Comfort,modernity and gender equality at home. Discourses on the modernization of the family and household in Poland from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s

Introduction

A magazine advertisement for vacuum cleaners produced in 1980 presented a pretty housewife tidying up her home (Przyjaciółka, 1980: 14). The attached text: ‘To make the house smell clean’ referred to the ideas of the modern housewifery, comfort, and the good life. Since the mid-1960s, similar images have appeared regularly in Polish advertisements. I believe that their main intention was not to encourage purchases but to influence people’s attitudes towards modernizing the household. Therefore, I do not use advertising as a source to examine socialist marketing practices, but to analyze the popular discourse on household modernization.

This article examines expert and popular discourses on this topic, as a part of the dominant discourse of progress developed by the socialist state from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s (Zalewska, 2020: 222).

Modernization and modernity were central categories that appeared in the written sources analyzed for this article. They were used both by contemporaries to describe almost all aspects of life and by the socialist state as a political agenda. According to Kosseleck (2005:113; 231–266), modernity is a concept of changing semantics, describing profound changes that have occurred over time in the field of society and its organisation. Recent studies (Eriksroed-Burger et al. 2023: 4–7) emphasize that the Western pattern of modernity was not the only one, and introduce the terms ‘multiple modernities’, or ‘entangled’ and ‘alternative’ modernity in relation to the model implemented in the Eastern bloc countries (Fox, 2016: 38). ‘Socialist modernity’ (Reid and Crowley, 2012; Beilharz, 2009) is most comprehensively described by Calic et al. (2011:11–14) as ‘a version of modernity in its own right’ and as an analytical framework that helps to explain the processes of industrialization, technological progress, urbanization, and social mobility. It shared with Western modernity its origins in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but was associated with the communist concept of social justice, and secondly was a top-down project implemented by dictatorial means. Katherine Pence and Paul Betts (2008 8) defined it as a comprehensive project of social engineering aimed at the ‘full-scale makeover’ of the society. Chernysova (2013: 45) highlighted another aspect of socialist modernity, arguing that consumption acted as a tool of modernization, and although the Eastern bloc countries did not become modern consumer economies, their citizens became modern consumers of fashion, leisure, and home technology.

Although the ‘kitchen debate’ of the 1959, which symbolized the new stage of the rivalry between ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ modernities (Reid, 2002: 212), had less impact in Poland than in the USSR, it changed the definition of modernity, previously understood mostly it terms of industrialization. The new party leader, Władysław Gomułka, who came to power after the 1956 riots, promoted ‘a domesticated—both Polish and communist—concept of modern life’, which meant ‘moderate consumption’ and rising living standards (Fidelis, 2009: 173). In the 1970s Poland experienced late socialist modernity characterized by growing connection to the global economy, the development of consumer activism, and the increasing role of expert knowledge (Klich-Kluczewska, 2017; Mark and Rupprecht, 2019; Mazurek and Hilton, 2007; Steiner, 2014). Even the first symptoms of economic crisis did not undermine the dominant ‘powerful narrative of harmonious socialist modernity’ (Fidelis, 2022: 184).

Since socialist modernization was a comprehensive project, the expert and popular discourses of progress were also applied to the spheres of the family and the household. The expert discourse represented the current state of knowledge and was meant to support the state policy of modernizing Polish society. Expressed in academic analyses, it was aimed at audiences with some prior knowledge of the issues. The popular discourse, pragmatic and aimed at explaining scientists’ ideas to the general public, was produced by journalists and popular experts. Historical discourse analysis, including the analysis of the visual images, is the basis of my approach. I consider the ‘non-verbal semiotic messages’ (Van Dijk, 1995, 17) not as secondary to the textual message, but as ‘visual texts’ that could function in a manner analogous to a writing system (Scott and Vargas 2007: 341). I therefore ask about their ‘grammar’ by which I mean the conventions chosen by the authors to present the advertised products, rather than their aesthetics. I adopt Michel Foucault’s definition of discourse as a system of thought composed of ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and practices that construct ‘current truths’ and focus on the role of discourse in social and cultural change (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999). In order to present the expert discourse, I analyze works written by sociologists who focused on the transformation of the Polish family from the late 1960s. The analysis of advice books and selected issues of popular magazines from the years 1965-1980, allows me to present the popular discourse on the topic. There were no significant changes in the media message about housekeeping during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, so I mention only selected issues of the expert magazines: Gospodarstwo Domowe addressed to household instructors, Reklama- addressed to advertising and marketing professionals, women’s and lifestyle magazines: Przyjaciółka (1965–1980), Kobieta i Życie (1967, 1970–1977), Ty i Ja (later Magazyn Rodzinny 1971–1976). All types of media in communist Poland were monitored by GUKPPiW (the Main Office for the Control of the Press, Publications, and Public Performances). However, the message of women’s and lifestyle magazines was not much different from that of the West (Fidelis, 2009; Jaworska, 2008).

