CEU Press

Introduction
1. The legacy of the pre-1945 period
● Ecaterina Arbore, The Working Woman in the Struggle towards Emancipation, 1911 (Romania)
● Žemaitė (Julija Beniuševičiūtė-Žymantienė), To the Enemies of Women’s Equality, 1912 (Lithuania)
● Rosika Schwimmer, The Grievances of Feminism under the Proletarian Dictatorship, 1919 (Hungary)
● Mariska Gárdos, On Sexuality, Prostitution, and Feminism, 1906 and 1941 (Hungary)
● Shaqe Marie Çoba, On Feminism, 1921 (Albania)
● Johanna Päts, Why Must Women Elect Women to Parliament?, 1932 (Estonia)
● Irena Krzywicka, The Fall of Male Civilization, 1932 (Poland)
● Halina Krahelska, The Roots of Changing Sexual Mores, 1937 (Poland)
● Angela Vode, The Woman in Contemporary Society, 1934 (Yugoslavia/Slovenia)
2) Women and war
● Žena danas Editorial Board, The New Feminism, 1936 (Yugoslavia/Serbia)
● Ina Jun-Broda, Two Poems by a Partizanka, 1943/44 (Yugoslavia)
● Maca Gržetić, Report on Women in the People’s Liberation Struggle, 1945 (Yugoslavia/Croatia)
● Romanian Workers Party, Fallen in Battle: Olga Bancic, 1949 (Romania)
● Lina Kostenko, A Female Poetic Voice against Totalitarianism and War, 1957, 1962, 1987 (Ukraine/USSR)
● Staša Zajović, Antiwar Activism in Serbia, 1996 (Serbia)
● Śviatłana Aleksijevič, What is Our Memory?, 1998 (Belarus)
3) Ideologies of women’s emancipation
● Hana Gregorová, About 8th March and Feminism, n.d. (Slovakia/ Czechoslovakia)
● Anna Kéthly, Women in Politics, 1945 (Hungary)
● Milada Horáková, Women in Politics, 1945 ....
A compendium of one hundred sources, preceded by a short author’s bio and an introduction, this volume offers an English language selection of the most representative texts on feminism and women’s rights from East Central Europe between the end of the Second World War and the early 1990s. While communist era is the primary focus, the interwar years and the post-1989 transition period also receive attention. All texts are new translations from the original.
The book is organised around themes instead of countries; the similarities and differences between nations are nevertheless pointed out. The editors consider women not only in their local context, but also in conjunction with other systems of thought—including shared agendas with socialism, liberalism, nationalism, and even eugenics.
The choice of texts seeks to demonstrate how feminism as political thought was shaped and organised in the region. They vary in type and format from political treatises, philosophy to literary works, even films and the visual arts, with the necessary inclusion of the personal and the private. Women’s political rights, right to education, their role in nation-building, women, and war (and especially women and peace) are part of the anthology, alongside the gendered division of labour, violence against women, the body, and reproduction.