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

If you'd like your resaerch to be considered for publication in an edited collection, check out our Call for Chapter submissions below. 

After a successful symposium that took place on 1 December 2023, the co-founders of the multi-disciplinary ‘Replaying Communism’ project (which received funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council) are looking for contributors to an edited collection entitled: Replaying Communism: Memories of Soviet Occupation in European Media and Culture. 

The book explores the cultural memory of Communist regimes in former Soviet satellite states, as portrayed in twenty-first-century media, cultural sites, and political rhetoric. The editors welcome submissions that examine contemporary portrayals of the Communist occupation of Central and Eastern Europe (1945-1990). 

The editors are looking for chapters that ask one or more of the following questions: 

·      Why is contemporary media ‘replaying communism’?

·      How do various media, cultural sites, and publications represent the Communist past?

·      How and in what ways have representations of ‘Eastern European’ identities changed?

·      How does contemporary media and culture created by artists/journalists born after 1989 differ to that by creatives who experienced Communism first-hand? And what impact is this having on the narrative of the Communist era?

·      Who controls representations of the Communist era (large technology conglomerates, governments, cultural institutions, privately owned media outlets, etc.) and in what ways does this shape our understanding of Communism? 

·      What can we gain from both scholarly and creative engagements with the synergies between the Communist era and today? 

The edited collection welcomes analyses of cultural memories of the Communist era in fictive and non-fictive accounts across all media and cultural institutions from a wide range of perspectives that include:

·      Nostalgia for communism or Ostalgie

·      Postcolonial perspectives (Eastern European identities)

·      Heritage and museum studies

·      Archiving Communism

·      Media studies (television; film; journalism; gaming)

·      Literary studies

·      Art historical approaches

·      Musicology

Please submit your abstracts (250 words) and bio to the editors Dr Lucy Jeffery and Dr Anna Váradi replayingcommunism@gmail.com by 19 January 2024.

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)

December 2023

The date for our first symposium is nearly here. If you're interested in joining, please get in touch via our contact page. We have a fantastic line-up and can't wait to enrich our understanding of cultural memories of Soviet occupation in European media. 

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! 

February 2023

The researchers leading the RC project conducted an exclusive interview with Bálint Szentgyörgyi, the writer-director of A Besúgó. They talked about the inspiration behind the TV series, its global reception, and what Eastern European cinema and television might mean. The conversation will lead to publications about Szentgyörgyi and his work. A translated and contextualised version of the interview is forthcoming... watch this space! 

Many thanks to Bálint for collaborating with us and dedicating his time to answer our questions. We hope to do it again sometime!