• DOI:10.2298/FID1603489G
• Corpus ID: 4799705

Bumbling idiots or evil masterminds? Challenging cold war stereotypes about women, sexuality and state socialism

@article{Ghodsee2016BumblingIO,
  title={Bumbling idiots or evil masterminds? Challenging cold war stereotypes about women, sexuality and state socialism},
  author={Kristen Ghodsee and Katar{\'i}na L{\'i}{\vs}kov{\'a}},
  journal={Filozofija I Drustvo},
  year={2016},
  volume={27},
  pages={489-503}
}

• Kristen Ghodsee, Katarína Líšková
• Published 15 October 2016
• Sociology
• Filozofija I Drustvo

In academic writing, facts about the past generally require the
citation of relevant sources unless the fact or idea is
considered “common knowledge:” bits of information or dates
upon which there is a wide scholarly consensus. This brief
article reflects on the use of “common knowledge” claims in
contemporary scholarship about women, families, and sexuality
as experienced during 20th century, East European, state
socialist regimes. We focus on several key stereo- types about
the communist state and the situation of women that are often
asserted in the scholarly literature, and argue that many of
these ideas uncannily resemble American anti-communist
propaganda. When contemporary scholars make claims about
communist intrusions into the private sphere to effect social
engineering or the inefficacy of state socialist mass
organizations or communist efforts to break up the family or
indoctrinate the young, they often do so without citation to
previous sources or empirical evidence supporting their claims,
thereby suggesting that such claims are “common knowledge.” We
believe that those wishing to assert such claims should link
these assertions to concrete originating sources, lest it turn
out the “common knowledge” derives, in fact, from western Cold
War rhetoric.