Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe

Communism Unwrapped reveals the complex world of consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, exploring the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, assessed and exchanged goods. These everyday experiences, the editors and contributors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived in its widely varied contexts in the region. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume brings dimension and nuance to understandings of the communist period and the history of consumerism.

Author: Paulina Bren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 09/06/2012
Pages: 430
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780199827671

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2013

About the Author
Paulina Bren teaches at Vassar College and is the author of The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring.

Mary Neuburger is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria and Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria.

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