Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 206-2-4

Title

Fifty Years Ago It Was a Hundred Years Ago

Date(s)

1998

Description Level

Series

Context

Name of creator(s)

Open Society Archives at Central European University

Content and Structure

Scope and Content (Abstract)

On the 100th anniversary of the 1948 Revolution, and the 50the anniversary of the 1948 Communist takeover in Hungary the Open Society Archives has curated and exhibition on the interpretation of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution and Freedom Fight.

Scope and Content (Narrative)

This multi-media exhibition revealed the various ways in which the1848 Hungarian revolution and war of independence had been remembered, celebrated, interpreted, and represented in Hungary over the last 50 years. The narrative started with the year 1948, when the Hungarian Communist Party seized power. The centennial festivities of that year - directed by the Party -- transformed the memory of 1848 into an early, heroic manifestation of communist ideals. The 1956 uprising denied that image by holding up the events of 1848 as the shining example of Hungarians' fight against foreign and domestic oppression and the legendary motivation and courage of the "March Youth" to defy authority.
In the years following the failure of the 56 uprising, the celebration of 1848 became a delicate and potentially dangerous issue - the spontaneous, unofficial commemorative events which stressed national freedom and independence from the Soviet Union were often brutally terminated by the police. After the fall of the communist regime "March 15" again rose to the rank of the officially cherished, majestic national holiday. Additionally, the newly arising right wing groups create another image of the 48 revolution and its leaders: by arguing that the great poet Petofi did not die, but was captured by the Russian Czar's troops and taken to Siberia, they and associate his figure with those thousands of martyrs who were tortured and worked to death in Gulag by the Soviet state, thus linking the poet of the 1848 revolution to the tradition of anti-communist resistance.
The exhibition demonstrated the main stages of this process with the help of contemporary paintings, statues, drawings, monument plans and models, newsreels, short films, press articles, political speech transcripts and other commemorative paraphernalia that come in the most surprising shapes and forms.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling information

Following the processing of both the hard copy and digital (or digitized) records of the exhibition, they will be accessible for research at OSA's Research Room. The collection is to contain other materials as well, those that were assembled by the curators during the research period of the exhibition, and also the ones that document the exhibition itself.

Accruals

Not Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Conditions governing access

Not restricted

Languages

English, Hungarian