Suchergebnisse

Milan Kundera warned that in in the states of East-Central Europe, attitudes to the west and the idea of Europe' were complex and could even be hostile. But few could have imagined how the collapse of communism and membership of the EU would confront these countries with a life that was suddenly and disconcertingly modern' and which challenged sustaining traditions in literature, culture, politics and established views on identity. Since the countries of East-Central Europe joined the European Union in 2004 the politicians and oppositionists of the centre-left, who once led the charge against communism, have often been forced to give way to right-wing, authoritarian, populist governments. These governments, while keen to accept EU finance, have been determined to present themselves as protecting their traditional ethno-national inheritance, resisting foreign interference', stemming the gay invasion', halting Islamic replacement' and reversing women's rights. They have blamed Communists, liberals, foreigners, Jews and Gypsies, revised abortion laws, tampered with their constitutions to control the Justice system and taken over the media to an astonishing degree. By 2019, amid calls for the suspension of their voting rights, both Poland and Hungary had been taken to the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament and had begun to explore ways to put conditions on future EU funding. This book focuses on the interface between tradition, literature and politics in east-central Europe, focusing mainly on Poland but also Hungary and the Czech Republic. It explores literary tradition and the role of writers to ask why these left-liberals, who were once ubiquitous in the struggles with communism, are now marginalised, often reviled and almost entirely absent from political debate. It asks, in what ways the advent of capitalism normalised' literature and what the consequences might be? It asks whether the rise of chauvinism is normal' in this part of the world and whether the literary traditions that helped sustain independent political thought through the communist years now, instead of supporting literature, feed nationalist opinion and negative attitudes to the idea of Europe'.

Carl Tighe has written a great deal about the interface between politics and literature in Poland, much of it published in the Journal of European Studies. Here he outlines some of the personal experience behind his articles.

In his early twenties Marek Hłasko (1934–69), an 'angry young man' and a rare 'authentic' working-class voice, became the great literary hope of the Polish Communist Party. In the space of a few months, and at a crucial moment in post-war Polish history, he made his literary debut, published two books, received the Polish State Literary Prize and instantly became a popular youth-hero and celebrity rebel. But just as rapidly he became an exile, an outcast and a pariah. In the West he found 'freedom' as difficult to negotiate as life under communism, and while he continued to write, after 11 nomadic years he died of an overdose. His life and his writing are of one piece: his career trajectory illustrates how the Party could operate to promote writers it favoured, but to block and isolate those who opposed it.

In 1848 Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto. The opening line claimed: 'A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.' In Poland the experience of more than 40 years of communism and the fear that 'reds' still secretly control the government haunts the present. This article explores the emerging political culture and the volatile political climate of post-communist Poland. In particular it looks at the various attempts at lustration as part of transitional justice, at the Kaczyński brothers' plan to redefine national identity by establishing a moral Fourth Republic, and at the involvement of writers, reporters and film-makers in the lustration debate.

This article follows the experience of Polish writers in the first decade of communism. Although the Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Poland, for almost all Poles communist rule brought pain and confusion. For several years the Resistance waged a war against the incoming communists. Poles connected to the London Government in Exile and the AK (Home Army) faced arrest and imprisonment; those who had spent the war abroad had to decide whether or not to return; those who had spent the war in the USSR had an intimate knowledge of what Soviet communism was capable but little choice other than to accept the 'new reality'. For Polish writers, who were by tradition social and political leaders, the Party was something of a rival, but one with which they shared certain aims. Their decision eventually resolved itself into one question: how far should they compromise in order to write and survive?

This article is concerned with Milan Kundera's essay 'A kidnapped West, or Culture bows out', which first appeared in 1984. It considers Kundera's essay in the context of the Reagan/Thatcher/Kohl era, examining the mythical elements of Kundera's 'Central Europe', its diversity and its unifying elements. Rather than regard the essay as a museum piece, the article reflects on Kundera's lasting and unresolved concern with the impact of totalitarianism – communist, Nazi and capitalist – on European identity and culture.

Jan Kochanowski was probably the key figure in Polish Literary humanism. His lifetime spanned the 'golden years' of the Polish Renaissance and almost everything he wrote was a 'first' in Polish literature. Upon his retirement from the royal court to his hereditary estate, Kochanowski wrote Treny, a lament for his dead daughter. This moving and complex sequence of poems can be seen as reflecting and summarizing the achievements and limitations of humanism in Poland. Kochanowski's writing and his career as a courtier provide us with an insight into the Polish nobility and the Polish state at the height of their power and wealth. This article is not aimed at the specialist in Polish literature or Slavonic studies, but seeks to introduce Kochanowski to English readers.

In the spring of 1989 Carl Tighe applied to the British Council Specialist Tours Department for a research grant to go to Hungary to talk with writers about their work and their relationship to the state. By the time the tour happened in December 1990, communism had collapsed, the map of Europe had changed massively and the theme of the research was irrelevant. Instead of cancelling the visit he used it to talk to writers about the change to democracy and how it affected them. He heard writers debate the urgent need to re-think the Hungarian national identity, saw them abandon writing and leap into the new politics, and witnessed the sudden re-emergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsy feeling as serious political strategies. Here he recounts his visit and draws attention to the development of these elements, in particular the growth of the radical nationalist party, Jobbik, and events during the 2009 European elections in Hungary.

Franz Alfred Six, though he had a low profile within the Nazi regime, was a university dean, a senior officer in the Reich Security Service, leader of an Einsatz unit, a diplomat and a leading Nazi ideologue. He was sentenced at Nuremberg for war crimes, then freed and recruited into the Gehlen organization where he is said to have taken part in the insertion of agents into eastern Europe, helped foment the Hungarian Uprising, assisted with the creation of the Green Berets and later trained Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. His career trajectory raises awkward questions about how de-Nazification was undermined by sections of Western intelligence, the role that Nazis played in post-war politics and about the very nature of the Cold War.

Is it at all possible that no trace should be left of the Jewish presence in Eastern Europe? Some traces are certainly left; but whether in the long run they will have more meaning than the traces that the Red Indians have left on the American civilisation of today is another matter.