Dr. Balazs Apor

COURAGE is a three-year international research project funded by Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The project will create the first digital database of both online and offline, as well as private and public collections in Europe which testify to the survival of various forms of cultural opposition in the former socialist countries. These collections cover a period from the rise of communist regimes in the region to the fall of the Iron Curtain. COURAGE will further a more nuanced understanding of how these collections work, what functions they have in their respective societies, and how they present their holdings to national and international audiences. The project will contribute to the development of nuanced interpretations of dissent, and will advance the preservation of collections as part of common European heritage. The role of TCD is to explore collections of cultural opposition in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, and to address the importance of Ukrainian diaspora collections in the preservation of the legacy of dissent.

The main aim of the project is to prepare the grounds for the submission of a grant proposal on the topic of Communist leader cults in modern Europe (East and West) to an Irish and/or European fund. The first phase of the process will be devoted to the creation of an international (initially, Europe-wide) research network, starting with the Central European University and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, Hungary. Activities, other than travelling and meeting potential research partners, will include the identification of priority research themes in co-operation with the proposed partner institutions, and the purchase of computer and digital equipment.

The aim of the project is to organise the conference, 'Memories and Identities in Central and Eastern Europe'. The conference will be organized by the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, in cooperation with the Center for European Studies at TCD, and the Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies. The project enjoys the support of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, and it will also be advertised as the 2015 annual conference of IARCEES. The conference grows out of a series of lectures, seminars and workshops organized by the Centre for European Studies in the past few years. The notions 'memory' and 'identity' have enjoyed significant scholarly attention in the past few decades. The 'memory boom' in the humanities has resulted in several collaborative projects, and in the publication of numerous articles and books on the subject. Memories of traumatic events-the Holocaust and Stalinist terror-and their impact on the transformation of individual as well as collective identities have been in the limelight of research, especially since the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. The aim of the conference is to attract and/or invite renowned scholars working in the field, and to provide an opportunity for the new generation of researchers to present their findings. Due to the interdisciplinary character of memory (and identity) studies, it is envisaged that the conference will attract scholars in politics, sociology, history, and cultural studies. A selection of the best papers will be published either as an edited volume or as a special issue of the journal of IARCEES, the Irish Slavonic Studies.

The aim of the project is to commission the translation of my book manuscript.

The overall attempt of the project was to analyse the emergence, the development and the decay of a satellite leader's cult in the peripheries of the Stalinist Empire - namely the Soviet bloc - in the post-war era (1945-1956). The project was the first endeavour to systematically study the construction of the cult of a mini-Stalin, in this case, the secretary of the Hungarian Workers' Party, Mátyás Rákosi. Such a scrutiny of the methods of cult-building in Hungary would likely enhance our understanding of the dynamics of the post-war Sovietisation project in the region and the similarities/differences in the process of adopting the 'Soviet pattern', including the leader cult phenomenon, in Eastern Europe. The project focused on three different aspects of cult-construction in Hungary and was divided into three main parts accordingly. (1) The major strategies of the party centre to implement the Soviet system of myths and rituals - the requisites of a new political religion - in the country. (2) The party's strategies to monitor the development of the cult, and the popular reception of the worship of rulers. (3) The methods of dismantling the cult in the period of the 'New Course' after June 1953, and after the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956.