1956, Resistance and Cultural Opposition in East Central
Europe
The Hungarian Historical Review
Deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 15, 2016.
Since 1989, former socialist countries have been in the process of constructing and negotiating their relationships with their recent past, which includes their stories of resistance, revolts and cultural opposition. Opposition is
typically understood in a narrow sense as referring to open political resistance to communist governments. We propose a more nuanced historical conception of resistance, opposition and revolts, expanding the concept
towards broader frameworks of political participation in order to facilitate a better understanding of how dissent and criticism were possible in the former socialist regimes of Eastern Europe. Since the authorities tried to control
public spheres and there were no opportunities for democratic public debates, several critical movements (democratic, Church related or nationalist opposition) decided to establish underground public spheres and declared open opposition to the socialist state. However, several cultural groups with no open political program (e. g. avant-garde art, alternative religious communities, youth culture) were also regarded as forms of opposition and branded as such by the authorities, and, as a result, they were also forced underground.
Possible topics include:
Individuals, institutions, groups and networks of cultural opposition;
New perspectives of revolts (1956, 1968, 1981) against the Communist regimes;
Members of the “hard-core” democratic opposition, who were banned during the socialist period (including the world of samizdat publications, art movements, and non-official lectures);
Activities and networks of elite and intellectual groups of the opposition;
Radical and experimental theatre;
Underground and non-conformist youth and popular culture;
Religious groups and institutions and their roles in the opposition;
Cultural and scientific institutions, which implemented the research agenda of the opposition (e.g. research on poverty in the communist regimes).
We invite the submission of abstracts on the questions and topics raised
above.
We provide proofreading for contributors who are not native speakers of
English.
Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short biographical
sketch with a selected list of the author’s five most important publications
(we do not accept full CVs).
The editors will ask the authors of selected papers (max. 10 000 words) to
submit their final articles no later than June 16, 2016. The articles will be
published after a peer-review process.
All articles must conform to our submission guidelines:
http://hunghist.org/index.php/for-authors.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 15, 2016.
Proposals should be submitted by email: hunghist@btk.mta.hu
The Hungarian Historical Review is a peer-reviewed international journal of
the
social sciences and humanities the geographical focus of which is Hungary and
East-Central Europe.
For additional information, including submission guidelines, please visit the
journal’s
website: http://www.hunghist.org
The Hungarian Historical Review
Published quarterly by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Research Centre for the Humanities
Institute of History
30 Országház utca, Budapest H – 1014, Hungary
Email: hunghist@btk.mta.hu
Website: www.hunghist.org
