July 2025

Later this year our edited collection will be coming out (published by Central European University Press, now under the umbrella of Amsterdam University Press), so Anna and I will be presenting our research at several conferences. 

Here's a list of some of the upcoming conferences relevant to the range of research covered by the Replaying Communism project. 

• Northeast Popular Culture Association: 9-11 October 2025 (online)

• Memory Studies Association 'Memory and Social Movements in Democratic Crises' Conference: 13-14 November 2025 (Florence)

• The 10th Memory, Melancholy and Nostalgia International Interdisciplinary Conference: 4-5 December 2025 (Gdańsk)

• Historical Fictions Research Network 'Feelings and Emotions in Historical Fictions' Conference: 19-20 February 2026 (Erlangen)

• Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference: 26-29 March (Chicago)  

• BASEES Annual Conference: 10-12 April 2026 (Birmingham)

• Communication and Media Studies 'The Image as Advocate: Shaping Cultural Conversations' conference: 1-2 October 2026 (Singapore)

May 2025

June last year Anna and I posted about a call for applicants to spend several weeks at the Open Society Archives in Budapest. The theme was 'The Language(s) of Freedom(s)'. This year, we're sharing news about the scholarship's highly relevant new theme: 'Living in dystopian times: Lessons from the Cold War (and after)'. As a recipient of the Visegrad Scholarship last year, I (Lucy) can say that it's well worth applying. The resources are fantastic and time allows you to make connections with fellow researchers and the archivists in the reading room. Anna and I managed to connect with Gabor Demszky and record an interview with him. 

Here's a link to the application page, which outlines all of the eligibility criteria and requirements: https://archivum.org/academics/visegrad-scholarship-at-osa. The deadline is 25 July 2025.  

If you'd like to chat with Anna or myself about the Visegrad Scholarship and/or OSA, feel free to reach out via our contact page. 

April 2025

It's been a while since we've been in touch so we thought that we'd bring in Spring with some good news! The Replaying Communism project will see its first major publication of an edited collection released later this year with Central European University Press and Amsterdam University Press. We'll write another update soon with information about the book's contributors and themes...watch this space! 

July 2024

We were recently contacted by Jack Power, journalist for The Irish Times, who asked us to comment on the representation of communist era artefacts in former Soviet bloc countries. In our conversation we discussed Memento Park, a sculpture museum dedicated to the statues that adorned Budapest’s streets during the Rákosi and Kádár regimes. You can read the article here.

In line with this, we are delighted to share with you our latest blog, written by the Managing Partner of Memento Park, Judit Holp: 

“After the Cold War, the Iron Curtain fell, and gigantic Soviet-style sculptures were removed from the streets of Budapest and put in Memento Park, which opened in 1993. This open-air museum, designed by architect Ákos Eleőd, immediately became the resting place of 41 statues that once symbolised communist ideology in the streets of Budapest between 1945 and 1989. During the change of the political system in 1989-90, the public in Eastern European communist regimes turned radically against reminders of that era. In Hungary, a unique political and societal compromise initiated the relocation of unwanted public propaganda statues. 

In the shared silence of witnessers of dictatorships, critical thinking activates itself. The monuments in Memento Park speak the simple language of political propaganda which echoes its own version of truth. Monuments along the first parade dedicated to the controversial liberation and subsequent Hungarian-Soviet friendship, statues dedicated to the leaders of the dictatorship, metaphorical and figurative artworks personifying the concepts and events of the so-called workers' movement all create an intimidating environment. Yet, in Memento Park’s open-air setting, the weather playfully contributes to the visitors' experience and makes this an ideal location for all generations to encounter Hungary’s complex history. The apolitical conceptual design of Memento Park speaks the language of silence, political propaganda, and creativity.

Memento Park is a memorial site that invites visitors to slow down from the fast-paced nature of their everyday life, to think, to remember, and to pose questions. For visitors, there is a printed guide available in six languages, guided tours in English run three times a week, and a private guided tour (available in major European languages) is available with pre-booking twice daily. Memento Park also features a documentary on the secret methods of the communist political police: How to recruit an agent? Where to plant the bug? What are the methods of covert surveillance? A visit to Memento Park is a fascinating journey behind the Iron Curtain through time to the realm of forgotten statues of the Cold War and communist dictatorships.”

