The Grammar of Trust and Distrust under State Socialism after Stalin. Introduction 1

Abstract

The Grammar of Trust and Distrust under State Socialism after Stalin. Introduction

The introduction to the special issue defines trust/distrust from an interdisciplinary perspective, treating these emotions as analytical categories and outlining their potential for historical analysis. Inspired by the emotional and sensory turns, the guest editor examines the shift from Stalinist violence towards a politics of trust and empathy. This new politics saw these feelings as powerful emotional forces and moral resources that not only made it possible to renegotiate a social contract between the state, society and the individual, but also enabled the stabilisation of the Eastern bloc as a whole in the post-Stalin era. Differentiating between regimes and communities of trust/distrust, the author sheds light on the grammar of trust and distrust under state socialism, which impacted the shared sense of stability and inner hybridity of the socialist personality. By connecting trust and distrust with the key analytical categories of gender and generation, morality and power, consumption and materiality, and self and subjectivity, this special issue is a contribution to a history of trust and distrust that provides further reflection on the unceasing debate about what socialism was and what the lived experience of socialism continues to be in post-communist space.