April 7 - April 13, 2010

Deadline for applications: 10th February, 2010

OSA Archivum,
Arany János utca 32,
1051, Budapest

The twentieth anniversary of the 1989 regime change has inspired debate about Communist legacies and the impact of the Cold War on transition in Eastern Europe. Much of this debate has focused on either the agents that contributed to its demise or an analysis of the transition as a struggle for European (re)integration. In both cases the destinies of former Communist countries are subjected to linear narratives that converge towards a vision of teleological (self-)liberation. But paradoxically this keen interest in the past met with a great deal of local epistemological reticence when it came down to the question of applied research and recent history. This can be correlated to a paucity of meta-reflections on Cold War Studies paradigms and a difficulty of gaining access to archival records of Cold War propaganda. A case in point is that of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which continues to stir up sentiment but remains underexplored due to enduring trauma and the inability to access source material.