Waste and Recycling in Cold War Eastern Europe

The Soviet bloc has been often interpreted by social scientists as “dirty” as opposed to the “clean” and “superior” West when it came to the environment. Despite that consensus, socialist citizens developed complex repair, reuse and recycle skills. They transformed, saved, and condensed an amazing variety of foods, consumer objects, and packaging. The system of objects was not rigid in the Soviet bloc, however change appeared at a significantly slower rate than in the West until the collapse of communism. After 1990, the “old” somewhat circular consumer system radically changed and consumer culture had overtaken
urban areas of Eastern Europe.

That new consumerism was based on the take-make-waste extractive industrial model originating from the West and was based on the continual influx of new products designed to be used briefly and then discarded. As a result of the “new” throw-away system .e.g. Russia currently battles with one of the worst consumer waste crisis globally.

This project aims to study how the idea of domestic trash changed in the Soviet bloc from the end of World War II to the rise of post-Soviet market economy. By analysing the content of socialist trash bins, this project aims to make meaningful contributions to the ongoing debate on humanity’s shift to circular economy within the larger frame of sustainability.

Viktor Pál is Grant-funded Researcher at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He also serves as Coordinator at the Helsinki Environmental Humanities Hub. His first book “Technology and the Environment in State-Socialist Hungary. An Economic History” was published in 2017.