The HAU festival “Every Day” brings together artists from different generations who have experienced other social orders and system changes – including Moldovan theatre makers Nicoleta Esinencu and Nora Dorogan with their collective teatru-spălătorie and director Tjaša Črnigoj, who lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In conversation with East Berlin author and theatre maker Luise Meier, they talk about the term “post-socialism”, sources of hope and which ideas of socialist feminists of the past are still important today.

Luise Meier: Thank you for finding the time to have this conversation. I would like to start with the title of the festival: “Every Day: Feminist Struggles in Post-Socialist Europe”. What does the term “post-socialist” mean to you?

Nicoleta Esinencu: Nora and I had a discussion about this term “post-socialist” just yesterday. Somehow, it sounds like something nice, like: after socialism it should be even better (laughs). But in reality, if we name it, it's capitalism. Post-socialist is more of a geographical term, but the reality is “real capitalist”, perhaps even a very accelerated capitalism, let's say, in our experience after the Soviet Union. Maybe what's important is to talk about the erasure of history. 
What we experience now especially in our region, is that history is being deleted. There is a fight against socialism, against communism, as if the origin of all problems were to be found in the Soviet Union. And now, somehow, we can build democracy only when we delete our history. I think, we really have to talk about this and, especially about the socialism and the communist period because I think there is a huge misunderstanding of all these terms, and it's a big problem to erase history, and to only pick out the parts of history which are convenient, interpreting history in only one way, manipulating it or using it for propaganda.

Tjaša Črnigoj: I wouldn't necessarily use the term “post-socialism,” but I am very interested in the legacy of socialism in the context in which I live and work. Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly aware of the past. I was born in 1988, three years before Slovenia became independent and Yugoslavia fell apart. My generation didn't learn much about the former system in school. This is probably connected with the deleting of the past. I wasn't so aware of the specifics of my environment until a certain point. 
But when I started to be interested in feminism and I read some feminist authors, slowly I started to question my context: Wait, I am living in a specific context here in Slovenia that has a specific history, a specific legacy. How does that shape my perspective? It's not the same if I read a French or an American author. I asked myself: what is different here? That is one of the things that motivated me to dig into the fight for women’s sexual and reproductive rights in Yugoslavia. One thing that was specific about it was that the fight for women's rights came from the top down, not from the bottom up. The authorities decided to do something at a certain point because, right after the Second World War, there was a big problem with so called ‘abortion epidemic’. The abortion was illegal and the contraception for women was not accessible. There were condoms, but they weren’t being used. In case of unwanted pregnancy, a lot of women died or risked their health by doing illegal and unprofessional abortions. That's why the authorities decided to do something about It and started to promote contraception and gradually legalize abortion. By 1974, Yugoslavia had enshrined the right to abortion and contraception in its constitution.
Another thing that is specific is that in Yugoslavia the women were encouraged to work, to be workers. In the generations of my mother or my grandmothers most of the women were working, doing paid jobs (besides working at home as mothers and housewives). 
Today in Slovenia or in the region, we live in capitalist system. But I think that the specific legacy of socialism is still present up to a certain point and it makes living and being a woman here specific.

Nora Dorogan: You may call it a post-socialist country. But to me, Moldova is like a country that is forgetting, denying and strongly discarding and its socialist past.

Luise Meier: Following up on what Tjaša said about working women: This is an experience that women in the Eastern Bloc shared. And afterwards, there was also the shared experience of losing their jobs when neoliberal capitalism and austerity politics took over. But the main Western feminist discourse is still about the right to work, starting from this perspective of women not working, which is ignoring a lot of working-class women in their own countries. 
So even if we don't call it “post-socialist,” the experience of the dismantling of the welfare state and austerity politics after 1990 still call for a kind of feminism that criticizes from this specific perspective the more individualistic approach of the dominant Western narrative about feminist struggles. There are ideas like “girl boss” feminism or “career woman” feminism. But then there are also very striking images that tell a different story, like the one of women from Eastern Europe, often older women, who are doing care work in Germany or in Western European countries for those so-called “career women” or “girl bosses” who then can emancipate themselves on the shoulders of other women. Do we need a different concept of feminism to shift the focus to these contradictions?

