Literary Pax Sovietica: National Revival and Cultural Unification in Post-War Eastern Europe

In the present-day reality, where nearly all major cultural and political projects have an international character, it is all the more vital to examine past attempts at the creation of a unified cultural and political sphere. The expansion of socialist rule into Eastern Europe after World War II was not exclusively a political enterprise; to no smaller an extent it was an exercise in transforming the national consciousness of the societies involved in the spirit of (forced) internationalism. In so far as literature is at the core of a nation's identity, it is important to examine steps taken towards a unification of literary production and consumption following the introduction of socialist rule in East European countries, during the formative years of the new world order.
At the same time, it is crucial to remember that only in a comparative context can researchers do justice to the complexity of the matter. Concentrating on a particular national context cannot give one a full idea of the cultural and political mechanics involved in the construction of the new totalitarian reality. For this reason the project will examine processes related to the institutionalisation of the production and consumption of literature during the first post-WWII decade in four East European countries, which exemplify different literary and political traditions - the GDR, Poland, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. The research team will investigate how similar events and procedures (all initiated by Soviet authorities) were adapted to specific cultural contexts and how, in turn, the centralised cultural policy responded to the particularities of each country. The team will study primary archival documents - both openly published and secret reports of writers' congresses, transcripts of meetings between writers and readers, as well as between writers and party officials, materials of international literary and cultural events, propagandistic texts and practical instructions related to the implementation of a unified Socialist Realist method of writing across Eastern Europe. By comparing and contrasting similar events and processes in the different cultural and political contexts, we should be able to achieve a fuller picture of the formation of socialist ideology in Eastern Europe, the foundations of the Cold War and, to a large extent, the building blocks of the recent cultural memory that is part and parcel of the European cultural heritage today.

Cultural centres:
Given the nature of the research, it is logical that the results be introduced to the public interested in the history of Eastern Europe and the particular cultures which will be in the focus of this project. This will be done by means of organising at the Cultural Centres of Bulgaria, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic in London exhibitions on the topics covered by the project and offering there a series of related talks (to be prepared and presented by the PI and the RA). The Bulgarian Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre, the Goethe-Institut and the Polish Cultural Institute have all expressed interest in the organisation of the exhibitions and in the public talks. The cultural departments of the embassies confirmed their willingness to contribute financially towards the organisation of the events.

Non-academic archival institutions and document centres:
In the framework of the project, research collaboration with the following institutions is planned: Institute for Studies of the Recent Past, Sofia (in cooperation with the Institute for Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences); The Institute of National Rememberance,Warsaw; the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Prague (in cooperation with the Institute for Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic); The Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED-Dictatorship, Berlin. All these organisations have a rich experience in the organisation of exhibitions and talks for the broad interested public. It is expected that the preliminary cooperation in the framework of the project will result in further research cooperation in the future.

Policy makers:
An additional group of potential beneficiaries who are likely to be interested in the project and in the outcomes of the research are policy makers that work on organizing pan-European cultural events, in particular those involving East European countries. At this moment no direct contact has been established with relevant bodies, but it is to be hoped that such contacts will be established through the cultural institutes mentioned above. It is important to note that, following the expansion of the European Union to the East and the lifting of employment restrictions for citizens from Eastern Europe, millions of citizens of the former socialist countries have relocated to Great Britain. An understanding of their cultural background is necessary for a full integration of these people into society.