On the Edge of Two Zones: Slovak Socialist Childhoods

Abstract

This chapter reconstructs socialist childhoods in Slovakia. It is based on autobiographical memory stories from the authors’ lives and adopts a largely duoethnographic approach. Episodes from these socialist childhoods are narrated against Slovakia’s chiefly Christian and agrarian traditions. In the ‘building communism’ era, these traditions encountered the newly introduced atheism and industrial way of life. The symbolic contrast between the ‘two worlds’ shaped the personal identities of their inhabitants that emerged out of the conflicts generated by these worlds. The analysis shows that the nature and timing of the communist transitional rituals borrowed heavily from their religious counterparts, illustrating the tensions between the two parallel worlds of socialist Slovakia and suggesting that there was no single indoctrinist socialist childhood.