Judit Holp, 31 July 2024

June 2024

After a very enjoyable Fellowship experience at OSA (read our Latest News story), we're sharing the next call for applicants. You can find all of this information as well as the collection catalogue, latest news, and events listings on the OSA website: https://archivum.org 

The Language(s) of Freedom(s)
Academic year 2024/2025

The criticism about infringements of academic freedom, or about the radicalization of autocratic powers cannot do without an understanding of the loaded vocabularies of freedoms in the past and present, for both societies and their elites. A complex rethinking and recontextualization of the thinkers of liberties, including from the Cold War era, must also be undertaken, together with the truth-seeking adventures and projects from the past.

We invite historians, researchers, political scientists, sociologists and socially engaged artists to reflect on the past uses of the languages of (attaining) freedoms by taking cues from the Blinken OSA collections. The applicants are encouraged to reflect on the connections as well as on the differences between current times and the past by following some recommended sub-topics listed below.

-the contribution to Eastern European intellectuals and dissenters to political philosophy in the past and present, the relevance and afterlife of their insights [clues: personal collections of Eastern European oppositionist and the RFE collections regarding their activities]
- the comparative and different understandings of what constituted authorship and censorship
- independent movements in the 90s: the complex interplay of nationalism, decolonization, political freedoms and their impact nowadays [clues: curated collection Winning Freedom, Ukraine 1989-1991 https://ukraine.89-91.osaarchivum.org/ and similar collections from the Soviet Red Archives, Samizdat archives, Western Press Archives]
- the representation and analysis of citizens’ aspirations within the communist regimes by internal and external observers; what was the understanding of political freedoms in relationship with other rights? [clue: the collection of audience and opinion surveys done by RFE and RL]
- the fascination with the revolution and social movements among the Western intellectuals and the communist parties within the non-communist countries; self-reflexivity with regards the nature of real existing socialism [clue: Kevin Devlin collection]
- the different meanings of freedom in the East and the West, and the transformation brought by the human rights paradigm
- the complex status of the alternative movements and artistic phenomena within centralized socialist systems (from gray zones to radical opposition); the transformative meaning they gave to an official lexicon through their concern with “peace,” “futures,” etc.
- the dysfunctional relationship between language and meaning and the ensuing concern for truth within different intellectual and scientific communities
- the language of transnational politics in the 70s and the adaptation of local political visions to the language of Western liberatory international organizations (ILO, Helsinki institutions, Amnesty international), etc.
- discursive strategies of Cold War observers, theorists and activists:
- the usage of the term totalitarianism, analytical term or discursive mechanism revived by the transnational activism and history writing in the 70s and 1980s (a situation re-emerging now?)
- the role of “liberatory” Western radios within the Cold War: political impact, protective strategies towards endangered oppositionist, documentation of issues then and now
- what have, was, or could be achieved by preserving records documenting rights abuses? A critical assessment of and ways of repurposing human rights archiving in times of democratic backsliding.

Blinken OSA Archivum research program
The current call is part of a reflexive-research program at Blinken OSA Archivum interested in connecting past issues related to oppressive regimes, censorship, violence and information manipulation to current phenomena. We would like to assess the potential of a genealogical project linking the contemporary epistemic and political crisis of democracy to past modes of inquiry and activism.

Admission
We seek to promote exchanges among people with backgrounds in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the way they think through and about archives while being concerned with current problems. From this point of view, the invitation is addressed to all scholars interested in theories of knowledge, who would use Blinken OSA Archivum documents as props for larger reflections and activist concerns.

Fellowship requirements and Blinken OSA Archivum support
While working on their own subject, fellows will have the opportunity to collaborate with Blinken OSA Archivum researchers and to transform their archival investigation into a full research experience. The fellows are invited to give a final presentation about their research findings at Blinken OSA Archivum and the ways in which the documents were relevant to their research. The presentations are organized within the Visegrad Scholarship at Blinken OSA Archivum lecture series and as such are open for the general public.

Blinken OSA Archivum academic and archival staff will assist the fellows in their investigations, facilitate contact with the CEU community, and grant access to the CEU library. Besides its archival analogue collections, Blinken OSA Archivum can also offer access to unique, audio-visual materials related to documentary practices, a special collection of RFE (anti)propaganda books and a growing collection on digital humanities, human rights, archival theory and philosophy.

About the Fellowship
The twenty grants of 3000 euro each are designed to provide access to the archives for scholars, artists, and journalists, and to cover travel to and from Budapest, a modest subsistence, and accommodation for a research period of eight weeks. Stipends for shorter periods are pro-rated.

Applicants, preferably but not exclusively, from a V4 country, may be researchers, students after their second degree carrying out research, or artists, journalists, academics, or both.

Scholars at risk from war zones as well as refugees of conscience (scholars fleeing authoritarian regimes) are especially invited to apply.