Tjaša Črnigoj: In my recent work I have been focusing on highlighting certain aspects of the previous system that can still serve as food for thought, inspiration, or even a source of courage today. I find the efforts for women’s sexual and reproductive rights particularly inspiring. We created a performance “Sex Education II: Fight,” which we presented at HAU in April 2024, where we delve into this topic.  Younger generations are often unaware of these struggles, but learning about them can be eye-opening. I believe it can offer a fresh perspective on similar struggles today.  Additionally, it can be valuable because it provides insight into a mentality that doesn’t take capitalism for granted as the only possible system.
Another topic I’m currently researching is feminism in the 1980s in Slovenia and Yugoslavia. One of the most significant achievements of feminist groups from that period is Article 55 of the Slovenian Constitution, which protects the right to abortion and contraception. When Slovenia was becoming independent in 1991, It was the most controversial article in the new constitution. Some politicians wanted to remove it and feminist groups had to fight hard to keep it in place. What is crucial about It, is that it’s written in a way that ensures abortion and contraception are not only legal in Slovenia but also free of charge. This makes It accessible to women of different classes or women with different financial means or no financial means at all.
Let me paraphrase Mojca Dobnikar, a member of those feminist groups, who once remarked in an interview that, for her, emancipation – understood as being independent, successful, and so on – had nothing to do with feminism. A woman can be individually emancipated yet remain indifferent to the societal position of women and take no action to change it. I find her thoughts inspiring. For me, as well, feminism is about solidarity and about intersectional perspective.

Luise Meier: Nicoleta, I know that in your work, you deal a lot with the contradictions of class within the European context, how Eastern European countries are also caught in an exploitative relationship with Western European countries and how this also intersects with feminist questions. How does this inform your work, in which you do not only criticize your own country, but also the dominant narrative of Europe as the bastion of Feminism?  

Nicoleta Esinencu: I was also thinking about this. I perceive the message coming from Western societies, saying: “You have no idea. You don't know what feminism is, what democracy is. And we are here to teach and explain everything to you.” And if you have an opinion, it goes like this: “You cannot have an opinion about feminism because we are the owners of feminism!” What Western societies are not addressing is: all they know was actually taken from somewhere else. We still have this very strange power relationship until today. 
We have to accept that we don't have the same history. Also our feminist history is different. And if Western Europe tries to tell us that they wrote the proper history of feminism, they are doing the same thing we talked about in the beginning: they are deleting our history as if to tell us that our history is not important or that our feminist history was somehow brought to us or taught to us by the West.
It was our fight also, and the fight of our mothers, our grandmothers and our great-grandmothers. I think we learned a lot during all these periods but we also lost a lot, and we have to think about what we lost by deleting our socialist history. It's a lot of work now to understand all the history of this territory and to learn from our feminist history. For example, we lost our international solidarity. And I still remember – even if it may not be popular to say this in our day – that, in Soviet times, I learned in school about peace and international solidarity. And I don't want to delete these nice parts of the Soviet propaganda (laughs).

Luise Meier: Are there any socialist feminist ideals and demands that we could revive today? I feel socialist feminism – as contradictory as it was in its connection to state socialism – was focused on strategies of collectivizing care work, for example, public childcare, public care for elderly people or the sharing of resources in general. There was an idea that the individual woman can only thrive and emancipate herself if there is a public system that supports her and takes care of these traditionally very individualized tasks. Guaranteed childcare from six in the morning to six in the evening, for example. All of these things were pushed into the background because of other dominant feminist demands that were about personal and individual rights only. Do you think that there might be a repressed history that we could connect our struggles to today?

Nicoleta Esinencu: We have to connect somehow. And I think that's the idea: to fight together. It is the aim of capitalism to divide us and to spread individualism so we do not live in communities or build new communities. We don't talk much about international solidarity anymore. We have been saying that we have to build strong communities for decades. We are repeating it and repeating it and it starts to look like utopian talk.

