ABSTRACT
The late 1940s are probably one of the key periods in the history of European culture. I mean several years, not just 1945, since the Sovietization of culture in Central Europe was not a single event, but a long process that took several years and did not develop at the same speed in all the countries of the new Eastern Bloc. In Romania, decisions about culture were taken quite quickly, in contrast to Czechoslovakia, which kept its multiparty democratic system until the communist coup d’etat in February 1948; this was only the beginning of the Sovietization of culture, although, paradoxically, a very hard line in cultural policy was introduced more or less at the time of Stalin’s death in March 1953. It should be added that the famous monument of the Leader, towering over the city of Prague, was built after his death. In Poland and Hungary, the process continued for much longer than in Romania and in different political frames of reference, even though communists seized uncontrolled power in both countries as early as 1945. Polish and Hungarian artists enjoyed a certain degree of freedom for some time and hoped—in vain, as soon became clear—not only that they would be able to keep their artistic liberties, but also, as is rarely remembered, that they would be allowed to contribute to the new reality. Soviet domination and the new political regime were, of course, imposed on the countries of Central Europe violently, but on the other hand, the communists very skillfully relied on the leftist and critical tendencies, strong among the intelligentsia in the 1930s. Many artists and intellectuals, both in Hungary and in Poland, accepted the new political system as a genuine promise to create a utopia, and not until the 1940s did the socialist realism imposed everywhere as the one officially recognized convention allowed in the public sphere largely undermine that hope. After the fall of Stalinism, during the time of the Thaw initiated by Khrushchev’s speech of early 1956, such hopes never reappeared in the artistic culture of the region. Besides, it should be remembered that in Czechoslovakia the Thaw came much later, and in Romania it came as late as the mid-1960s, while in Hungary, 1956 was the year of bloody atrocities after the Budapest Uprising. Only in Poland did the Thaw progress fairly rapidly in the late 1950s—more rapidly and deeply than in the USSR itself.