Submission deadlines for the 2024/25 academic year
- July 25, 2024
- November 15, 2024

Assessment
The Selection Committee will evaluate proposals on the strength of the professional quality and novelty of the research proposal, its relevance to the chosen topic and the involvement of the Blinken OSA Archivum holdings in the research. In the case of equal scores those from V4 countries have an advantage. The artists submitting proposals are kindly required to frame their application as research-based projects as well, carefully indicating the collections they will rely on. The artistic proposals will be assessed according to their merit, originality, timeliness as well as their feasibility (with regards to their reliance on available Blinken OSA Archivum collections). Blinken OSA Archivum can only offer conditions for the realization of artistic research, not for production.

Application procedure
Please submit the following to Blinken OSA Archivum (in one merged pdf)

1. Application letter in English (should specify expected period of stay and preferred dates and how you learnt about the scholarship (through which courses, instructors, social media groups or pages, websites, academic platforms, Blinken OSA Archivum public programs/ projects etc. you were informed about this scholarship).

Please note that the Archive’s Research Room is closed during the Christmas period, and the research stay must end on the last day of the given academic year, July 31.

2. Research description/plan in English (about 800 words and should include the following: introduction, presentation of the stage of research, literature on the subject, preliminary hypothesis, questions, identification of possible documents in the Blinken OSA Archivum holdings). Artists are expected to submit a portfolio, too. We recommend you refer to one of the topics in your application. Please also mention the specific collections you would like to consult.

3. Curriculum Vitae (C.V.)

4. Proof of officially recognized advanced level English language exam (native speakers and those with qualification from an English language institution/degree program are exempted)

5. Names of two referees with contact address. Letters of reference are not needed.

The Application letter, C.V., the Research description/plan, the copy of a language exam certification and the Referees’ contact information should be sent by email to Katalin Gadoros at gadoros@ceu.edu.

Selection Committee
All members of the committee are academic staff of Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives / Central European University or the Visegrad Fund.

More Information
To find out more about the program, please visit : https://www.osaarchivum.org/work-with-us/fellowship/visegrad-scholarship

Contact Information
The Application letter, C.V., the Research description/plan, the copy of a language exam certification and the Referees’ contact information should be sent by email to Katalin Gadoros at gadoros@ceu.edu.

April 2024

As summer is in the air, picnics and potlucks with family and friends await! In Hungary this means a trip to Lake Balaton where lángos and ízes palacsinta (jam filled pancakes) are sure to be on the menu. Such foods, still popular today, evoke memories of time spent at Balaton during the Kádár era. Authors and scholars have written extensively about taste nostalgia, often connecting food and drink with a sense of cultural, national, and/or familial belonging. (Proust’s madeleine biscuit and lime blossom tea epitomises the power of taste memory.) In a chapter entitled ‘Suckling Pig or Potatoes?’, Elena Popan (2020) argues that films such as Sedmikrásky (Daisies, dir. Věra Chytilová, 1966) and A tanú (The Witness, dir. Péter Bacsó, 1969) ‘use food symbolism to address the socio-political reality of the Communist regimes in place’ by exposing their hypocrisy. Memories of the Communist era are also closely connected to and triggered by foods. 

For this blog, we’ve set up our own market stall at Fehérvári úti vásárcsarnok (a marketplace in Buda that opened in 1977) to present a Hungarian version of Proust’s tea and biscuits.  

1.     Traubisoda – a grape juice flavoured soft drink, produced near Lake Balaton. Traubi became popular in the 1970s and imitated (in style though not in taste) famous Western sodas like cola. This said, Traubi, marketed as ‘the gift of nature’ was enjoyed by Hungarians well into the 2000s.

2.     Teaízesít / Citrompótló – this lemon tea flavouring is unmistakable to anyone who has tased it! This powdered ‘lemon’ flavour (which also came in tablet form), mimicked tea with lemon due to the scarcity of available lemons in most markets. In stark contrast to a bottle of Traubi, most connoisseurs do not sing its praises.

3.     Sport szelet – originally marketed in the 1950s as ‘MHK Sport szelet’ (an abbreviation for the Soviet-style ‘Munkára Harcra Kész’ [Ready for Work and Fight’ community sports movement. Believe it or not, this rum and cocoa flavoured chocolate bar is still popular today. Whilst its association with Communist propaganda has faded away (it is a commercial product sold everywhere), taking a bite may lead to a trip down memory lane. 

4.     Kubai narancs – although the Communist era is associated with food shortages, there was more than enough of one fruit in Hungary: Cuban oranges! Adverts touted the ‘multiple tons of health’ to be gained from a fruit sold by a Kölcsönös Gazdasági Segítség Tanácsa (KGST) [Council for Mutual Economic Assistance COMECON) country…they failed to mention the sour taste! 