Nora Dorogan: Moldova is a minimalist state; there is austerity and poverty. The state is withdrawing from supporting education, health, etc. I think those ideas that the socialist feminists had, we can rethink them and adjust them for contemporary society. In our work with teatru-spălătorie, we often address the violence of economic progress. Even the violence of a democracy that says: you have a right to wealth, for example, you have a right to own a house. Good. But the right to own a house means nothing in a neoliberalist capitalist world when you cannot afford it. You have a right to have a job also. But if you have a job in Chișinău, it might pay you like 150 euros per month. So there is this right and that right, but actually it's nothing. You cannot survive on this.

Nicoleta Esinencu: Some have the right to own a house and some have the right to clean this house. This is our current situation. 
Tjaša Črnigoj: I think it’s crucial to remember and preserve solidarity or what is left of It. Earlier, I mentioned Article 55 of the Slovenian Constitution, and I think it’s important to recognize its significance—not only as a right on paper, but as one that people can actually exercise because these services are free of charge. It represents a hard-won achievement of collective struggle and should never be taken for granted. Over the years since Slovenia gained independence, there have been attempts to restrict access to abortion and contraception, including proposals to make contraception chargeable. However, civil society fought back and successfully defended these rights. So, I think It's important to be constantly vigilant and ready to fight.

Luise Meier: Tjaša, in your work you are talking to women of different generations. And when you hear them tell their stories or talk about their experiences, does it feel like the idea of progress is still accurate? Do the experiences line up like this, that the next generation has more freedom and a better life than those who came before? What are the experiences that you are hearing from these different generations of women?

Tjaša Črnigoj: “Girls” is a collaboration with Kolektiv Igralke from Rijeka, Croatia and the performance focuses on the Croatian context, which differs from Slovenia’s. Since the dismantling of Yugoslavia, Croatia has had a constitution, which does not explicitly enshrine the right to abortion or contraception. While abortion is legal, many doctors and even pharmacists invoke conscientious objection, refusing to perform the procedure or provide contraception based on personal beliefs. This makes access to abortion and contraception pretty limited. Additionally, they are not free of charge.
The performance is about four generations of women in Croatia. It delves into their first sexual experiences, fears of unwanted pregnancy, and the broader experience of adolescence. The work was inspired by an article in a high school newspaper titled “My Body, My Property” by Vita Tijan and by workshops with contemporary teenagers living in Rijeka. The piece is based on the personal experiences of the performers as well as interviews with their mothers, who are in their sixties, and grandmothers, who are in their eighties. Through these personal stories, the performance reveals the re-traditionalization of society. It seems like the teenage years of future generations in Croatia could be more similar to those of performer's grandmothers than to those of the performers or their mother's. One of the contemporary teenagers we spoke to was uncertain, even asking whether abortion in Croatia is legal or illegal. I think that confusion comes from the fact that, despite its legality, abortion is quite inaccessible.

Luise Meier: Nicoleta and Nora, in your new work, you are going back even further back than the socialist past, to an even more distant past, to maybe find some hope or some utopian vision. Why do we have to go so far back, what can we find there and how does it relate to our situation today?

Nora Dorogan: Well, when we started to dig deeper into this history, we remembered learning about this historic period in school: the Cucuteni-Tripolje-Culture that we are very proud of here in Moldova. But it was always told like: yes, it happened, blah blah blah, but never from a feminist point of view. And then we read about Marija Gimbutas' research who claims she claims that it was a period of peace where there were no weapons. It was a different society. She doesn't say that it was a matriarchy but she talks about equality. For us, it was an inspiration and especially in the times that we are living now, with European countries militarizing so much. And also in times when it's believed that there is no other possibility than to continue like this and that there is no hope in ending capitalism. In a way, I think we need to believe that it’s possible in order to fight back. Capitalism is not the history of humanity; it’s only been here for a few hundred years. We just need to locate it in time and say: okay, your time has passed. And to look in the very deep past, where we can find times when it was possible to live in peace.

Nicoleta Esinencu: European patriarchal societies have always been about white men. The last part of the trilogy “Symphony of Progress”, “Dirty Laundry. The Trash Opera” on which teatru-spălătorie is working right now that will have the premiere in March 2025 in HAU1 is also about the “author of civilization”: the white man – who is also the author of economical violence, militarized societies, war and genocide. We have to understand that this violence comes from the capitalist -patriarchal society and we cannot ignore this. We should have the right at least to dream of peace.

