Understanding State Socialism Through the Lens of Disability

Abstract

This book review examines Re/imaginations of Disability in State Socialism: Visions, Promises, Frustrations (edited by Kateřina Kolářová and Martina Winkler), a vol-ume exploring the history of disability across communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. Moving beyond narratives of invisibility or total institutionalization, the book addresses multiple perspectives on disability under state socialism, ranging from expert discourses such as defectology to labour-centred care policies and cultural representations of disability. The volume also highlights intersections with other categories, including ethnicity and family. The contributions span di-verse contexts, from the Soviet Union to Czechoslovakia, Poland, the GDR, and Bulgaria, offering a nuanced and comparative picture of socialist disability histories. Importantly, the book focuses not only on the visions and plans of communist dictatorships but also on the limits, paradoxes, and contradictions inherent in socialist disability policies. These tensions reveal both the utopian aspirations and the structural challenges faced by socialist welfare regimes. Furthermore, the con-tributions situate approaches toward people with disabilities within a broader framework of welfare state transformation, tracing shifts from the Stalinist period to the era of late socialism. It positions disability as a lens through which broader themes of modernization, identity formation, and social norms can be examined.