5.     Banán – in contrast to Cuban oranges, bananas were rare luxuries that were coveted by many. They draw large crowds to stores selling bananas and were often smuggled back into Hungary from the West. It is widely known that when shipments arrived, store owners would alert their friends and family, and party members would even have the bananas delivered to their homes.

Our stall is a sample of some of the flavours that characterise the Kádár era. Writing this blog has made us reflect on the food and drink that different generations, nations, and people consume and how the act of consumption is circumscribed by geopolitical situations. 

Feel free to set up your own stall at our marketplace by contributing your own foods: Get in Touch!

Works cited

Popan, Elena. (2020). ‘Sucklin Pig or Potatoes? Class Politics and Food Symbolism in Eastern European Film during Communism.’ In (In)digestion in Literature and Film. Eds. Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat. New York: Routledge. 

Tóth, Eszter Zsófia and Zoltán Poós. (2019). Csemege ajándékkosár: Fogyasztás és zene a Kádár-korszakban. Budapest: Scolar Kiadó. 

Picture: Characters from Macskafogó (Cat City), a Hungarian animated film, released in 1986, that satirises the Communist regime in Hungary. It has since become a cult classic and can be seen here painted on a wall in Pasaréti út, an affluent area in Buda. The film was directed by Béla Ternovszky and written by József Nepp. 

February 2024

Listening to Mariana Mazzucato on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Political Thinking’ made me think about the specific challenges facing countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) whose path to and attitudes towards capitalism differ to those in Western Europe, the UK, and the US. In Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (first published in 2020) Mazzucato compellingly argues that: 

The public sector has shown too little regard for voters’ concerns about clean air, robust public health systems, the regulation of business and planetary health. 

The case for radical change is thus overwhelming. But to drive this change, we have to see the problem through a particular lens – concentrating on rethinking government in order to stimulate improvements across the economy. Why? The reason is simple: only government has the capacity to steer the transformation on the scale needed – to recast the way in which economic organizations are governed, how their relationships are structured and how economic actors and civil society relate to each other.’ (2022, p. 23) 

The ‘particular lens’ through which we think through economic stimulation policies for a country like Hungary, Slovakia, or Bulgaria, for example, contains within it a determined view to the future combined with reflective glances to the past. When we think about an economic mission for a CEE country, therefore, we must ask questions that probe its past: What is the lasting impact of the economic policies of the Warsaw Pact on the member countries? How does the restoration of neoliberal capitalism in the former Eastern bloc affect the economic and political situation in those countries and how does development in CEE since the collapse of socialism impact the rest of the world? One could even ask to what extent economists are ‘Replaying Communism’ when they put forward an economic policy in a CEE country. 

Mazzucato’s argument in favour of Big Government lands differently in CEE countries than it does in countries where neoliberalism has, for decades, seen government merely regulate the market so that private sector drives innovation. Though the extensive privatising of state-owned companies and outsourcing of essential services has weakened governments and, Mazzucato argues, has had a detrimental effect on society in Western democracies, the economic transition that took place much later in the Eastern bloc has led to a complex set of issues that colour this ‘particular lens’. In a PEW Research Center report published in 2019, Richard Wike et. al. reveal that the economic gains since the fall of Communism have been disproportionate:

Majorities in all the former Soviet orbit countries surveyed say politicians and business people have benefited a great deal or fair amount since the fall of communism. And in all cases, more people say political and business leaders have prospered than say [sic.] changes have benefited ordinary people. (pewresearch.org, 2019) 

Few would argue against the fact that CEE countries need greater egalitarianism and improved democratic processes. To achieve these universal goals both neoliberal capitalism and nationalist populism need to be addressed. 

In the Afterword to her book Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary (2022), Zsuzsanna Szelényi, an MP for FIDESZ in the 1990s who left the party to join the liberal opposition in Parliament, writes of the future of Hungary: 

There will be no easy revival of democracy in Hungary. The years-long entrenchment of illiberalism will pose a serious challenge for any future Hungarian government. As Hungary has been fairly unique in its path, we do not know if a restoration of democracy is possible or whether, instead, we face an alternation of democratic and autocratic governments that will pull the country into further decline. 

Despite this, the renewal of Hungarian democracy is not inconceivable. A desire for autonomy and a self-regulating society goes back centuries. In spite of the efforts of the political elite, society is far from being too divided to reunite, as most people reject the culture wars which are being foisted upon them. Hungarians agree that with a legacy of political culture woven around the idea of liberty, we Hungarians are inseparably bound to the West. 

