Reconsidering the Collapse of Socialism in Eastern Europe

What were the root causes of the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? How can we understand it in light of the longer history of socialism world wide including that of China, Cuba and Vietnam if we look at longer term developments during after socialism? Speakers will focus on economic dynamics, the problem of mixed economies and the role of the state both in socialism and during the transition from it. They will pay attention to key theoreticians including not only Lukács and also Mészáros, whose book Beyond Leviathan has just appeared. They will discuss the critically important matter of workers self-government and its links to markets and planning in socialist countries. More broadly, speakers will reflect on working class and labor history in light of debates about what was and was not achieved during socialism.

Raquel Varela is a labour historian, researcher and professor with Habilitation at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She is honorary fellow at the IISH, Amsterdam. In 2020 she was the first awarded of Simone-Veil Grant (LMU Munich) and she has been visiting senior researcher at Europainstitut Institute for European Global Studies (Universität Basel). She has published 34 books, among them The People’s History of The Portuguese Revolution and The Peoples History of Europe in the ** Century, booth in Pluto Press

Rastko Močnik, retired professor of the University of Ljubljana, visiting professor at the Faculty of the media and communications, Belgrade. Doctor honoris causa at the Plovdiv University "Paisiy Hilendarski". In the nineteen-sixties, he participated to the Yugoslav student movement; in the nineteen-seventies and the eighties, he was active in the alternative movements. In the nineteen-nineties, active in the peace movement and at keeping the ties among Yugoslav peoples. He translated and commented the works by Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Donald Davidson, Émile Durkheim, Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévy-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, and others. Now working on historical materialist analysis of the restauration of capitalism in the Yugoslav region. Author of several books on the theory of ideology and the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. Recent publications: Writings on Contemporary Capitalism (in Croatian), Zagreb, 2016; Theory with Ideology (in the “common” language, “zajednički”), Belgrade, 2019.

Tamás Krausz is an internationally renowned scholar of the Soviet and Russian history in the 20th century, with a special focus on left-wing intellectual history. His book entitled Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2015.

He has acted as a founding member of the journal Eszmélet (Consciousness) in 1989, which ever since has provided a unique forum in Hungary to discuss left-wing theoretical issues. He has accomplished an impressive theoretical and organizational work to keep the left-wing thought alive in Eastern Europe and in Hungary. He is editor of a wide range of books in Russian and in Hungarian, and he has published extensively on issues related to the theory of socialism in English, Russian and Hungarian. He has acted as Professor and Head of Department of Eastern European History at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest until his retirement, when he earned the title Professor Emeritus. Currently, he is also head of the Doctoral Programme of the Department, where he has established a strong school of doctoral students.

Eszter Bartha is Associate Professor at the Department of Eastern, Central European and Russian History of Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary. In the academic year 2018-19, she was a Fellow at re:work: “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History” at Humboldt University, Berlin. In 2020-2021 she has been affiliated with the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the Technical University of Dresden as a Marie-Curie Research Fellow. Her main research field is the post-war social history of Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on labour and gender history. She has published extensively on the state socialist era and the working class including her book Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary (2013) published by Berghahn. Currently, she is engaged in a research, which focuses on the newly formed industrial working class and right-wing populism in Eastern Germany and Hungary. From 2021, she also serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.

Moderator - Attila Melegh is a sociologist, economist and historian. He is associate professor at Corvinus University, Budapest, and a senior researcher at the Demographic Research Institute. He has taught in the United States, Russia, Georgia and Hungary. He has led four major international projects on migration, migration statistics, population discourses and East/West discourses. He has published extensively in the global history of social change in the 20th century, and international migration. Author of the book ‘On the East/West Slope, Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses on Central and Eastern Europe’ published at CEU Press. He has been the founding director of Karl Polányi Research Center at Corvinus University. He is editor of Eszmélet Journal. He is new book is coming out at Palgrave entitled ‘The migration turn and Eastern Europe”.

This event was co-organized by the International Manifesto Group and Eszmélet.

Host or Publisher International Manifesto Group