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the studies on household and domestication of technologies in socialist Poland, with special attention to the gender aspect of these issues. My intention is also to add something new to the studies on socialist expert culture. Consumption and lifestyles under state socialism, with a special focus on the post Stalinist turn towards ‘moderate consumption’ are widely discussed in the literature (inter alia Fehérváry, 2013; Haney, 2002; Patterson, 2011; Madarász, 2006, Porter-Szűcs, 2020, forthcoming, Reid, 2002, 2009, 2013). Brian Porter-Szűcs, who argued that socialist economists sought to integrate concepts such as consumer needs and satisfaction within the vocabulary of centrally planned economy, examines the connections between consumption and cultural transformations in post-1945 Poland in his forthcoming book.

Nevertheless, the 1970s represent a significant gap in research, especially with regard to issues such as the household. Marcin Zaremba’s most recent book (2023) examines collective emotions from the mid-1970s onwards, but focuses on those associated with the public sphere.

Most studies on women’s domestic work and the household concentrate on the 1960s (Reid, 2002; Varga-Harris, 2008a; Zachmann, 2002; Žimbrek and Horvat, 2023). The next two decades are of more interest to sociologists and memory researchers. Sociological research on housing practices in Poland has developed in recent years (Jewdokimow and Łukasiuk, 2016; Łukasiuk and Brosz, 2018; Skowrońska, 2011). The most recent project, ‘The Consumption Revolution in Poland’ (2020), conducted by Joanna Zalewska and Marta Skowrońska, among others, is a major contribution to studies of the memory of consumption under state socialism. Representing both sociological and anthropological approaches, Zalewska also conducted her own research on the domestication of technology in communist Poland (Zalewska, 2017), examining how it was remembered by her senior interviewees. Notably, she emphasized the ways in which the dominant discourse of progress influenced people’s memories, but showed less interest in the process of producing this discourse and in its analysis. The present article addresses these topics. From the perspective of the history of technology and material culture Patryk Wasiak examined the usage of high-tech equipment during the 1980s. and 1990s. (Wasiak, 2020). The modernization of the household in the Polish People’s Republic has been studied from the perspective of women’s history (Perkowski and Stańczak-Wiślicz, 2020; Stańczak-Wiślicz, 2017) and from the perspective of the history of socialist modernization (Wasiak and Stańczak-Wiślicz, 2023). This article continues this line of research.

There is a growing body of research on knowledge production under state socialism (Hincu and Karady, 2018; Hollings, 2016; Surman, 2022), but topics such as household expertise and the connections between expert and popular discourses remain understudied. This article aims to contribute to this field. I also refer to the studies on the ‘agency of things’, which suggest that objects do manifest radical changes in society (Csíkszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Shove, 2003). However, I focus on the representations of objects rather than their materiality. Referring to Ahmed’s (2014) speculations on the relationship between objects and emotions, I want to consider their meaning as the symbols of an imagined modern lifestyle. Similarly, I found Colin Campbell’s theory of modern consumerism, as well as the studies on domestication of technology (Zalewska, 2020) inspiring. With regard to magazine advertisements, I find promising Cook’s (2001) approach to analyzing advertising as discourse. I also follow Elza Ibroscheva (2020) and Mia Oiva (2014: 71–88) who argued that marketing in the Eastern bloc should be analyzed in its own terms, not from a Western perspective. I found inspiration in the recent studies on visuality, primarily in the works of Burke (2008) and Didi-Huberman and Lillis (2008), who recommended ‘reading’ historical images in their multiple contexts and identifying the narrative conventions used by their authors.

