How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

While she does not shy away from the obvious repressions of communism, like censorship of the press, Drakulić spends the most time on the cumulative effects of decades of material deprivation. She devotes an entire essay to the absence of toilet paper, as this problem has persisted for most of her adult life, and recurs as Yugoslavia enters a period of transition to a new economic system. She notes that while people in Eastern Europe are familiar with shortages, “it is hard to predict what will be considered a luxury” as any item could soon disappear. She then declares, “everywhere, the bottom line is bread. It means safety—because the lack of bread is where real fear begins” (18). At various points in the narrative, panicked shopping and hoarding of objects is a fear response, epitomized by her grandmother’s endless drawers of food stores and her own shopping as she fears that civil war is about to come to Yugoslavia. She argues that the rejection of communism should be understood not as ideological but as a reaction against living standards, as she points out that communism’s “symbol was Golub,” the hated low-quality toilet paper (75).