Moral Inversion: Value Change, Memory and Culture After Communism, 1990 Onwards

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The end of the communist ideological edifice, which gradually eroded from within before rapidly imploding in the late 1980s, was marked by a sudden shift in the moral order. The old precepts, imposing (at least superficial) cohesion around the values of Marxist-Leninism, as interpreted by the party, were thoroughly discredited. The lurid tales of historic atrocities, inability to provide basic goods and services, and shocking criminal revelations shattered the façade that had been so painstakingly enforced by propagandists and state activists for decades. The previous route to status and prosperity – party membership, long years of service to the regime and living (at least outwardly) with socialist propriety – was made redundant almost overnight.

However, the rapid change left a vacuum into which surged new ideas, art forms and social movements, even as the post-communist order struggled to be born. New cultural archetypes gained cache, including many that explicitly, transgressively rejected the ideals of the recent past. The punk movement took off, underworld figures became local legends, and the footballing world broke free of its normative constraints, embracing celebrity and inviting in crime.

This panel will explore processes of moral inversion in Ukraine and Hungary, looking at how previously taboo phenomena rapidly rose to prominence during the period of post-communist whiplash and onset of wild capitalism, and how they remain present in the memory culture of that time today, casting a long shadow over current political and cultural processes.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Maria Sonevytsky, Bard College

Papers

• From Outlaws to Icons: Crime, Identity and Memory After Communism in Southern Ukraine, 1990 - Francis Kirk, Centre for Contemporary History (Germany)

• 'It is as if the 80s had never ended': Punk, Transition and Memory in (Post-)Communist Hungary - Balazs Apor, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

• Ukrainian Post-Soviet Football: Between Professionalization and Criminalization - Kateryna Chernii, ZZF Potsdam (Germany) / European U Viadrina (Germany)

Discussant

• Maria Sonevytsky, Bard College