Project MUSE®: Slavonic and East European Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Slavonic and East European Review.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 79 (2001) through current issueLatest Articles: Slavonic and East European ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Slavonic and East European Review2222-43270037-6795Latest articles in Slavonic and East European Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Political Jokes as a Form of Dissent during the Hungarian Regime Change, 1988–1994
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987147
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'Did the regime change have an impact on humour? Did humour influence the regime change and if so, why is public life today so humourless and laughter-free? Where have political jokes disappeared?' The words of writer-editor Károly Szalay, published in August 1992 in the national daily Magyar Nemzet, shed light on the fact that in the early years of post-Communism there was a considerable concern about the relationship between humour and dictatorships and the perceived disappearance of jokes. Writing in 2016, Martha Lampland and Maya Nadkarni drew attention to the fact that 'the everyday mischief of pausing in the midst of a conversation to tell a joke is alive and well in Hungary', so the dramatic claims about how
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallPolitical Jokes as a Form of Dissent during the Hungarian Regime Change, 1988–19942026-04-13text/htmlen-USPolitical Jokes as a Form of Dissent during the Hungarian Regime Change, 1988–19942026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1919682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Dropping out of Putinism: Russian Relocants, Music Communities and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Georgia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987148
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This article investigates the Russian music community that relocated to the city of Tbilisi, Georgia, after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The recent exodus of Russian nationals has become an urgent matter of security,1 integration,2 economy,3 activism4 and culture.5 Centred on ethnography of migrant music communities, the article contributes to the study of these wide-ranging reconfigurations across the territories formerly known as the 'post-Soviet space' through the lens of popular music. This approach is justified by: a) the unprecedented number of Russian musicians abroad, many of whom have become 'foreign agents' in the eyes of the Russian government;6 b) the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallDropping out of Putinism: Russian Relocants, Music Communities and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Georgia2026-04-13text/htmlen-USDropping out of Putinism: Russian Relocants, Music Communities and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Georgia2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®2690442026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Completing the Velvet Revolution? Czech and Slovak Punk Zines and the Legacy of Cultural Opposition after 1989
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987149
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Among the most important gatekeepers of punk subculture in Czechoslovakia were the representatives of cultural opposition before 1989, i.e. members of the Czech alternative and underground movement. Similar to the musical underground, the Czechoslovak State Security Service before 1989 perceived punks as 'defective youth' and a serious threat to the state and socialist morals. Consequently, the state apparatus exerted systematic efforts against them on various levels. The regime change after November 1989 placed punks in a different position. They were active participants in the pre-1989 cultural opposition and supporters of the Velvet Revolution. From December 1989 onward, prominent punk bands shared stages with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallCompleting the Velvet Revolution? Czech and Slovak Punk Zines and the Legacy of Cultural Opposition after 19892026-04-13text/htmlen-USCompleting the Velvet Revolution? Czech and Slovak Punk Zines and the Legacy of Cultural Opposition after 19892026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1685432026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Intimate Resistance: The Kharkiv School of Photography and the Politics of the Body in Late Soviet Ukraine, 1971–1988
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987150
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'We didn't think we could say "fuck the system", that we were saying "fuck you" with our little activities. But we were sure that it had to change, that it needed to change. That it wasn't fair. That's what drove us forward. "It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair." And when you wanted something: "Why is it forbidden? Why is it forbidden? Why is it forbidden?"'In a series of monochrome photographs from 1972 entitled The Violin, a group of nude male 'hippies' are gathered outdoors in what feels like something of a ceremony. As they swim, relax and commune, the group is accompanied by the eponymous violin — the instrument moving between and travelling with them. The photographer, Evgeniy Pavlov, is deliberate in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallIntimate Resistance: The Kharkiv School of Photography and the Politics of the Body in Late Soviet Ukraine, 1971–19882026-04-13text/htmlen-USIntimate Resistance: The Kharkiv School of Photography and the Politics of the Body in Late Soviet Ukraine, 1971–19882026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1251532026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Absent Futures, Eternal Presents: The Recycling of Moscow Conceptualist Aesthetics in Contemporary Russian Street Art
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987151
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The citizens of St Petersburg who happened to pass by 37–39 Liteinyi Avenue on 22 January 2021 would have most likely witnessed the result of an illicit activity. On a transformer box painted in fiery yellow a stencil graffiti appeared overnight representing the symbol of a digital battery — a rectangle whose borders were painted in white. The space inside the rectangle remained almost empty, with a single bright red line warning of the battery's low charge. Above this representation, a Russian word paint-sprayed in large, capital, and white letters read: PATIENCE (terpenie). This street artwork's message was clear: the art group Iav´ (Art-gruppa Iav´), which claimed the artwork's authorship by placing their logo
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallAbsent Futures, Eternal Presents: The Recycling of Moscow Conceptualist Aesthetics in Contemporary Russian Street Art2026-04-13text/htmlen-USAbsent Futures, Eternal Presents: The Recycling of Moscow Conceptualist Aesthetics in Contemporary Russian Street Art2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®2033052026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Ramka, Resistance and Resilience: Lessons from 1980s Polish Dissent for Contemporary Networked Cultures of Protest
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987152
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The 2010s was a decade of networked protest. Such protests referred to each other regionally and transnationally, and built on an established range of contentious repertoires.1 Their protest cultures were premised, on the one hand, on the affordances of social media, which promoted de-centred, non-hierarchical and informal forms of activism. On the other hand, protest cultures were premised on horizontalism, a principle of social movement organization blending leaderlessness, creative adhocracy (non-permanent and problem-oriented forms of decision-making), and commitment to prefigurative politics whereby protestors wanted to 'model' in their behaviour what they desired in terms of change to the social order.2
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallRamka, Resistance and Resilience: Lessons from 1980s Polish Dissent for Contemporary Networked Cultures of Protest2026-04-13text/htmlen-USRamka, Resistance and Resilience: Lessons from 1980s Polish Dissent for Contemporary Networked Cultures of Protest2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1434992026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Forms of Resistance and the Afterlives of the GDR
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987153
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'A ghost story for grown ups'This article will explore forms of textual resistance in literature from the former GDR, focusing especially on how the use of what might be termed a 'spectral aesthetic' has served to challenge the dominant narratives of the Berlin Republic. The central focus will not, however, be dissidents or underground writers, as might perhaps be expected, but those who were able to publish in the socialist state and who continued to publish beyond its demise. In this way, attention can be brought not so much to sites or agents of resistance, but to the resistant cultural practices and textual strategies that have served writers before and after 1990 under different forms of government. In this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallForms of Resistance and the Afterlives of the GDR2026-04-13text/htmlen-USForms of Resistance and the Afterlives of the GDR2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1549982026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Legacies of Cultural Resistance Across the 1989 Divide: An Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987154
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On 17 January 2025, popular Hungarian rapper and media celebrity, Majka, released a new song and video on YouTube with the title 'Csurran, cseppen'. The phrase from Hungarian slang translates as 'it trickles, it drips' and refers to the (unsteady) flow of money to one's pockets. The video features the prime minister of a fictitious country called Bindzhistan (Bindzsisztán), who accidentally drinks a vial of truth serum and reveals in a live TV interview his corrupt machinations and the dubious strategies he adopted to stay in power (nepotism, propaganda, and so on).1 Although there are no explicit references in the song to Hungarian politics, in the fifteenth year of Viktor Orbán's Regime of National Cooperation
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/823/image/coversmallLegacies of Cultural Resistance Across the 1989 Divide: An Introduction2026-04-13text/htmlen-USLegacies of Cultural Resistance Across the 1989 Divide: An Introduction2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®651332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13