The Production of High Fidelity Audio Electronics and the Politics of Technological and Social Modernization in Late State Socialist Poland
Patryk Wasiak
Introduction
This article investigates how the state apparatus, the electronics industry, and a range of intermediary actors in state socialist Poland of the 1970s appropriated the production and consumption of High Fidelity audio electronics as an element of the nationwide project of technological and social modernization. I will discuss here how such actors affected the emergence of the audiophile culture that accompanied the dissemination of the Hi-Fi audio system as a positively valued hobby that offered a cultural uplift to working-class male youth. In this historical setting, a host of interest groups – such as governmental agencies, consumer electronics manufacturers, the electronic engineering community, and communist youth organizations – played a pivotal role by embracing this technology and the accompanying auditory culture in the Polish economy and society. This is an instance of the process of the re-negotiating of cultural values attached to a specifically marketed technology, as Hi-Fi audio systems originally emerged in affluent Western countries, and their purchase and use helped one in forming one’s identity as a member of an elite “consumption microculture” (Branch 2007). In the “original” Western consumer culture, being an audiophile was related to the pursuit of a highly individualized lifestyle through the manifestation of cultural capital and personal affluence.
Technically speaking, High Fidelity is an industry standard DIN 45500 introduced in 1973 (HiFiWiki n.d.), which defines the parameters such as the amount of noise and distortion and accurate frequency response (DIN 45500). However, several historians of technology note how historical actors used the term Hi-Fi rather vaguely. My paper covers the manufacturing and consumption of a range of audio systems in which the quality of sound reproduction was a central feature but which do not necessarily comply with the Hi-Fi norm. For this reason, I use the broader term “high-end audio” (HEA) as proposed by sound historian Joseph O’Connell (1992). I refer to the term Hi-Fi only as it was originally used by historical actors.
I argue that the aforementioned actors formed a loose coalition and that they built a specific “sociotechnical imaginary” (Jasanoff and Kim 2015) in which HEA electronics, instead of being seen as a market niche with premium-priced products, was defined as a mass-manufactured and relatively affordable consumer product category available to a wide variety of social strata. These actors also embedded the development of domestic production and consumption of HEAs into the public narrative of “catching up with the West” in terms of technological prowess in electronics and social development. Similarly, they redefined the audiophile culture from being an elite consumption microculture into a nationwide project of cultural and technical education intended to stimulate the upward social mobility of young working-class males. The central element of this redefinition was the claim that there are no particularly gifted “golden ears.” Thus, in a society that was supposedly built on the principle of social equity, the audiophile culture was presented as accessible to anyone willing to pursue an interest in high music culture, acoustics, and electronic technology by learning the basics of sound reproduction.
It is necessary to provide a brief background on Poland, which was at that time a part of the Eastern Bloc. The most commonly used term for the political and economic system of the Bloc is “state socialism.” In political terms, this system was based on the authoritarian rule of leaders of a single party that directly or indirectly controlled most of the economic and social activities in a country. The ruling party that governed the state apparatus and economy articulated goals for future economic, social, and technological development and decided what means should be used to achieve such objectives. The party also attempted to control the shape of the consumer culture by dictating which cultural values related to owning and using consumer goods citizens should embrace and which to reject (Bren and Neuburger 2012). I will thus first offer a cursory outline of Polish society and economy of the 1970s and highlight how the project of production of HEAs and the emergence of audiophile culture were embedded in the cultural logic of that system.
Following this outline, I will demonstrate how my historical investigation and the use of the proposed interpretative framework offer possible theoretical contributions to sound studies. My paper both contributes to this field and adds to the history of technology in three ways. Firstly, I demonstrate how technology and the related consumption microculture that have previously been identified as elements of the cultural logic of late capitalism, or postmodernism (Branch 2007), were appropriated by a nexus of social actors in the historical setting of state socialism as a key element of a nationwide program of technological and social progress. O’Connell notes that in the USA “the development of the HEA industry has occurred in relative isolation from political influence – unencumbered by government regulations, not tied to cycles of military procurement, and lacking the structured international network of laboratories, journals, and reviewers” (O’Connell 1992: 5). My case emerges within a substantially different historical setting, in which the state apparatus and a host of intermediary actors formed such a network. I investigate the interactions between the actors that operated in the state apparatus – such as policymakers, manufacturers, the state media, and the communist youth organization – and interest groups that interacted with the apparatus and played the role of intermediary actors: the electronic engineering community and “Hi-Fi clubs” that represented emerging milieus of users of HEAs. I also emphasize how audiophile culture was embedded in local culture and the politics of technological development.
Secondly, I aim to shift the attention from the audiophiles themselves and rather discuss audiophile culture as a sociotechnical system based on a constantly negotiated network of human actors, technological artifacts, bodies of knowledge, procedures, and ideologies. Most studies of audiophile culture quoted below focus primarily on users, and their authors use users’ testimonies as source material to study how they experience their participation in this auditory culture. History of technology has traditionally used an opposite approach by focusing on technology producers and governmental agencies that stimulate and regulate the dissemination of technological innovation. Only in the early 2000s did the discipline undergo the “user turn,” and scholars began paying more attention to the agency of users in sociotechnical systems (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003). Scholars from the field of sound studies have already extensively studied HEA users but paid less attention to the other human and non-human elements of audiophile culture. I take a different approach by decentralizing audiophiles and their individual experience and moving to a broader perspective of audiophile culture as a sociotechnical system in which several actors equally contribute to its development and dynamics.
Thirdly, my paper sheds more light on the formation of an audiophile culture that was officially promoted by the state apparatus under state socialism. While reviewing sound studies literature, I was surprised to find only a single theoretically informed paper that addresses auditory culture in the Eastern Bloc. In their paper on listening practices in Hungary and Czechoslovakia (2012), Trever Hagen and Tia DeNora explore an auditory culture that emerged in an unofficial setting of private apartments where people listened to Radio Free Europe and Western music such as The Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground, media content unwelcomed by the state. While discussing the specificity of that unofficial setting for listening practices, Hagen and DeNora provide a useful point of reference for my discussion on the emergence of an audiophile culture in an “official setting.” As they note: “We use the term official to describe areas of society and culture that were defined and ordered by centralized powers of the state, manifested not only in institutions and agencies but also in everyday practice” (Hagen and DeNora 2012: 441, emphasis mine). My case study examines exactly such an “official” auditory culture, in which the experience of the quality of music was embraced by state actors as a practice that contributed to the better integration of youth into society by building upon the values of state socialism.
In the first section of this paper, I will examine the relevant literature on the production of HEAs and audiophile culture and demonstrate how such a trend was embedded in the broader cultural, social, and economic settings that were found on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In section two, I discuss the development of the production of HEAs and highlight its relevance to the broader policy of the pursuit of the goal of the technological and social modernization of Poland in the 1970s. The third and final section deals with the emergence of the “Hi-Fi social movement” that re-negotiated the values of audiophile culture and presented it as an attractive and socially desirable youth hobby and lifestyle in state socialism. The paper includes an analysis of technical and lifestyle periodicals with testimonies of electronic engineers, representatives of the electronics industry, and media narratives on the audiophile culture as well as vintage electronics databases and audio electronics manuals.
It is relevant to explain that during my research I had only rather limited available source material. Virtually all Polish audio electronics manufacturers went into bankruptcy after the year 1989. Most of their archives have been simply discarded or are not available to the public since being owned by private companies. For that reason, there are no documents on R&D, production profiles of HEAs, or details of manufacturers' daily operations available to historians.