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The spectre of the queue: resignifying the past in the post-communist Czech Republic

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Abstract

Long queues for basic goods, including food, had to be endured routinely on the streets of Czech cities from the 1950s until the late 1980s as a result of the constant shortages of consumer goods in the centrally planned economy. After the fall of the communist regime, queues disappeared from the street, but they started a new, second, life in the public discourse. Today, more than 25 years after the fall of the regime, the images of the “communist queue” are still vivid and reproduced in jokes, metaphors, and media images. The paper shows how the queue, disembodied from the everyday interaction, became a morally and emotionally charged signifier. Remembered as unjust, humiliating, and absurd, the “communist queue” stands in opposition to theoretical models of queues and serves as a synecdoche for the memory of the communist past as a whole. In the post-communist public discourse, the queue became a powerful, polluted symbol used both to endorse and to criticise free market capitalism. This paper suggests that its prevalence is a cultural driving force behind post-communist privatism.

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Notes

  1. Inevitably, the sample covers only a part of the metaphoric references to the queue. This is due to the variety of ways in which the metaphor can be expressed in Czech language. For example, an article containing the string „queues like in communist times“would make the sample, while one containing the string „like in communist times, there are queues…“would not be included. As the media database does not allow the use of more sophisticated search tools, the issue can’t be resolved, but it is unlikely to account for a systematic sampling error.

  2. Apart from queues in the streets, there were also waiting lists, kept by the authorities. Typically, these lists were for consumer durables, such as cars and housing and often they lasted for years. In 1982, one of Hraba’s respondents estimated his waiting time for an automatic washing machine would be at least 5 years.

  3. Quoted from an interview conducted in a students’ project supervised by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Available online at: https://www.ustrcr.cz/vzdelavani/oddeleni-vzdelavani/archiv-materialu-2018-2012/velke-a-male-pribehy-modernich-dejin/velke-a-male-pribehy-modernich-dejin-normalizace/zakladni-skola-kamenice/ (accessed 1 May 2018).

  4. Jokes like this one were a common way of mocking the Soviet Union, dubbed “the country of tomorrow” by the propaganda. The jokes were building on the contradiction between this official image and the everyday reality of lack, poverty and disastrous planning which had people waiting in long lines leading nowhere. In this particular joke, the critique is made even more powerful by adding a reference to Soviet Anti-Semitism (“All Jews have to leave”). High levels of Anti-Semitism were common both in Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet Union and they were shared by the Party and its institutions. Evidence of Anti-Semitism stood in contrast to the propaganda-fueled image of Soviets as peacemakers who had liberated Europe from the evils of fascism: the distinction between “good Soviets” and “bad Nazis” was a basic axis of the Soviet interpretation of the recent past. Therefore, international knowledge of Soviet Anti-Semitism was highly troubling for the Soviet regime, as it put the distinction into question. This adds power to the joke: not only does the joke reveal the secrets of lack and queuing, but it also raises the forbidden topic of Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. An allegation that the minority group is secretly privileged (“the Jews always get the best deal”) is a common strategy in spreading prejudice against minorities.

  5. All quotes are from the game’s manual (English edition), available online at http://pamiec.pl/ftp/kolejka/GB_print_and_play/GB_instrukcja_2013_podglad.pdf (accessed 1 May 2018).

  6. Quoted from a twitter profile: https://twitter.com/PavelRyska/status/808340933787918336 (accessed 1 May 2018).

  7. See Sunega (2003).

  8. See Pospěch (2015) and an Incoma GfK survey report at https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/finance/nakupovani/zavrene-obchody-jako-darek-k-vanocum-cesi-jsou-proti/r~1f85e68c7ae611e497f0002590604f2e/ (accessed 1 May 2018).

  9. See STEM/MARK survey report at http://auto.idnes.cz/rychla-jizda-alkohol-cesi-0h9-/automoto.aspx?c=A140430_103836_automoto_fdv (accessed 1 May 2018).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Philip Smith for his help in the development of this paper and the participants at the 2017 Yale CCS Workshop for their comments. My stay at Yale was made possible through the generous support of the Fulbright Commission. I am also grateful to Zuzana Hudáková, Monika Palmberger, Anna Durnová, and the AJCS editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 10, 60200, Brno, Czech Republic

    Pavel Pospěch

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Correspondence to Pavel Pospěch.

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Pospěch, P. The spectre of the queue: resignifying the past in the post-communist Czech Republic. Am J Cult Sociol 8, 191–213 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-019-00068-9

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