Democracy is being held together by an ethos of autonomy, the principle of political fairness, and the efforts of the community. My historically privileged generation, who believed that history always moves forward, have squandered this chance. All we can do now is, with all our strength, help the next generation, so that they can carry on pushing Hungarian democracy forward and manage to overcome the forces of autocracy, which are always ready to pounce. (p. 359) 

Szelényi’s optimism and frankness is infectious. Perhaps her determination to push forward and ‘overcome the forces of autocracy’ that taint perspectives on the economic future of CEE countries can speak to Mazzucato’s redress of capitalism which sees public and private actors coming together to invest, innovate, and collaborate because, ‘the good news is that we can do better’ (Mazzucato, p. 206). CEE countries may have a longer way to go in terms of entrusting governments to spend public money in ways that benefit all of society, and, as Szelényi warns, in overcoming the forces of autocracy. But, the goal to revive economies and, in so doing, revive democracies by ‘doing capitalism differently’ can still be achieved. For Mazzucato, this involves ‘reimagining the full potential of a public sector driven by public purpose – democratically defining clear goals that society needs to meet by investing and innovating together’ (p. 208). 

Works cited

Mazzucato, Mariana. (2022). Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. London, Penguin. 

Szelényi, Zsuzsanna. (2022). Tainted Democracy: Victor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary. London, Hurst. 

Wike, Richard, Jacob Poushter, Laura Silver, Kat Devlin, Janell Fetterolf, Alexandra Castillo, Christine Huang. (2019). ‘European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism.’ Pew Research Center, 14 October 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/political-and-economic-changes-since-the-fall-of-communism/

January 2024

2024 promises to be a busy year in the field of post-socialist media and cultural studies. In this blog, we’re going to share with you some of the conferences and book releases that, if you’ve made it to our blog, you’ll find of interest. 

19 January, Of course we have to kick things off with our own Call for Chapters (see our December 2023 blog below for more info), or, click here. We are still welcoming submissions! 

March 14-15, Konferencja Nie Tylko “Świat Młodych”. Prasa Dziecięca I Młodzieżowa w Prl [Youth and children’s press under socialism: different systems – different experiences’]. This conference is organised by the Institute of Information and Communication Research of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. You can read more about it on the brilliant conference website, here. 

April 5-7, British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES): Annual Conference at Robinson College, University of Cambridge. Submissions have closed but you can register to attend here.

20-21 June, Eighth Annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies organised by the University of Tartu Centre for Eurasian and Russian Studies. The CfP is entitled ‘Area Studies in Crisis? In Search of New Approaches in East European and Eurasian Studies’ and can be found here (note that the deadline for abstracts is February 20). 

November 21-24, Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES): 56th Annual Convention in Boston. The theme for 2024 is ‘Liberation’ and the CfP can be found here.

Brill have announced a forthcoming series entitled Contemporary Studies in Sovietology edited by Robert van Voren and Vytautas Magnus. 

Central European University Press also have a diverse range of forthcoming titles that can be explored here.  

If you are running an event or if you have a book coming out that you’d like us to mention, please get in touch and we can add your news to our blog! 

December 2023

We're off to a great start for the first Replaying Communism symposium. In case anyone missed it, here's the text to the intro: 

Hello everyone and welcome to the first Replaying Communism symposium. 

My name is Lucy Jeffery and with Anna Váradi we are the co-founders of this research project which received funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. 

We’re delighted to see you all online and promise an engaging day of presentations and discussions. Over the next ten minutes, I’m going to introduce the concept for this symposium, but first Anna will explain the format of the day. 

As Lucy said, it’s great to see such an international conference. We were hoping that the delegates and audience would reflect the reach and universality of the issues we are about to unpack and I’m so pleased to see that this is already the case. 

I’m going to talk us through the programme for today and, as we are joining from so many countries, the first thing I want to remind all delegates is that the timings are based on us here in the UK. So, the symposium will run from 9am until around 4pm this evening. We have scheduled 2 comfort breaks that each last 5 minutes’ and a 1-hour lunch break at 12.10 (UK time). Please feel free to have tea and coffee at any time. 

As we mentioned in our email correspondence, we want this to be as interactive as possible, so, during the ‘questions and discussion’ sections, please use the ‘chat’ or ‘message’ function to add comments, thoughts, share links to relevant websites, and ask questions. Please also use the ‘raise hand’ function to ask a question. We invite you to exchange research and ideas during the breaks and lunch hour just as if this were an in-person event. And, finally, please have your cameras on. We ask this of both delegates and audience. I’m sure you’ve all had the experience of giving a talk or lecture to a black screen; we don’t want this to be the case for us here today, so we warmly invite and encourage you all to be present and visible. 

