An international workshop occurred on 13 – 14 February 2025 at the IOG Seminarraum, Hof 3, Altes AKH, University of Vienna. It was a joint event of the MSCA project WORK-AGE-JUST and the FWF-GAČR project Linking Arms
Workshop program (check out the workshop leaflet)
Location: IOG Seminarraum, Hof 3, Altes AKH, University of Vienna
February 13
15.00 – 17.00 Panel 1: Transformations
Discussant: Alexandra Ghit (University of Vienna)
Zhao Jin (East China Normal U) & Tao Chen (Tongji U) New Enterprises and New Workers: Worker Participation in the Construction of Baosteel during the Early Reform and Opening Period in China (1977–1985)
Aleksandra Fila (University of Vienna) Gendered creativity in state socialist and post-socialist Poland. A case of transformation of the working-class community in Oleśnica
Denis Laco (Comenius U) Silver Mines, Thermal Spring, Beer and Tanks: The Case of State-Owned Enterprises in Multifaceted Village of Vyhne in Central Slovakia
Lea Vucic (Belgrad U) From Swans to Silence: The Legacy of ‚Prvi maj’ as a Site of Socialist Work Culture and Post-Socialist Transformation
17.30 – 19.00 Keynote – Alessandro Iandolo (UCL) “Solidarity and the State in the Soviet Union and the Global South”
19.00 Dinner
February 14
9.30 – 10.00 Michael Hödl, Peter Eigner and Clemens Jobst (University of Vienna) Writing a new history of state-owned enterprises in post-1945 Austria – an outline
10.00 – 12.00 Panel 2: Theories and Practices of Work
Discussant: Agata Zysiak (University of Vienna)
James Nealy (NYU) The Shchekino Method: Flexible Production with Socialist Characteristics in the Soviet Union
Paweł Sasanka (Pilecki Institute) Polish-Yugoslav transnational meetings and the spread of idea of workers’ council, 1956
Rosamund Johnston (University of Vienna) Factory Chronicles and Articulating Work in Normalization Czechoslovakia
Mariia Romanova (University of Vienna) Discovering the Soviet Accounting: Data Manipulation for Socialist Economic Planning
12.00 Lunch
13.30 -15.00 Panel 3: Socialism – Its Promises, Threats and Realities
Discussant: Eva Maria Muschik (University of Vienna)
Anna Calori (Glasgow U)The frictions of solidarity: public enterprises in the non-aligned world
Leo Stauber (Charles U) Solidarity versus Job Security: Local Conflicts in Cold War Steyr
Radka Šustrová (University of Vienna) TobaccoIndustry in CSR and AUT in the 1940s and 1950s
15.00-15.30 Coffee Break
15.30 – 17.30 Panel 4: Uneasy Cohabitations
Discussant: Alessandro Iandolo (UCL)
Zsombor Bódy (ELTE Budapest) From a military plant to a state-owned enterprise. Groups and conflicts in a large Hungarian factory from the end of World War II to the 1960s.
Ivan Lavrentjev (U Tartu) Housing Policies of a Secret Plant in Soviet Estonia
Goran Musić & Immanuel R. Harisch (University of Vienna) Solidarity and Conflict among African workers and Yugoslav expats in the Zambian Parastatal Sector under One-Party Rule
Martin Gumiela (University of Vienna) Complicated relationships: State-owned companies and the growing private sector in People’s Poland since the late 1970s