Luise Meier: Nora, what you said reminds me of this neoliberal slogan: There is no alternative to capitalism that has so deeply penetrated our thinking. And then I remember my parents’ generation and the fall of the wall in Berlin, when everything started to open up for them. And there was this feeling emerging – not from socialism but from the fall of state socialism – that there is always the possibility of change: Nothing is forever and everything can change.
Now this generation is more and more resigned to the fact that capitalism will last forever. But I still think sometimes that, in this experience of a big system that seemed unbreakable suddenly collapsing, maybe there's a source of hope. 
And when it comes to sources of hope, Tjaša your work is also about pleasure. Is there a source of utopian thinking in these stories of female pleasures or can we find clues for a better future in them?

Tjaša Črnigoj: “Utopian” is a big word and I wouldn’t use it. My recent work is “Sex Education II”. It is a series of lecture-performances dedicated to women’s right to sexual pleasure, and is based on interviews with women, who shared with us their personal stories. They spoke about pleasant experiences as well as about problems and less pleasant experiences. The lecture-performances are grounded in the practice of documentary theatre, but each part approached the topic using different theatrical strategies. My idea was to create theater experiences for relatively small groups who would listen to the women's stories, witness them, look at artistic interpretations of these stories. And I wanted to create a warm feeling of sharing in the room. My overarching idea for the entire series was to create a warm and accepting atmosphere that would allow spectators to perceive the right of every woman to enjoy, to be treated as a person and to feel good about her body as something that is a fundamental human right.  I believed that if, as a society, we were more aware that women have the right to pursue their desires – while respecting the autonomy of others—there would be less sexual violence against women. We created a series of lecture-performances and the first two premiered in December 2022, the second two in March 2023 and the last on in June 2023. It felt like through the serial nature of It, we built a small community, because people who saw the first two parts, came for the second two parts and so on. It was really touching and fulfilling to see people coming back. And also bringing new people. For me It wasn’t so much about hope, as it was about courage to be vulnerable and to share a perspective which challenges the expectations of society. The women who shared their personal stories were very courageous, as were the people who are and were fighting for their rights, and I think this was something that was inspiring for people to embrace vulnerability themselves and to be able to see each other in a new way. 

Luise Meier: Nicoleta and Nora, in the really fundamental and very precise critique that you are developing in your work and the anger at the system that it provokes, at least in me, is there also maybe a source for a utopian vision? What are your maybe unexpected sources of hope?

Nicoleta Esinencu: As we are talking about collectivity, it is very important to understand that we are living in a moment of not only individualism but also dehumanization. It’s very difficult to build and to resist and to be together because of how capitalism works. I think it's okay to accept that sometimes there is no hope and that's it. It's okay to understand and to feel this. But we still have to talk about what is happening around us because if we stop talking or if we avoid it, we become part of the problem. If we are not talking about censorship, we become part of censorship. If we are not talking about genocide, we are part of genocide. The list goes on. And hope is connected to this. We lose our hope when we stop talking and start accepting everything.

Nora Dorogan: I think that it's important not to forget the past and to take care that the stories which we can learn from will not be forgotten. To bring them into present continuously. I think it's important to continue fighting. We can also imagine the world we want to live in and to strive for it. Imagination can be a strong tool.

Luise Meier: I feel that when I see things on stage that I long for or that I miss in the world around me – even if it's a really sharp analysis of my life or the structures that surround me – sometimes it makes me realize: This is what is actually lacking or what I actually want. And it’s usually not a new car or a weapon to defend myself with. No. It is a way of working through stuff collectively. This is what I am missing. 
And what I find interesting about your work on female pleasure, Tjaša, is that sometimes it is good to simply be reminded of how easy it is to make each other feel good, collectively; and that we don't have to be isolated and always worry about our individual moral standing, protecting ourselves from others, competing with each other, but that it's a collective practice to make each other feel good. For me, these might be the seeds of a communist utopia. 
Thank you so much for this, for your thoughts, for your ideas and for the inspiration. I really look forward to seeing your works at the festival at HAU.