The Essay

Passports, garden chairs, cars or contraceptives. Four essayists from former Warsaw Pact nations reflect on the changing use and meaning of an apparently banal object - an object that unlocks a wider story about how daily life in their country was transformed by the dramatic events of 1989. In today's programme the Polish academic Kataryna Wolczuk presents a personal view of contraception, women's rights and the importance of calendars in Poland, both before and after the collapse of communism. Producer: Julia Johnson.