Neither objective nor subjective

In journalism subjectivity is not the binary opposite of objectivity. The protagonists on both sides of the Cold War propaganda war were engaged in neither objective nor subjective journalism. While Western journalists working in the trenches of the Cold War at Radio Free Europe or Voice of America used the “mimicry of objectivism” and the “aura of objectivity” as their weapons to counter political propaganda from the East, journalists behind the Iron Curtain were consciously and proudly committed to direct propaganda as the only effective way of intervening in the affairs of the world. This introductory essay suggests a historical frame for interpreting the different practices of the two sides. The three papers that follow this introduction, all based on detailed archival work, analyze different aspects of the unprecedented propaganda Cold War. This war was fought under a serious constraint: the grave shortage of information from the opposing side. Working under conditions of uncertainty, reliable information was substituted by either self-delusion, wild fantasies, hearsay, lies, or unjustifiable trust in unreliable information. The papers attempt to bring the reader closer to an era that seems to be the opposite of ours: instead of an information deluge, propagandists, pundits, and analysts of the Cold War were forced to live with a dearth of information.Published versio

Why does intellectual property matter?

Adaptált digitalizált tankönyv. Az ELTE Fogyatékosügyi Központja a fogyatékossággal élő hallgatók megsegítése céljából tankönyveket adaptál. A tananyag akadálymentes, adaptált változata az arra jogosult (a fogyatékosügyi koordinátoroknál regisztrált) hallgatók számára érhető el

The Man in the White Raincoat

In the late morning of 30 October 1956, revolutionaries attacked the headquarters of the Budapest Party committee, next to the City Opera in the eighth district of the city. Most probably, it was not a well-planned, premeditated siege; the attack was triggered by unsubstantiated and never confirmed beliefs about the existence in the cellars of underground prisons and torture chambers with hundreds of prisoners, women and children among them. The Ministry of Defense sent six tanks to assist th..

13. Counterrevolution

A legal case that had been under consideration for seventy-three years was closed on 28 November 1994 in an open session of the Supreme Court of the Hungarian Republic. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence brought against Mihály Francia Kiss in 1957 for war crimes and other criminal acts by the Council of the People’s Tribunal of the Supreme Court of the Hungarian People’s Republic. The Supreme Court reexamined the case on the appeal of Francia Kiss’s bereaved daughter. Since according..

Liberty Square, Budapest: How Hungary Won the Second World War

After more than sixty years of almost complete silence about its role in the Second World War, Hungary managed to find an officially satisfactory and morally uplifting story of the country’s involvement in the war. One of the central squares of Budapest offers a vivid, sensual, and tangible demonstration of both the futile past efforts of coming to grips with a difficult past and the unexpected recent solution. The square, its monuments and artefacts provide a spatial trace of historical and historiographical contentions and controversies of the past decades and the future to come.Published versio

13. Counterrevolution

A legal case that had been under consideration for seventy-three years was closed on 28 November 1994 in an open session of the Supreme Court of the Hungarian Republic. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence brought against Mihály Francia Kiss in 1957 for war crimes and other criminal acts by the Council of the People’s Tribunal of the Supreme Court of the Hungarian People’s Republic. The Supreme Court reexamined the case on the appeal of Francia Kiss’s bereaved daughter. Since according..

Ten years on from the Budapest Open Access Initiative: setting the default to open

La traducció al català ha estat coordinada i revisada per l’Oficina de Difusió del Coneixement, Centre de Recursos per a l’Aprenentatge i la Investigació (CRAI) de la Universitat de Barcelona.Fa deu anys, la Iniciativa sobre l’accés obert de Budapest (Budapest Open Access Initiative, BOAI) va iniciar una campanya mundial per a l’accés obert a tots els nous resultats de la recerca revisats per parells. Aquesta iniciativa no va inventar la idea de l’accés obert, sinó que, de manera deliberada, va reunir els projectes existents per explorar com podrien «treballar junts per aconseguir l’èxit de manera més àmplia, més profunda i més ràpida». La BOAI, però, sí que va ser la primera iniciativa que va fer servir el terme accés obert amb aquest objectiu; la primera que va articular una definició pública d’accés obert; la primera que va proposar estratègies complementàries per fer realitat l’accés obert; la primera que va generalitzar les crides a favor de l’accés obert a totes les disciplines i països, i la primera que va anar acompanyada d’un finançament significatiu

Past for the Eyes

How do museums and cinema shape the image of the Communist past in today’s Central and Eastern Europe? This volume is the first systematic analysis of how visual techniques are used to understand and put into context the former regimes. After history “ended” in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, museums and other memorials mushroomed all over the region. These efforts tried both to explain the meaning of this lost history, as well as to shape public opinion on their society’s shared post-war heritage. Museums and films made political use of recollections of the recent past, and employed selected museum, memorial, and media tools and tactics to make its political intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from scholars around the region take a fresh look at the subject as they address the strategies of fashioning popular perceptions of the recent past. "Books on the CEE transformations that deal with media and popular cultures should be welcomed. Past for the Eyes belongs to this extraordinary breed. The book is devoted to the visual representations of the socialist / communist past and the forms they took. The interconnected processes of visualization of the past, and the collective memory sedimentation are the main focus. The book brings together perspectives of linked but still distinctive ways of enquiry: visual studies, cultural studies, area studies, museum studies and contemporary history with its passion for ethnography and oral evidence