We have 3 panels today, entitled Museums, Media, and Rhetoric. Our first panel will discuss ways in which museums are representing Communist histories in Hungary and Poland. Our second panel focuses on re-imaginings of Communism on film and television. Our four speakers each focus on twenty-first century fictionalised accounts of Communism in East Germany, Romania, Hungary, and Poland. You may have read our ‘Communism on Film: Top 5’ blog from our website (we’ll share the link in the chat) where we’ve recommended some films that I’m sure will be discussed by our speakers. If you have any media to share – film, TV-show, music, etc. – please feel free to type them into the chat as we make our introductions. After this media panel, we’ll have our lunch break and then return for our third and final panel entitled ‘rhetoric’. Our speakers will focus on how the language of journalists and politicians frames our understanding of the Communist era, using Romania and Hungary as case studies. Last, but not least, we are thrilled to have Anikó Imre as our keynote speaker. We will be introducing Anikó and her research later but suffice it to say that we are delighted to have one of the leading academics on post-socialist media industries and cultures talk to us about the narrative of communism around the world. As with all panels, at the end of Anikó’s keynote there will be time for questions and discussion. Finally, it’ll be back to us to reflect on the conference and speak to you all about next steps in terms of publication. But at this stage, I’ll pass over to Lucy who will get us into the theme for today: ‘Replaying Communism’. 

***

So many examples come to mind when we hear the phrase ‘Replaying Communism’. As well as it being an academic interest for us here today, we all likely have a personal – whether direct or somewhat removed – story of our own. Since we started this project in February, Anna and I have been thinking about how our experiences of the reverberations of Communism have impacted our lives. Though we’ve been talking about doing a project like this for some years, we were compelled to initiate our research after watching A Besúgó with Anna’s mum in Budapest in 2022. For those who haven’t yet watched A Besúgó (or The Informant in English), it’s a Hungarian-language TV-series that follows the life of an informer who is blackmailed into working for the Hungarian Communist Party when studying at university in Budapest. The reason why I mention watching this with Anna’s mum is because seeing her reaction to a depiction of her own life as a student in Budapest during the late Communist era gave us the necessary prompt to study the implications of such depictions of that era academically. We immediately wrote to the TV series’ writer-director, Bálint Szentgyörgyi, who granted us an exclusive interview where we discussed the generational differences when it comes to replaying Communism. Then, in August we visited the OSA archives where we were struck by the political resonances between the 1970s-80s and today. During our travels through Eastern Europe, we also visited cultural heritage sights like Memento Park, whose director will open the symposium for us today, and the Museum of the Polish People’s Republic in Nowa Huta, Krakow. 

I have memories of visiting Nowa Huta in the early 2000s. I remember driving through the streets in a Black Volga, the car associated with abduction and murder at the hands of the communist secret police. This was twenty years ago, and the tourist trail hadn’t reached Krakow. Communism wasn’t deemed a ‘tourist activity’. So, driving through what was one of the largest socialist districts ever built in a Black Volga did not go down well with the people who still worked at the largest steelworks and tobacco factory in Poland. The realities of Communism were, to a large extent, still in effect and the notion of ‘Replaying Communism’ aroused concern, distrust, and contempt. When I went back earlier this year, however, I noticed a commercialisation of daily life during Communism on a scale that I didn’t think possible. In Nowa Huta and in other cities across the former Soviet bloc you can ride through historically significant streets in old Communist era cars, go on guided tours of nuclear bunkers, walk through prison cells once used for interrogation and torture, dress up as citizens or Party members, even enjoy Soviet bloc-equivalent produce like Bambi or Ptasie Mleczko. It is this turning of the tide of lived experience to nostalgia that Anna and I have found worth researching. In this symposium, we aim to make sense of how this change in attitudes towards the Communist era has come about. We invite you to think about how the Communist era is being presented and discussed by creatives, politicians, and citizens. We also ask what impact these engagements with Communism has on the lives of those still living in the former Soviet bloc. Lastly, we welcome you to consider your own experience of Communism as it is replayed in fictional and political discourses. I’ll end with a quote from Kathleen Stewart’s slightly older publication Nostalgia: A Polemic from 1988 – the era in question for us – ‘nostalgia, like the economy is everywhere. But it is a cultural practice, not a given content; its forms, meanings and effects shift with the context – it depends on where the speaker stands in the landscape of the present.’ (p. 227)