Visual images of modernity in the household

Beginning in the 1960s, with the development of television and richly illustrated magazines, visual imagery and communication played an increasingly important role in the process of mediating socialist modernity through mass culture. Consequently, Reklama (Advertising), a monthly magazine devoted to marketing, advertising and visual communication, was established in 1968.

The journalists and popular experts, who produced the popular discourse on household modernization believed in the power of visual communication. They used the images of comfort and material abundance, such as comfortably furnished apartments, well- equipped kitchens, and new electrical appliances to promote ideas about the modern household. Special sections, such as ‘Better Living’ in Kobieta i Życie, or ‘We have chosen for you’ in Ty i Ja; colour illustrations in the middle of the issues, presented the vision of home comfort. According to the studies on visuality (Aiello and Parry, 2020: 210), images are key to defining lifestyles, and consumption patterns. However, as Burke (2008: 187) notes, they ‘give access not to the social world directly but rather to contemporary views of that world’. The images in Polish magazines presented the model of the modern household, not the lived reality of Polish homes. They acted as a model to follow, as ‘the structures of message within which are embedded social conventions and/or perceptions, and which also present the discourse communities to which visual text make identifies’ (Albers, 2007: 84). Their role was to familiarize readers with the new household technologies, to disseminate ideas about aesthetics and comfort, to discipline common taste according to the current aesthetic regimes (Fehérváry, 2013: 3). Thus, journalists and magazines’ experts pointed to the contrast between the contemporary style associated with ‘lightness’ and ‘cleanliness’, and old-fashioned, ‘unhygienic’ heavy furniture (Fehérváry, 2013: 87). They recommended simple furniture suitable for a young, modern couple (Kobieta i Życie, 1974: 14) or electrical appliances photographed in the futuristic aesthetics of a hygienic laboratory (Kobieta i Życie, 1973).

Magazyn Rodzinny, 1976. photo: Jan Tyszler

Such visual images, even though they were devoid of commercial information, played a role similar to that of socialist advertising, defined as ‘a forum for cultural pedagogy’ (Ibroscheva, 2020: 52). Cook (2001: 33–39) argued that advertisement ‘exists through other genres’ and developed the concept of ‘accompanying discourse’ and ‘parasite discourse’. I believe, that advertisements for household appliances in Polish magazines can be perceived as an element of the popular discourse of household modernization. They were the forms that shaped the readers’ beliefs about the household, through which knowledge of modernity was constructed and communicated, with their visual elements representing ideas that were crucial for the modernization scenarios developed by experts (Barroso, 2020: 20). From the mid-1960s onwards, advertising became a visible part of the cultural landscape in Poland, as in other countries of the bloc. According to Reklama, print advertising in magazines, and then window displays, reached the largest audience. As demonstrated in the analysis of that time, household appliances were among the most frequently advertised goods, and only clothing and confectionery surpassed them (Witkowski, 1975: 9). Both outdoor and print advertisements presented images of abundance: well-furnished homes, fashionable clothes, luxurious food. Chernysova (2013: 45) argued that these images ‘compensated’ for the chronic shortages typical of the centrally planned economy. In Poland, they were integrated into the discourse of modernization. Window displays which had their ‘narrative and dramaturgic sense’ (Guimaraes, 2011: 750) presented the future-oriented project: a model of the imagined modernity in everyday life. For example, the display arrangement in a store selling household appliances was described as a manifestation of the idea of the modern household defined by cleanliness, functionality and comfort (Piotrowska, 1968: 34). Jampel (1968: 3), an economist who contributed to Reklama explained that window displays showed ‘how to equip a household, how to feed a family, how to dress’, thus developing consumers’ good taste.

