Postcards from the east: on the art of everyday communist life

http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/4458/owen-hatherley-postcards-landscapes-of-communism

by lermontov • 11 years ago

24 14 11 years ago

calvertjournal.com

contingencies2• 11 years ago

Content sounds interesting, unfortunately it doesn't load without Google Analytics, Twitter and Facebook.

feefie• 11 years ago

If you have a moment, what tool do you use to detect/block those?

Immortalin• 11 years ago

ublock or umatrix, either will do.

contingencies2• 11 years ago

Adblock edge on this browser.

gioele• 11 years ago

It seems to work flawlessly with Ghostery.

CmonDev• 11 years ago

It was not a communism, it was a flavour of socialism. Just like China, Sweden and USA.

oblio2• 11 years ago

They called it communism, everyone else called it communism. That it didn't really fit the textbook definition matters little.

And in my opinion this is how communism looks in the real world: crooks take over and you get a totalitarian regime. Anything else is an utopia.

nugga• 11 years ago

By the same logic hacker is someone who breaks into systems and causes mischief. That ship has sailed as well and clinging to the original definition is a lost cause.

jazzyk• 11 years ago

No, it is a bit more complex.

Within the Warsaw Pact, there were essentially two levels of utopia: "socialist" and "communist". "Socialist" countries (Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia) allowed limited private ownership of land and businesses (private businesses could not employ more than 50 people). IN "communist" countries (East Germany, USSR), no private ownership was allowed at all.

Yes, crooks ruled in both systems. But everyday life was much easier in "socialism"

I should know - I grew up there.

keithpeter2• 11 years ago

Those Albanian flats by the sea look amazing with the rake and the little balconies for each.

I know the reality would have been somewhat grim and that ordinary people would not have been able to have one.

Osmium• 11 years ago

Albanian

I think you mean Albena not Albania, unless there was a typo in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albena

JBiserkov• 11 years ago

Correct, you are. The image caption says: Albena, People’s Republic of Bulgaria

Postcards from the east: on the art of everyday communist life

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