Program

Summer Institute for the Study of East Central and Southeastern Europe, 2026

Project

Pop Culture on the Party’s Assembly Line? Alternative and Official Culture in the Political Festivals of Socialist Romania, 1976-1989

Department

History

Abstract

This project construes the structure and functions of the National Festival of Socialist Education “Song of Romania,” namely its role in the formation of a mixed, official/alternative culture, which served both to strengthen the Romanian communist regime and to undermine its legitimacy, through the use of alternative types of culture— such as pop music and experimental visual arts—as part of the official structure of the state’s cultural policy.