Paper short abstract:

Ethnographic data representing everyday life in socialist Slovakia and Hungary are analysed and compared from women's perspective. In both countries, the socialist regime defined not only the political ideology of the state, but also tried to define people's lifestyles.

Paper long abstract:

In our paper, we want to create a picture of the everyday life experience in socialist Slovakia (part of Czechoslovakia at that time) and Hungary from women's perspective. In both countries, the socialist regime did not define only the political ideology of the state, but also people's daily lives, festive lives, consumption patterns, social relationships, social mobility paths, as well as socialization strategies. At the same time, there was a parallel experience of people being true to the "former" (pre-socialist) values.

In both countries, we follow women's lives from birth to old age, mainly using the methods and approaches of ethnography and historical comparative analysis. While historical and political events, socialist rule of law, power and control appear in both countries, they also have specific features to each of them.

The paper also wants to introduce a special analytical approach of a dialogue between two women ethnologists from the two countries concerned. For mutual dialogical analysis, we have picked three decades of shared past experience. This period as well as innovative analytical approach should contribute to enlarging scholarship on women's memories and mutual understanding of shared life experience in former Eastern Bloc countries.