Culture Wars: Struggle for the Hegemony of the Past in Hungary and Poland
Abstract
The emerging authoritarian tendency and centralisation of power in Hungary and Poland display a profound drive to create a new ‘Zeitgeist’ based on national conservative values. The current political elites claim that striking against the liberal intelligentsia in cultural life is therefore inevitable. History politics has a special place in the prevailing culture war, because the construction of the new era requires a revision of identity that depends on a suitable interpretation of the past. This article focuses on two flagships of history politics. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance is a research facility, but it also acts as a truth committee. The Hungarian Foundation for Research on Central and Eastern European History and Society controls several memory institutes. Both centres were established with a political purpose, and they play an essential role in the institutional evolution of historiography. In addition, both combine the complex fields of research, education, the popularising of history, and museums. These institutions not only offer a particular view of the current culture war but are key organisations on which the regimes depend. They produce necessary knowledge that provides the building blocks of cultural hegemony in seeking the new era.
Keywords: culture war, value hegemony, historical institutionalism, institutes of memory, politics of history, Hungary and Poland