November 2023

Since starting this project we’ve been recommended loads of great films that are set in the former Soviet bloc and depict life during the Communist era. As we are recommended more and more films and hear about new releases, our list of retro communist films continues to grow, so we thought we’d share our ‘top 5’ with you. This list is not intended to be a quality barometer that is solely concerned with the distinction between ‘good films’ and ‘good watches’. It’s also not a list consisting of the same Communist movies that would appear on IMDb or in Empire magazine. Rather, we intend for our ‘top 5’ to highlight two things: (1) the tonal shift in representations of Communism from immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall to today; and (2) the sustained interest in life during the Communist era and what this tells us about society today. (So, please don’t accuse us of ignoring some of the classics by directors like Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Miloš Forman, or Agnieszka Holland!)

Please note that as we’re focusing on films that ‘replay’ Communism, we’re not including at any film premiered before 1989. We are also excluding films that depict representations of Communism in countries other than the former Soviet bloc. Hence, well known films like Ken Loach’s 1995 Land and Freedom and Tomas Alfredson’s 2001 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are not included. This is because Loach’s film sees an English Communist leave Liverpool for Spain to fight against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War, and Alfredson’s adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel is concerned with a mole at the head of British Intelligence and is set in London (with only a brief scene in Budapest even though it’s Czechoslovakia in the novel). They’re worth mentioning here, though! 

The Top 5 

Przesłuchanie [Interrogation] (1989) dir. Ryszard Bugajski

Amintiri din epoca de aur [Tales from the Golden Age] (2009) dir. Hanno Höfer, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru, and Răzvan Mărculescu

Barbara (2012) dir. Christian Petzold

Nincs parancs! [No Command!] (2020) dir. Péter Szalay (documentary)

Nyugati nyaralás [Riviera East] (2022) dir. Dániel Tiszeker and Balázs Lévai

If ‘resistance’ here refers to the Hungarian government’s rejection of EU policies and values, what journalists have termed ‘Huxit’, Fico’s re-election adds grist to Orbán’s mill, strengthening the anti-EU stance of the Visegrad Four led by the right-wing Prime Ministers: Petr Fiala (Czechia), Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland), Fico (Slovakia), and Orbán (Hungary). 

Back to board games. In his article, Begy quotes the Egyptologist and cultural historian Jan Assmann who explains the link between the curation of a country’s heritage and its societal values: 

Through its cultural heritage a society becomes visible to itself and to others. Which past becomes evident in that heritage and which values emerge in its identificatory appropriation tells us much about the constitution and tendencies of a society (Assmann trans. by John Czaplicka, 1995, p. 133)

If read alongside Assmann’s comments about collective memory and cultural identity, ‘Pesti Srácok 1956’ forms an interesting object of analysis. It could enable us to understand how Hungary navigates instances of counter-factualism and patriotism within the fictional and real spaces of the game and of the Parliament. If, as Begy argues, ‘a culture’s ideas about the past are reflected in the objects it produces’ (p. 19), ‘Pesti Srácok 1956’ represents a divided culture. On the one hand it pays tribute to the valiant uprising of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. On the other hand, it is a manifestation of the rule bending and historical appropriation that constitutes much political discourse. Does the notion that the boys from Pest come out on top and ‘let freedom win’ give credence to other alternate notions of history and re-imagined cultural heritage? If so, which values will emerge triumphant for generations of Hungarians who did not experience the Revolution first-hand but whose early engagements with it were through fictionalised accounts or gameplay? 

Works cited

Assmann, J., & Czaplicka, J. (1995). ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.’ New German Critique, 65, 125–133.

Bauman, Zygmunt. (2017). Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity Press. 

Begy, Jason. (2015). ‘Board Games and the Construction of Cultural Memory’. Games and Culture, 12 (7-8), 1-21.

Boffey, Daniel. (2018). ‘Slovakian journalist investigating claims of tax fraud linked to ruling party shot dead.’ The Guardian, 26 February, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/slovakian-journalist-investigating-claims-of-tax-linked-to-ruling-party-shot-dead

Lowenthal, David. (2015). The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited. Cambridge: CUP. 

PM_ViktorOrban. (2023, October 1). ‘Guess who’s back! […]’, X, 1 October, https://twitter.com/PM_ViktorOrban/status/1708402386891358636

September 2023

We’re delighted to announce that the Programme for our online Symposium (1 Decebmer 2023) is now available on our website! 

We have a great line up (view it here) and we are excited to get the show on the road. Our speakers will invite us to think about representations of communism across different former Soviet bloc countries and through a range of conceptual themes. We hope to make this online symposium as interactive as possible and welcome comments from audience members during the ‘Questions and Discussion’ sections towards the end of each panel. 

