Kurzus nemzetközi vendég- és részidős hallgatóknak

Kar

Bölcsészettudományi Kar

Szervezet

BTK Történeti Intézet

Kód

MA-ERA-IHS-S-3

Cím

Breakin' the Law. Challenging the Statethroughout the 20th century

Tervezett félév

Őszi

ECTS

8

Nyelv

Oktatás célja

Learning Outcomes and Teaching Materials. As learning outcomes, by the end of the course, students will be able to (1) distinguish between the main historical schools of dissidence: totalitarianism, revisionism, and post-revisionism.  (2) understand the complex dialectics between state and opposition. (3) understand how agency works and how to find examples. (4) understand the nuances of core-concepts like dissidence, opposition, pastime activity, youth unrest, counterculture. (5) be able use various types of primary sources, such as oral history interviews, archives, fanzines, autobiographies (6) create a personal archival file. Regarding teaching materials, I will use both primary sources and a critical bibliography. Firstly, the intention is to familiarize students with working with primary sources, such as archives, interviews, and autobiographies. A significant emphasis will be placed on familiarising with primary digital sources on Communism, such as the website https://fortepan.hu/ , https://www.osaarchivum.org/ , and the Courage database http: // cultural- opposition.eu/. In addition to working with digital archives, students will watch various interviews. The ultimate goal is to sensibilize them with oral history and encourage them to design their personal archive base. Secondly, I will refer to the critical works edited in Anglo-Saxon academia. Besides the linguistic advantage, using this extensive scholarship will help students understand the debates from a broader perspective. The intention is not to provide a comprehensive bibliography but to have primary material for debating ideas and offering a taste for these topics.

Tantárgy tartalma

Breaking the Law. Challenging the Socialist state. Short Description The discussion about the legacy of Communism is far from being over. On the one hand, the public political discourse revisits this period at certain key moments. On the other hand, a new generation of young people in Central and Eastern Europe, who have not witnessed socialist regimes, understand this period differently. Youngsters assert a particular fascination for various dissident movements. In this complicated relationship, the young generation and the dominant cultural discourse offer a different understanding of Che Guevara, Vaclav Havel, Tito, or even Stalin. Hence, there is a strong need for an updated course on the history of Communism, with a strong focus on the different ways to dissent. This course is situated at the intersection of multiple disciplines: literature, political science, history, and sociology. The focus will be given on adequately using historical contextualization and correctly using the terminology. From the introductive course, I will explain the different approaches of this large concept, named Communism, in the 20th century. I will explain the differences between totalitarian, revisionist, and post-revisionist schools of thought. I will also offer a transnational perspective, focusing not only on the Soviet Union but also on Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. The course on the history of dissent in Central and Eastern Europe has three aims. Firstly, this course will question the understanding of the idea of revolution by offering much more varied examples. Secondly, It aims to unfold the history of Communism by using another approach, that is, to see the agency of particular classes of people: revolutionaries, writers, and students in specific decades. Thus, the first part will be dedicated to appropriately contextualizing every decade starting from 1917 to 1989. Then, another axis would focus on the particular role of a specific category of people in this given decade. Through this, students can understand the main international events, how they influenced people, and how they influenced events in return.

Számonkérés és értékelés

Assessment Tasks. Evaluation:  30% active participation.        40% final term presentation- one source description and one book review.        30% final essay. The summative evaluation will be based on the final term presentation. It will be composed by an argumentative essay on a topic chosen by mutual agreement between teacher and student based on personal affinities and future projects.

