Censorship in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia: comparative historical perspectives

Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen
November 29, 2019
(Location: Building 27, room 0.17.)

In this international workshop, we would like to look at how recent illiberal and non-democratic tendencies in the area of media control in Central and Eastern Europe (including new European Union member states as well as Russia) fit into longer-term political and social patterns in the region, as well as cases that seem to break those patterns. This historical approach is significantly missing from recent media and political science scholarship on illiberal regimes and the process of democratic backsliding in the region.

The history of censorship and media control in CEE will be tackled from a long-term historical perspective. In the 19th century, what were the key institutions of political censorship in the imperial systems, including the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and czarist Russia? How did post-imperial, interwar, and communist regimes respectively follow up with their specific censorship systems in the 20th century? What kind of continuum and breaks can one identify between the imperial and post-imperial institutions of censorship as well as the censorship culture of media elites and audiences?

In a similar vein, can one identify any, even indirect, continuity, in censorship institutions and cultures in the communist and the post-1990 post-communist periods, respectively? How closely would subsequent censorship policies change with political system changes and media policy transformations? To what do degree abrupt and gradual changes in political regime go together, and coincide with, shifts in censorship institutions and journalistic and media audience cultures?

As for the CEE region, to what degree can we talk about the culture of censorship in a long-term perspective in the CEE region? And how is it possible that Baltic states were able to establish successful democratic media institutions and journalistic culture with a high degree of media freedom after many decades of Soviet occupation and Sovietization of media systems? As for Russia, that has exerted significant influence on the CEE region in various historical periods, can pre-communist Russian, Soviet and post-communist Russian periods be regarded as different periods of an overarching empire of censorship?

This will be a workshop in a true sense, so we do not ask participants to present fully written research papers. Rather, we plan to engage in an exchange of views about possible historical and comparative conceptualizations and to discuss methodological and practical problems (e.g., availability of national media and censorship history research in English) and propose solutions.

The workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars with different backgrounds and approaches: researchers focusing on present day media systems and political communication (media researchers, sociologists and political scientists) and historians (especially experts in 19th and 20th century media, press and information history). The initiative is rather novel in this effort. The practical goal of the workshop is academic network building for closer cooperation in the near future, aiming at a joint research grant application and/or joint publications.

Program

9:15 Welcoming participants - Miklos Sukosd (University of Copenhagen)

Session 1. Chair: Vibe Termansen

9:20-10:05 “Longue durée approaches to media (de-)democratization and censorship history” - Miklos Sukosd (U. of Copenhagen) Discussant: Zrinjka Peruško (U. of Zagreb)
10:05-10:55 “Critical junctures and path dependencies in media censorship in Southeast Europe: a historical institutionalist approach” - Zrinjka Peruško (University of Zagreb) Discussant: Mikhail Suslov (U. of Copenhagen)
10:55-11:10 Coffee break

11:10-11:50 “Fighting propaganda with censorship: a study of the Ukrainian ban on Russian social media” - Yevgeniy Golovchenko (University of Copenhagen) Discussant: Jun Liu (U. of Copenhagen)
11:50-12:35 “Censorship and information history: a quest for new contexts” (Laszlo Z. Karvalics, University of Szeged, Hungary) Discussant: Laura Skouvig (U. of Copenhagen)
12:35-13:00 Plenary discussion -- Initial comments by Mikhail Suslov (U. of Copenhagen) 13:00-14:00 Lunch

Session 2. Chair: Zrinjka Peruško

14:00-14:40 “Censorship in the Horthy era (1920-1944) and the Kadar era (1956-1989): similarities or continuity?” Balazs Sipos (Eotvos University Budapest, Hungary) Discussant: Zrinjka Peruško (U. of Zagreb)
14:40-15:20 “Continuity and discontinuity in 20th century Hungarian book censorship” (Laszlo Z. Karvalics, University of Szeged, Hungary) Discussant: Jesper Nyeng (U. of Copenhagen)
15:20-15:35 Coffee break

15:35-16:20 “Public debates and research problems around censorship in pre-revolutionary Russia’” (Mikhail Suslov, University of Copenhagen) Discussant: Ilya Yablokov (U. of Leeds)
16:20-16:55 “Censorship and early Soviet literature: the institutional aspects” (Jesper Nyeng, University of Copenhagen) Discussant: Balazs Sipos (Eotvos U.)
16:55-17:10 Coffee break

17:10-17:55 "Censorship or self-censorship: how authoritarian media systems can operate? The case of Russia, Hungary and Latvia" (Ilya Yablokov, University of Leeds) Discussant: Miklos Sukosd (U. of Copenhagen)

17:55-18:15 Closing discussion and future plans (closed session)