Printed advertisements presented a narrative of transformation, showed hypothetical consumer scenarios and persuaded the audience how the modern lifestyle could be achieved. Advertisement professionals, sometimes renowned photographers and illustrators, ‘translated’ expert ideas into visual texts. They used visual metaphors or simple instructional images, simple common language or sophisticated word combinations, depending on the audience. For example, Ty i Ja- a lifestyle magazine with a strong focus on art and design, published fullpage multicolours advertisements. The most popular women’s magazines Przyjaciółka and Kobieta i Życie tended to use black and white graphics with catchy slogans, such as ‘Polar for everybody!’ –in the advert for refrigerator (Przyjaciółka, 1979: 11). They also published advertisements that can be identified as narrative. Black and white graphics with text bubbles presented a story around the advertised product.

In general, advertisements in Polish media showed how good life should look like. They used the potential of the visual text not primarily to increase sales, but to shape and disseminate the new cultural standards. Since the competition was not a driving force of a centrally planned economy, most authors agree that socialist advertising should be considered in its own terms (Miklóssy, 2016: 65, Porter-Szűcs, 2020: 91; Oiva, 2014: 83). Although from the 1960s onwards, the new party-state policies resulted in the emergence of some elements of competition into the official structures of the socialist economy, it was still supposed to be different from ‘capitalist’ advertising. Reid (2002: 218) argued, that its aim was not to generate new consumer demands but to educate people, to get them accustomed to the new ways of life, to discipline the common taste, and to enable the construction of the socialist consumer. Kaminsky (2007: 268) in her analysis of advertising in the GDR emphasized that it was ‘infused with political propaganda’ and its main functions were to show the advantages of socialism over capitalism and to help educate citizens to be rational consumers. Greene (2014: 125–129) showed that even in Hungary where economic reforms introduced methods of marketing traditionally associated with capitalism, advertising was described as being ‘liberated from their capitalist origins’ and seen as beneficial to both sellers and buyers because of their educational function. Recent studies show that regardless of its educational value, socialist advertising was well integrated into a centrally planned economy. Perczak (2010: 51; 2020: 132) although agreed that Polish press advertising contained many elements of propaganda, argued that it was supposed to increase productivity and to ‘secure market balance’ by directing consumer needs. In this model, educating consumers to rationalize their needs was expected to regulate consumption preventively, to avoid tensions caused by the regular unavailability of desirable goods. Summing up, despite different economic contexts, socialist advertisements had similar forms to their Western counterparts (Greene, 2014: 111), but their authors used the images and ideas embedded in the values and attitudes of the socialist society. Thus, as Patterson (2011: 57) argued, ‘something very similar to Western-style advertising’ could work in countries where the political order was not based on market values. Reid and Crowley (2012: 25) argued that during the 1960s and 1970s, advertising articulated a clear claim that socialist states had become ‘consumer societies in the Western mold’, regardless of actual consumer opportunities. At that time Polish society experienced a subjective sense of material improvement.

Many people gained access to western consumer goods. The well-furnished household became a part of the consumption model based on the idea of everyday comfort, situated ‘between necessity and luxury’ (Crowley, 1999: 758; Shove, 2003: 24). Household appliances belonged to the category of goods seen as bound up with modernity, whose acquisition was encouraged by the state (Chernysova, 2013: 184). Thus, advertising was meant to familiarize people with modern home technology and in a broader sense, with the new model of family and household.

