The RC in Hungary case study analyses the significance of the late-Communist era to the lives of Hungarians today, as seen in the internationally popular TV series A Besúgó [The Informant]. The case study highlights sociopolitical parallels between life during the Kádár era (1957-1989, when A Besúgó is set) and life during, what can be termed, the Orbán era (2010-today). We suggest that A Besúgó's depiction of the anti-Communist youth movement during Hungary’s ‘soft dictatorship’ reflects today’s intergenerational and political tensions concerning civil liberties.

Hungarian TV is neglected in media scholarship. To address this gap, RC in Hungary takes a multi-disciplinary approach that will diversify the field through the synthesis of original archival materials, an interview with A Besúgó's writer-director Bálint Szentgyörgyi, and the close textual analysis of contemporary Hungarian TV aesthetics. 

We hope that RC in Hungary will bring Hungarian television into the academic and public spotlight at a critical time for understanding Eastern European identities when considering Viktor Orbán’s anti-European rhetoric, anti-Eastern European sentiment surrounding Brexit, and the war in Ukraine. 

A Besúgó tells an interconnected story of the lives of university students who organise and participate in the Democratic Opposition movement in 1985, the twilight hours of Communist Hungary. 

The series begins with a scene depicting Geri Demeter, the protagonist, being blackaimed by the State Police on a train from rural Hungary to Budapest where he is due to begin his university studies. It is in this moment that Geri becomes 'a besúgó', an informant, as he is enlisted to report on Zsolt Száva who leads the student opposition. A Besúgó sees Geri walk a tightrope as he balances his duties as an informant with his desire to belong and be free. 

With its fast-paced espionage plot, use of Hungarian rock music, and depictions of the chaotic lives of university students, A Besúgó raises interesting questions about intergenerational trauma and postmemory. Specifically, research combines Alison Landsberg’s ‘prosthetic memory’ theory, an understanding of the sociopolitical parallels between 1980s Hungary and Orbán’s ‘illiberal democracy’, and Szentgyörgyi’s perception of the Kádár-era (as a person born after 1989) when creating A Besúgó, offering original insights into why Communist histories speak to viewers today.

Read Veronika Hermann's chapter to find out more: Socialist Settings in Contemporary Hungarian and Czech Quality Television. 

In this short feature, Kateryna Yeremieieva discusses how her life and academic interests developed, leading to her research on the importance of humour as a discourse that can be used to destabilise communities during times of political oppression. 

"Soviet political jokes was one of the topics that inspired me to pursue academic research as a student. At that time, I perceived Soviet anecdotes almost outside their original Soviet context: as interesting, absurd, and sometimes cruel cultural forms that could be analysed as texts in their own right.

Years later, when teaching courses on Ukrainian history, I began using these jokes as illustrative material in my lectures. To my surprise, my students often did not understand what was funny about them — or even what their point was. Yet this misunderstanding did not worry me. On the contrary, it made me quietly happy. It meant that a new Ukrainian generation had grown sufficiently detached from the Soviet symbolic universe to form its own narratives, references, and systems of meaning. Soviet jokes no longer spoke to them — and that, in itself, felt like a sign of decolonial distance.

That is why April 1, 2022, came as such a shock. On International Day of Laughter, Russian state media released a documentary devoted entirely to Soviet-era anecdotes. This happened just as evidence of mass atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine was emerging, including the massacre in Bucha. The juxtaposition was chilling. 

Why were Soviet jokes being revived at this moment? For whom were they being told? And what cultural and political work were they meant to perform?

These questions served as the starting point for my chapter in Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production, edited by Lucy and Anna. You can find out about the volume by listening to their podcast here. 

In my contribution, I focus on Soviet anecdotes as a particular form of cultural memory. Far from being harmless humour, these jokes operate as compact narratives that require historical knowledge to be understood. Today, in Russia, they increasingly function as tools of nostalgic storytelling, reinforcing generational hierarchies and offering a familiar symbolic language in times of crisis. When retold by state actors — including Vladimir Putin himself — Soviet jokes help normalise the Soviet past and make the present appear less alarming by comparison.

At the same time, these anecdotes remain deeply ambivalent. They mock power while preserving attachment to it; they expose absurdity while softening critique through laughter. Examining their contemporary circulation allows us to see how humour participates in memory politics, affective coloniality, and the normalisation of violence.

If you are interested in how seemingly “small” cultural forms, such as jokes, carry trauma, nostalgia, and political meaning long after their historical moment has passed, I warmly invite you to explore Replaying Communism and the conversations it opens."