The symposium is divided into three panels – museums, media, and rhetoric – which gives us a broad idea of how we’ll be thinking about representations of communism today. On top of this, at 2.15pm (UK) we welcome Professor Anikó Imre who will give her keynote presentation entitled ‘Communism as Global Storytelling’ (see our June blog for more info about Imre's work).

If you’d like to join us, please send an email to replayingcommunism@gmail.com or get in touch via our contact page. It would be our pleasure to welcome you! 

August 2023

As promised in our May blog, we're bringing you news from our research trip. We’re back from Budapest where we visited Memento Statue Park, the Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA), the House of Terror Museum, and the Budapest Retro Interactive Museum which promised 'fun behind the iron curtain'! 

Of all these places, we especially recommend: 

The OSA: it's a fantastic archive with a great library in the heart of Budapest (2 minutes’ walk from the Basilica). The Senior Reference Archivist, Robert Parnica, is very helpful - he made our week at the archives both pleasurable and productive. If you’re interested in post-war European history (especially in the former Soviet bloc), the Cold War, samizdat, propaganda, human rights, war crimes, etc. the OSA is worth a visit. They also hold small exhibitions in their courtyard space.

Memento Park: under the excellent direction of Judit Holp, this statue museum is well worth a visit. It’s in District XXII, so metro 4 (‘green line’) to Kelenföld and busses 101B or 101E will take you there. It’s an open-air museum consisting of communist statues that were once located throughout Budapest. If you're curious about its design and role in preserving and representing communist history, you can listen to BBC World Service podcaster, Laura Jones, talk with Judit Holp about Memento on ‘Witness History’. (You can also read Richard Collett’s BBC Travel article, ‘Budapest’s graveyard for communist statues’ from 15 December 2022.)

July 2023

One of the Replaying Communism project’s main themes is censorship. It’s a phenomenon that often crops up in television series and films that depict life during the Cold War. So, we’re dedicating the next four blogs to this theme. In the first three blogs, we offer a glimpse at the impact of censorship on literature (#1 Script), film (#2 Screen), and radio (#3 Sound) during the Communist era. In the fourth blog (#4 Society), we suggest how former Satellite countries are facing similarly authoritarian restrictions on freedom of expression today. 

CLICK HERE to read all four Censorship Blogs

If you’d like a list of our sources and/or to offer a comment, please send us an email! 

June 2023

We are delighted to announce that Anikó Imre will be a keynote speaker at the first Replaying Communism symposium. Anikó is Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Her internationally renowned research focuses on (post) socialist media industries and cultures as seen in her monographs: TV Socialism (published by Duke University Press in 2016) and Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the New Europe (published by MIT Press in 2011). Her scholarship on post-socialist television studies takes into consideration themes of populism and popular culture, digital surveillance, nationalism, race, gender, and sexuality. 

A large part of her work is dedicated to the de-Westernisation of television & media scholarship – an aim that we share in the Replaying Communism project and upcoming symposium. For a taste of Anikó’s work, we recommend the introduction to Popular Television in Eastern Europe During and Since Socialism (2012); an ever-relevant collection of essays she co-edited with Timothy Havens and Katalin Lustyik. 

For those interested in transnational television cultures, we recommend Anikó’s brilliant article ‘HBO’s e-EUtopia’ published in Media Industries (2018). Anikó’s reference to HBO’s e-EUtopia – a term derived from Julie Aveline’s understanding of the European Union as a digitally connected communication network or ‘e-society’ that prioritises supranational oneness over the particularities of national citizenship – suggests that HBO productions are conveying shared European ‘norms’ that promote a supranational Brand Europe. For Anikó, initiatives such as Television Without Frontiers has led to increasing division and imbalance, ‘moving Europe further and further away from the idea of a digitally networked e-Eutopia’. 

You can register to join us at the Replaying Communism symposium where we’ll be discussing the cultural memories of soviet occupation in European media with Anikó and others! 

May 2023

In the summer of 2023, RC in Hungary research will take place at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) in Budapest. The OSA, in affiliation with Centeral European University, has extensive holdings related to the history of the Cold War and grave international human rights violations, including a large collection of Radio Free Europe broadcasts. We'll keep you posted. 

April 2023

Good news! SkyShowtime has purchased the rights to A Besúgó from HBO and they have made the full first episode freely available on YouTube. The subtitles are only in Hungarian, but YouTube's auto-translate subtitling function can provide a decent viewing experience for those who are interested in the series and cannot view the pilot episode on any other platform. Our very own multi-lingual expert, Anna, has checked this for you!