBTS ABOUT FUR COATS 133

15 THAT SUNDAY, LIKE AN EMPTY RED BALLOON 143

16 MY FIRST MIDNIGHT MASS 152

17 ON THE QUALITY OF WALL PAINT IN EASTERN EUROPE 159

18 THE DAY WHEN THEY SAY THAT WAR WILL BEGIN 169

19 HOW WE SURVIVED COMMUNISM 179

Acknowledgments

Books come in life like children do. First there is a seed, then in grows. The idea for this book now seems too obvious: there were so many articles and books written on Eastern Europe after 1989, but none of them spoke about women, their lives, their feelings. My traveling on assignment for Ms. Magazine to Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and East Germany in January and February of 1990 made me realize that. And even if I had been previously to these countries, that trip made me see what we all went through in the last forty-five years. It was as if only the present could unlock the door to the past.

Yet, this book is not only on women. To understand their (our) situation, one has to see the system at work behind.

I am grateful to Robin Morgan, who sent me on this trip in the first place. To Gloria Steinem, for trusting me more than I trust myself. To Mary Cunnane, my editor at Norton, who gave me not only the opportunity but also the support

to finish this book. To Kate Mosse, my editor at Hutchinson, for writing cheerful letters in bleak times. To my friends Andrea, Alemka, Jasmina, Vesna, Dorina and Vanja here in Zagreb, who find time to help me with their comments. And to my daughter Rujana who, as always, bravely sustained my unbearable changes of temper.