Print advertisements for household appliances were addressed to women as mothers and wives, as the main decision-makers in the family and as individual consumers (Ibroscheva, 2012: 112). Therefore, in contrast to socialist screen advertising (Česálková, 2022: 6), where the focus was on the goods and their utility values, it was a figure of a woman, or of a heterosexual couple in the centre of the hypothetical consumer scenarios presented in them. The female figures, as a part of the ‘dominant heterosexual script’ were role models rather than objects of desire, so Polish advertising professionals did not use as much nudity as their Western counterparts (Reichert, 2003: 13). They adopted some elements of Western advertising iconography, such as female attractiveness, material abundance, leisure situations, and incorporated them into a socialist value system. Although they reproduced selected gender stereotypes, they based on the idea of socialist citizenship (Perczak, 2010: 59), and therefore, unlike Western and especially American advertising, they did not glorify the role of women as stay- at- home wives (Fox, 1990: 26). Polish advertising professionals took the official discourse of gender equality for granted, advocated the liberation of women from domestic labor and presented the project of how this could be achieved. Advertisements presented a narrative of transformation: from time-consuming, exhausting drudgery to an efficiently managed household, from a backward, overworked woman to a modern housewife who enjoyed consumer pleasures. In this narrative, household appliances were presented as agents of change, objects that could improve people’s lives, introduce modern consumer behavior and lifestyles, and transform the family into a modern one. The imaginary everyday situations created by advertising professionals opened up the field to present their agency. In this fictional world (Cook, 2001: 180) they made life easier, and acted as magical agents identified by Vladimir Propp (2009: 43). They transported women into the modern world, where they could be released from time-consuming, exhausting drudgery. For example, new washing machines were able to do the laundry with the ‘single touch of the button’ (Ty i Ja, 1971: 51), floor polishers and vacuum cleaners were presented as ’your second pair of hands’ that could replace the housewife’s effort (Ty i Ja, 1972: 54). In 1965 Przyjaciółka published a series of adverts based on the contrast between old and new methods of housekeeping. One of them pictured an exhausted woman of the old days, doing laundry by hand, and the modern woman, who thanks to her washing machine could enjoy reading a book (Przyjaciółka, 1965: 14). The second one showed the contrast between sewing with a needle and using a sewing machine (Przyjaciółka, 1965).

Przyjaciółka, 1965

In 1979, in the advertisement for vacuum cleaners, an attractive woman, dressed in the fashion of the roaring twenties, promised that cleaning could be even joyful (Przyjaciółka, 1979: 11). Moreover, advertising promised that technologically advanced appliances were capable of meeting new conventions of cleanliness, and new standards of domestic science: to have a clean shiny floor (Przyjaciółka, 1972: 14), to eliminate harmful dust (Kobieta i Życie, 1971: 14), to ensure hygienic food storage (Przyjaciółka, 1970: 14; Ty i Ja, 1971: 54). The advertisements created an iconosphere with a clear message based on the contrast between backwardness and modernity: the old methods of housekeeping were time-consuming and oppressive, while the new ones were not only efficient, but they symbolized the project of new women’s identity – that of a modern housewife.

Modern appliances, presented as being used by young, attractive women, living in a partnership marriage, materialized promises about the future. They were shown as agents of change in the family introducing not only modern technologies, but also more equal division of housework. Polish advertising focused on these two aspects of the project of modernizing the household. Responding to the process of domestication of technology, it showed how the use of modern appliances led to changes in the relationships between household members and opened up the places of everyday life to new types of activities (Zalewska, 2020: 221). During the mid-1960s modern appliances were presented primarily as gendered objects, used by women. In the advertising campaigns women were still portrayed as the main providers of domestic labour, while men as the breadwinners and decision-makers, who decided to buy expensive appliances to relieve their wives of the drudgery. For example, advertisements in Przyjaciółka presented several versions of the story about the purchase of a washing machine. It was a gift for Mother’s Day (Przyjaciółka, 1965: 14) or for Women’s Day. ‘Today is a great celebration in our home. Daddy has bought a washing machine and finally, the laundry will no longer torture our Mum’ – said a little girl in the advert (Przyjaciółka, 1965: 13).

