Talk on István Rév
Andrea Talabér recently presented the work of Hungarian historian and Open Society Archives director István Rév, together with articles from Népszabadság covering the official 15 March celebrations of 1967 and 1974. Andrea outlined Rév’s focus on the function of show trials, and the manipulation of personal histories (not to mention historical dates), within the context of a broader discussion of competing historical narratives, and national holidays and official ritual under socialism.
With reference to Rév’s work (in particular, the essays in Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Postcommunism, Stanford CA, 2005), Andrea noted the sheer number of ‘revolutionary’ public holidays in the early 1970s, (re-)burial practices, and archival ‘findings’ produced to rewrite history. Reading the Népszabadság articles (‘Gazdag program a forradalmi ifjúsági napokon’, 1967, and ‘Forradalmár elődeinkez méltóan dolgozunk, harcolunk’, 1974), we discussed the elevation of 1848 and erasure of 1919 from Hungarian Communist chronology, convergent interpretations of 1956 as an anti-Communist revolt, as well as the more general coincidence of rhetorical styles adopted by the Kádár regime and, the subject of a number of our earlier talks, the contemporary Right.