Roots of Illiberal Memory Politics: Remembering Women in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
Résumé
ost studies on memories ignore their own audience, as Wulf Kansteiner warned us some years ago. 1 Because stories matter and because memory can be assigned and attributed to certain social groups, there will necessarily be competing memory cultures. Kansteiner argued that collective memory is a result of complex processes of production and consumption that acknowledge different traditions, values, and interests. 2 This is very true in the case of the memory politics of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which has recently been transformed and now includes a new focus on women's experiences and memories, perhaps a surprising development at first glance. In discussing the gender history of 1956, the main question is whose stories are being told. 3 This means that when discussing women's memories of 1956 we need to distinguish the producers and consumers of collective memory from the traditions of gendered memory and the appropriations of memory. Appropriation was used by Michel de Certau in underlining that consumption is not a passive process. The producers of memory are building on their own meanings and values through the consumption of culture, which is at the same time a revisitation of culture. Never has so much money been involved in commemorating the 1956 Revolution than for the commemorations in 2016. The Official Gazette announced the government decision 1728/2015 to commemorate 1956, which was backed by unprecedented-and not very transparent-public funding. 4 There were 2,500 proposals submitted for grants from this fund, of which 1,600 were supported. In 650 villages and cities, a total of 1,430 events were held to commemorate the 1956 Revolution. 5 The history of the 13
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