Przyjaciółka, 1965

Then, as the simple washing machines and vacuum cleaners became normalized, advertising started presenting technologically advanced, multi-functional models or high- tech equipment such as floor polishers or electric frying pans - this time frequently operated by men (Przyjaciółka, 1970). ‘In the past, you had to ask your husband to wax the floor, but today he does it willingly with the modern floor polisher’ – said the advert in Przyjaciółka (1965). High-tech equipment, associated not with monotonous drudgery but instead with technical skills, was presented as capable of re-defining the housework, and making a household a space of collaboration. For example, the new symbol of modernity – a dishwasher, promoted as providing ‘the highest degree of cleanliness and microbiological hygiene' (Przyjaciółka, 1979: 12) was no longer a gendered object. It was presented as being operated by both women and men, providing free time for the couple. In the course of the 1970s. the narrative of the advertisements focused on lifestyle and fashion, which was driving consumption in late socialist Poland (Zalewska, 2017). Electric juicers, cookers and blenders were associated with low-fat diet and new beauty standards, symbolized by a figure of young slender woman (Przyjaciółka, 1979: 12), sewing machines became promoted as objects of leisure activity or as a necessary device for following fashion trends (Przyjaciółka, 1973: 14; Ty i Ja, 1973: 54). ‘Would you like to change your dresses more often ?’- asked the advertisement in Ty i Ja (1973: 51). It was fashion that mattered, no longer the basic needs. Sewing machines were advertised as objects that offered some luxury and fun when in a shortage economy women had limited access to fashionable ready-made clothes (OBOPiSP, 1975). Even the advertisements for cleaning equipment used the images of leisure and female attractiveness. The figure of attractive woman wearing miniskirts and high heels, or dressed in a pin-up girl style (Przyjaciółka, 1970:14; 1972: 14; Kobieta i Życie, 1972: 13) replaced the image of the casually dressed hard-working housewife. In the imaginary consumer scenarios created in advertising, both women and men could enjoy consumer pleasures: dressing up in fashion, spending time on modern leisure: watching television or listening to music. Not only were men portrayed as involved in domestic work, but women were also given the right to rest and to use devices associated with leisure, such as radios, gramophones, or televisions. The new, fairer division of housework allowed married couples to spend leisure time together (Przyjaciółka, 1979: 11; Magazyn Rodzinny, 1978: 4).

Advertising, as an element of the popular discourse of household modernisation, contributed to the establishment of a discursive norm for understanding the household. The images of modern lifestyle as a ‘real’ part of the advertised appliances (Campell, 1987: 48) certainly influenced the feelings and imagination of consumers, offering them a vision of an efficiently run household and a modern family based on partnership. Advertisements made promises about the future, but based on the diagnoses of experts. They presented certain consumer goods – household appliances as agents of the transformation of the Polish socialist family, participating in the construction of social reality (Caronia and Mortari, 2015). This led to a process of ascribing them as good and beneficial, which Sara Ahmed identifies as a kind of emotional relationship with objects (Ahmed, 2014: 6). Significantly, in 1970, Sydney Abraham, a British advertising professional, argued that Polish advertisements were very well designed but did not encourage people to buy. They showed a vision of a better life (Abraham, 1970: 16), explaining how the household should look.

Conclusion

This article refers to the theoretical framework of Polish discourse of progress developed between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s. It considers both expert and popular discourses on the modern family and household, situating them in the context of modernization processes generated by the new policy towards consumption.

The article makes a contribution to the multidisciplinary studies on the modernization of the everyday life under state socialism. First, it examines the emergence of critical reflection on gender inequalities in an officially egalitarian society which was based on the analysis of the household practices. Then, it analyses the mechanism through which knowledge on the topic was produced, mediated and transmitted to the general public, and how it was used by home efficiency experts to develop the ‘modernization scenarios’ for the household. Thus, it aims to integrate research on the modernization of domestic spaces into the studies on expert culture under state socialism. It brings also a new perspective to the studies on the Polish family, thereby contributing to the field of social history. It shows how the phenomena already described, such as the domestication of technology, were linked to the project of transforming Polish society and how they affected gender relations within the family.

The educational aspects of socialist advertising have been studied by a number of authors. However, this article offers a new approach, by analyzing it as a manifestation of the popular discourse on household modernization. It shows how advertisements contributed to the process of mediating modernization scenarios for households, and, in a broader sense, how universal forms of popular culture introduced socialist modernity.