Irodalomjegyzék

Structure   Week 1. Main Concepts. This session will unfold the main concepts that we will tackle throughout the year- Communism, socialism, dissidence. We will discuss about the context of modernity in the post-1848 Europe that favored the emergence of Communism. Primary source to discuss: Communist Manifesto. Required readings: Leslie Holmes, Communism: A Short Introduction, OUP, 2009, pp.1-16. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Volume 1 Weiner, Lauren. “What Is a Dissident?” In Totalitarianism on Screen, 35–54. The Art and Politics of The Lives of Others. University Press of Kentucky, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wrs65.5. Week 2. Modernization of Europe. The Second International. In one of his works, Leszek Kolakowski coined the term "The Golden Age of Marxism" to describe the period of the late 19th century, specifically referring to the zenith of the Second International. This session aims to explore and evaluate the extent to which this era truly represented the peak of Marxism and Communism. Additionally, we will delve into the influence of the extended Industrial Revolution on the emergence and development of socialist movements, emphasizing the intricate relationship between modernization and socialism. Required readings: Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Volume 2: The Golden Age of Marxism, pp.1-31 To watch- Arte Doku- Le temps des ouvriers,      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KygUNB4LHbM&ab_channel=FOArcelorMittal  Week 3. Revolutionary Russia.The revolutionary Historians like Eric Hobsbawn, Tony Judt, Sheila Fitzpatrick all agree that the Russian Revolution might be the most important event of the 20th century. Throughout this session, we explore the profound impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917. We will discover the pivotal role of the revolutionary figure as the driving force behind the revolution. This session aims to gain insights into the strategies and unwavering commitment of the Bolsheviks in shaping history. As a side discussion we will also focus on the the challenges and consequences of the Hungarian aftermath.  We will unveil the lasting significance of these revolutionary events, offering a deeper understanding of this transformative period in history. Document: V. I. Lenin: The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (a.k.a. the April Theses).” Accessed May 11, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm. Required reading: Chapter “The Party is Always Right” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution: 1917-1932. (Oxford University Press, 1984), 14-40 Deak. Istvan. Budapest and the Hungarian Revolutions, 1918-1989. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4205930 To watch- Dziga Vertov- Optional reading: Figes, Orlando. Revolutionary Russia: 1891-1991 (Metropolitan Books, 2014). Reed, John. Ten Days That Shook The World (Penguin Classics, 2007). Malia, Martin The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994)- Introduction, Chapters 1-2, Conclusion.   Week 4. The House of Government.The bureaucrats After the revolution, the state needed consolidations. Thus, each modern state needs a large apparatus of trustworthy bureaucrats. Since the Soviet Union needed a new class of administrative people, this session will be dedicated on the role of the elite in shaping the new state.  Reward and punishment mechanisms were employed to incentivize and control the behavior of these bureaucrats. Successful and loyal functionaries were often rewarded with career advancement, opportunities for further education and specialization, and access to privileges such as improved housing, healthcare, and consumer goods. This served as an encouragement for their commitment and dedication to the socialist cause. On the other hand, those who deviated from the party line or failed to meet the expectations of the state apparatus could face severe repercussions. Throughout this session, we will understand the ways of punishment.This could include demotion, reassignment to less desirable positions, loss of privileges, or even expulsion from the party and dismissal from their positions. The state exercised strict control over the conduct and loyalty of the bureaucratic elite to ensure adherence to socialist principles and maintain political stability. Key-words: nomenklatura, apparatchik, bureaucrat, administration, politburo   Document: https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg   Required reading: To watch:  Ilya Khrzhanovsky,Jekaterina Oertel- DAU, Natasha Slezkine, Yuri. The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. Illustrated edition. Princeton ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017.   Week 5. Caviar and Ashes.The artists In any modern state, the relationship between the artists and the state was always a difficult one. The socio-cultural class was prone to challenge the cultural hegemony, but also to support the revolution. The Russian Revolution challenged the perception about the artists. In few years, artists received heavy support from the state in case they complied with the party line. Document: Vladymyr Mayakowski, The Bedbug Required Reading: Chapter 6. Socialist Realism in Dobrenko, Evgeny, and Marina Balina. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Optional reading: Shore, Marci. Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Trencsenyi, Balazs. A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Negotiating Modernity in the “short Twentieth Century” and Beyond. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018, 121-162. Week 6. Peasants Under Siege: The peasants One of the key components of Communism was the nationalization of the lands. Throughout this session, we will investigate how the class of peasants was affected by the regime change. This class constituted the vast majority of the former Russian Empire, as well as Eastern and Central Europe. Some of them saw the revolution as a social ladder, others, on the contrary, were heavily affected by it. Throughout the session, we will focus on these two competing narratives. As well, we will try to understand the imperial legacy with a specific focus on the various nationalities that composed the Soviet Union, with a focus on Tatars and Ukrainians. Key-words: kulak, collectivization, holomodor,   Document: Yakhina.Guzel. Zuleiha Opens her Eyes (Oneworld Publication: 2020). Required reading: March Fever: Peasant Rebels and Kulak Insurrections in Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Appelbaum, Anne. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (Penguin, 2017). Optional Reading: Verdery, Katherine. Peasants Under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962. Cameron, Sarah. The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).   Week 7. Postwar Europe.The construction workers Throughout this session, we will explore the extent to which construction workers were favored by socialist regimes in postwar Europe. The period following World War II witnessed a surge in construction and infrastructure development, with socialist governments placing a strong emphasis on these projects as symbols of progress and modernization. Under socialist regimes, construction workers often enjoyed certain advantages and privileges. The socialist ideology emphasized the importance of labor and the working class, and construction workers, as key contributors to the physical transformation of cities and societies, were celebrated as heroes of progress. They were viewed as crucial agents in the realization of the socialist vision, tasked with building a new and more egalitarian society. Our focus will be particularly on Nowa Huta, a totally new city designed near Krakow. Document: Johannes Becher, Auferstanden aus Ruinen (German Democrat Republic Hymn)-1949 Required reading: Chapter Palaces on Monday in Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution: 1917-1932. (Oxford University Press, 1984), 67-89. Chapter 1.Unplanned City in  Lebow, Katherine. Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56 (Cornell University Press, 2016). Chapter 2. The New Man in Lebow, Katherine. Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56 (Cornell University Press, 2016) Week 8. Ways of Revising Marx.The revisionists Events such as the Prague Spring, the Polish March, the Belgrade protests from April 1968 and the Croatian Spring of 1970–1971 shook the post-Stalinist foundations of the Eastern bloc, but without managing to offer a viable political alternative. Civic initiatives replaced the “revisionist” discourse, and they became a new type of protest in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The youth started to challenge the hegemony of the Soviet Union Central Committee and the Eastern bloc political leaders. Throughout this session, we will revise to what extent  1968 brought the “death of revisionism”, as Adam Michnik and Tony Judt stated. By confronting the sources, we will examine whether the system could not fulfill the Communist “liberals’ demands”. Document: Kuroń, Jacek. An Open Letter to the Party. International Socialism, 1969.   Required reading: World Socialist Web Site. “Jacek Kuron’s ‘Open Letter to the Party’ and the Perspectives of the KOR.” Accessed May 17, 2023. https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/poland-1980-1981-solidarity-movement-perspective-political-revolution/04.html. Gildea, Robert, James Mark, and Anette Warring. Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt. 1 edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Kusin, Vladimir V. The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring: The Development of Reformist Ideas in Czechoslovakia 1956-1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Tismaneanu, Vladimir. Promises of 1968. First edition. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011. ———. Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism. 1st edition. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2003.   Week 9. Dropping Out of Socialism. Eastern European hippies From the late 1960s, youngsters defined themselves not as members of an ethnicity, nation, class, but rather according to their music tastes.  That is why this session will be dedicated to Eastern and Central European hippies. Throughout this session, we will discuss how inventions like phonographs, recording platforms, and amplifying sound systems created a new medium of acoustic perception. Throughout this meeting, we will discuss the technical aspects of the recorded sound (the record, X-Ray record), amplification systems (Marshall, Fender), but also transmission improvements, like long-wave radio, short-wave radio. We will focus on how these technical improvements created the context for music to be a political tool. Document: “‘Hungarian Hippy Movement Growing’ in HU OSA 300-40-4. Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: Hungarian Unit: Information Items. Box 7. File Youth Hippies, 1968-1970.” Accessed January 20, 2020. http://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/nO2vmk4E. “‘Item No.491/69, Hungarian Youth’s Admiration of the West and of the Beatnik and Hippy Movements’ in HU OSA 300-40-4. Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: Hungarian Unit: Information Items. Box 7. File Youth Hippies, 1968-1970.” Accessed January 20, 2020. http://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/nO2vmk4E. The Vinyl Factory. (2016). X-Ray Audio Soviet Records Bootleg. [video] Available at: https://thevinylfactory.com/films/x-ray-audio-soviet-bootleg-records-documentary/ (Links to an external site.)  (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)   Required readings: Judt, T. (2005) ‘The Spectre of Revolution’, in Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, pp.390-421. Furst, J. (2016). ‘We All Live in a Yellow Submarine’. In: Dropping out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc. Lexington Books. (the whole chapter) Rauhut, Michael, and Thomas Kochan, eds. Bye bye, Lübben City: Bluesfreaks, Tramps und Hippies in der DDR [Bye bye, Lübben city. Blues freaks, tramps and hippies in the GDR]. Berlin: Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, 2004. Miklós Haraszti, The Velvet Prison : Artists under State Socialism, Noonday Press edition. (Noonday Press, 1987). György Dalos, Archipel Gulasch: Die Entstehung der demokratischen Opposition in Ungarn (Bremen: Donat & Temmen, 1986); Miklós Haraszti, Stücklohn (Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1975). Week 10. Broadcasting Freedom? The Western journalist Listening to RFE was not tolerated by the Communist regime, and thus Secret Police harassed the teenagers listening to them. By referring to RFE Archives, oral testimonies, and Secret Police records, this session will refer to a particular object: the letters teenagers sent to RFE to ask for their favorite songs. Each of the actors involved in this transnational correspondence understood such documents' meaning in a different key. The senders wanted to assert their cultural affinities, Radio Free Europe read the letters as a confirmation of its successful broadcasts and Secret Police saw it as a threatening activity. The chapter aims to unveil the strategies used by RFE, teenagers and Securitate to stop or continue this correspondence because, for each of the parts, the letters had their symbolic meaning. Document: TELEX Files. Required readings: This Is Radio Free Europe (1964), 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jyqEB5Q6Xg. How Radio Won the Cold War, The Cold War Channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhDxsbDmYSY [Basic-Mandatory] Optional readings: Johnson, A. Ross, and R. Eugene Parta. Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe : A Collection of Studies and Documents. Central European University Press, 2010. Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Week 11.Tools: Dissident as a teenager Throughout this session, we will visit the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, where we will discuss about the materiality of the sources, the content, the catalogue, the way in which the archivists store these collections. The source under discussion will be a series, consisting of the correspondence received by Géza Ekecs, the long-time editor of a very popular musical program of the Hungarian Broadcasting Department called Teenager Party. The program, which he led under the pseudonym of Cseke László, existed between 1959-1992. In most of the cases the letters, which were sent by listeners from all over Hungary and the neighboring countries and somehow found their ways through the Iron Curtain, contained requests for certain pop-rock musical pieces to be broadcast in the program. The aim is to understand the relevance of an archive, and the discussion will revolve around the question: ‘Why are these letters historical materials?’   Week 12.Tools: Mapping the dissenters. What is the impact of digital humanities in mapping the dissident movements? For that, throughout this session we will have first of all to make a clarification between the main categories of Digital Humanities, now a focal point of discussion: data visualization, coding, collections, spatial geometry, big data. Our discussion will focus on particular initiatives that aimed to use the sources created by dissidents in a new way. Documents: Fortepan- https://fortepan.hu/ COURAGE- Connecting Collections- http://cultural-opposition.eu/ Vera and Donald Blinken OSA- https://www.osaarchivum.org/digital-repository   Required Reading Toni Weller, Introduction in ‘ Toni Weller (editor) - History in the Digital Age-Routledge (2012) , 1-21.   Week 13.Tools: Schools of thought The last session’s aim is to understand critically the different schools of thought that revolved around the topic of dissidence in the Cold War. We will discuss about traditionalist, revisionist, post-revisionist, cultural, and post-cold war schools of thought. As well, we will place the semester’s readings into different categories. Week 14.Presentations

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