Blinken OSA tried to prepare for the notable events, anniversaries and programs of 2017. Then something unforeseen, unexpected, and inexplicable happened: without warning, the Hungarian government pushed a new higher education law through Parliament in just a few days in order to make the work of Central European University impossible in its hometown, Budapest. The immediate reaction was a huge, spontaneous demonstration in Budapest with tens of thousands of demonstrators, a world-wide reaction of solidarity from hundreds of the best universities of the world, petitions were signed by dozens and dozens of Nobel laureates. The University decided not to give in, and its fight became the global symbol of the defense of academic freedom against populist, demagogic state intervention. The Archives, as part of the University, works and lives in a deliberately maintained state of existential uncertainty, but it is determined to continue its important, high-quality and unorthodox activities in Budapest, whatever new tricks the government may try to invent to make our work impossible.

2017 was the second year of our program series devoted to different aspects of the history of Communism. We organized an exhibition and additional programs on the Symbols of Socialist Art, which we opened up to both university and high-school students.

OSA, in collaboration with the Calvert 22 Foundation (London), the Universität Bayreuth, EGEAC – Galerias Municipais and Africa.Cont (Lisbon), organized the exhibition “Red Africa: Things Fall Apart” on the devastating Communist experiments on the African continent. The exhibition and the related film series demonstrated that in the second half of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and its satellites played a more defining role in the fate of the newly independent countries than the former colonial powers did. The current situation in large parts of Africa (and in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan) is not only the consequence of long colonial rule, but also that of the direct or indirect intervention, economic and military “assistance” of the Soviet Union and its East and Central European allies. To claim that today’s so-called migration crisis should be solved by those who caused it, that is, the former colonizers, while Central European countries bear no responsibility, is no more than baseless historical demagoguery. 

After several years of preparation, in collaboration with Afghan and Russian archives and collections, we launched a complex program, “Graveyard of Empires” on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Blinken OSA curated an exhibition depicting the war from multiple perspectives, from the story of the Afghan communist movement to the anti-Soviet rebellion. The exhibition ended with the regaining of state sovereignty but the beginning of an even bloodier civil war, international incursions and the present-day conflagration with the National Unity government controlling only slightly more than half the national territory. The critically acclaimed program demonstrated that the Soviet intervention in the country, traditionally torn by ethnic and religious conflicts and war, can be compared to a biopsy performed on a cancerous body: the result was a metastasis of the deadly disease with consequences ranging from 9/11 to the present global refugee crisis. 

While pathetic official historical revisionism in Hungary claimed that the Bolshevik Revolution was no more than a German financed military putsch, The Archives organized a complex program, “Traces of the Revolution”, in order to reevaluate the historical significance, the tragic global consequences, and the moral lessons on the centenary of the Revolution. We held a high-school student debate, organized a symposium, and commissioned a space-specific performance of Heiner Müller’s play, “Mauser”. The East-German playwright, whose works were regularly banned in East-Germany, wrote a critical paraphrase of Bertolt Brecht’s 1929 work, “Taking Action”. The performance, which focused on the moral issues of revolutionary violence, was the only serious reflection on the historical and moral questions one should raise today about the Bolshevik Revolution in a country whose future and whose chances of restoring its democratic institutions are wrapped in complete uncertainty.

In 2017, Blinken OSA made special efforts to attract children from primary schools, high-school and university students into the Archives. We organized special museum-pedagogy programs (especially with the “Gaudiopolis” exhibition that presented unusual progressive Central European pedagogical utopias after World War II), role-plays, debates, and student film screenings. More than 2,900 school children and close to 900 university students took part in these special programs, not counting  student visitors of our exhibitions. We continued our officially accredited teacher-training course to counter the revisionist intervention of the government in the school curriculum. Ours is the only accredited teacher training program in the country that does not follow the historical directives of the authorities. We are able to offer such programs because we are one of the very few remaining autonomous institutions in the whole country. This is the most important reason why the government tries to make the work of our institution impossible in Budapest.