Book Review: Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania by Jill Massino

Abstract

The mainstream discourse on the communist regime, which imagines that people could only have experienced suffering, converges with liberal ‘end of history’ narratives that celebrate the unique virtues of capitalism and liberal democracy and are relatively silent about growing inequalities and the dismantling of social benefits. Looking at the everyday lives of women and men as Jill Massino does in Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania, building a narrative from their experiences and understanding other aspects of what it meant to live under communism—to go to work, have a family, go to parties, enjoy holidays and genuinely connect with other human beings—does not mean that one ignores lived injustices, disregards people’s suffering, or legitimises the communist regime.