Skip to main content

Queer Urban Underworlds in European State Socialism

Spaces of Resistance and Survival

Queer Urban Underworlds in European State Socialism cover

Queer Urban Underworlds in European State Socialism

Spaces of Resistance and Survival

Description

This volume redefines the history of queer life in Central and Eastern Europe outside the USSR by uncovering how individuals and communities navigated repression, surveillance, and marginalization from the post-World War II era to early post-socialism.


Moving beyond legal and political narratives, Queer Urban Underworlds in European State Socialism reveals the hidden networks, informal spaces, and subcultures that shaped queer survival and resistance. Through archival research, oral histories, and underground media analysis, it challenges Cold War binaries of repression and liberation, demonstrating how queer agency actively shaped spaces of sociability, self-expression, and defiance within socialist societies.

Accessibility Information

Additional accessibility information

  • EPUB 3.0
  • Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
  • WCAG level AA
  • WCAG v2.2 compliant
  • accessibility@bloomsbury.com

Hazards

The publication contains no hazards

Support for non-visual reading

  • No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
  • Has alternative text descriptions for images

Visual adjustments

Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)

Navigation

  • Page list to go to pages from the print source version
  • Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
  • All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
  • Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
  • Purposes of all links are made clear

Rich content

Language tagging provided

Table of Contents

Introduction
Jaromír Mrnka
Chapter 1. Framing "Queer Urban Underworlds": Historiography, Theoretical Foundations, and Socialist Contexts
Dan Healey
Chapter 1. Queer Underworlds as Resistance and Subversion in Eastern and Post-Socialist Europe
Jaromír Mrnka & Thomas Heise
Section I: Spaces of Sociability and Survival
Chapter 2. Queer Spatial Experience in Czechoslovak State Socialism
Ladislav Jackson
Chapter 3. Your Eternally Hungry Heart: Gender Expression and Queer Experiences of Women Political Prisoners in Socialist Czechoslovakia, 1948–1968
Marie Koval
Section II: Cultural Practices and Subversions
Chapter 4. From Viks to Kekec: Tracing Ljubljana's Queer Communities through Magazines of the 1980s and 1990s
Tery Žeželj & Darko Ilin
Chapter 5. Ecologies of Desire: Bialoszewski's Cultural Practices in the 1970s
Martyna Miernecka
Section III: Activism, Marginality, and Authority
Chapter 6. The 1980s Budapest Queer 'Underworld' Under the Spotlight
Kata Benedek
Chapter 7. Accepting, Bypassing, or Ignoring Authority? Queer Activism in the People's Republic of Poland
Magda Wlostowska
Section IV: Legal, Gender, and Literary IntersectionsChapter 8. Decadents and Saboteurs: Queer Men on Trial in Post-War Socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1951)
Franko Dota
Chapter 9. The Other Yugoslavs: Class and Sexuality in Yugoslav Literature
Natalija Stepanovic
Chapter 10. Transsexuality in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia
Christiane Brenner
Conclusion
Vera Sokolová

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 24 Jun 2027
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Pages 256
ISBN 9798216365327
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 20 b&w illus.
Series Interdisciplinary Studies on Spatial Dynamics and Marginalization in Central and Eastern Europe
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Jaromír Mrnka

Jaromír Mrnka is head of the Prague Branch of the…

Environment: Staging