Workers’ Democracy in the Face of Crisis in Late Socialist Romania

• In Event: Labour and Rights in Post-War East Central Europe: Rewriting History from Below

Abstract

Interest in workers’ democratic self-management in Socialist Romania picked up in times of crisis, towards the end of the 1970s. It resulted in theorizing on the humanization of work, surveys on the factory shopfloor, as well as social structure research, particularly on the relationship between workers and intellectuals. In this paper, I place this interest in a longer genealogy of ideas about democracy under socialism, or “socialist democracy,” with a particular focus on the circulation of ideas and practices about self-management. At the same time, I begin to parse out workers’ actual engagement with democratic practices and ideas in the workplace, based on sociological studies conducted at the time. I ask about the role of democratic practices and theorizing in the face of crisis—part of a broader shift in focus from quantitative to qualitative aspects of work in the late socialist period in Romania.

Author

• Adela Hincu, Institute of Contemporary History (Slovenia)