ABSTRACT
Cold War Hungary was known for “gulyas communism,” which most people understood in economic terms as greater prosperity than other countries under Soviet domination. But the Kadar regime installed after the 1956 Revolution, and at the helm when the socialist regime was dismantled in 1989—1990, was conversely more oppressive in the civic and cultural spheres. Art of the Cold War period in Hungary thus falls roughly into an era of near isolation until the early sixties, a period of unpredictable tolerance until about 1975, and eventually the period of nearly-normalized contact in the eighties. Party ideology enforced by the Soviet military and police presence in Hungary determined the Communist Party’s prescription of Socialist Realism in all art forms. Concurrently, artists in Hungary were determined to nurture their forbidden heritage: orientation to “The West.” Before cultural restrictions hardened in the early seventies, a handful of essays concerned with American art were published in diverse journals.
