The Wingless Eros of Socialism: Nationalism and Sexuality in Hungary

This article explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and nationalism by re-reading Alexandra Kollontai's early model of a socialist eros in light of the realities of Hungarian workers in the 1950s and 1980s. Whereas under Stalinism women were expected to reproduce and to produce for the benefit of the state, the popular nationalist ideology of today's post-communist state disempowers women in an analogous fashion by relegating them to second-class status. The appropriation of this new discourse on sexuality paradoxically coincides with the creation of a free' and 'democratic' society for the Europe of 1992. [sexuality, eros, nationalism, utopia, Hungary]