13 October 2025 | 14:00-16:30 | Terézváros, 6th District of Budapest
In the framework of the elective course ’Regime Types and Human Rights’, a group of students attended a special class off-campus, in Terézváros, the 6th District of Budapest. The course leader, Eszter Kirs (Department of International Relations), invited them to her home to create an environment where participants could sense the atmosphere of underground, uncensored lectures delivered in private apartments under state socialism.
The guest speaker, Professor András Bozóki (Department of Political Science, Central European University), shared his expertise and personal experiences related to Hungary’s and the region’s democratic transition from state socialism. The participants discussed with him the development of autonomous civil society under state socialism in the Central and Eastern European region. The Polish example of open, uncensored lectures on political and social affairs, known as the Flying Universities, was followed by Hungarian dissidents. Students, professors, and researchers sought access to uncensored information and an open exchange of ideas on critical aspects of history, politics, and social affairs. They created an informal space for freedom, rejecting the rules of the game of political power. As Václav Havel put it, they decided to live in truth, opposing lies disseminated by the repressive regime.
Through this experiential class, participating students had the opportunity to engage in profound reflections on the political reasons behind censorship in state socialism, the pressure of political power on autonomous civil communities, the forms and means of their resistance and resilience, and the atmosphere of underground education. In addition to listening to the guest speaker’s lecture on the development and international collaboration of different “islands of freedom” in culture and education in the 1970s and ‘80s, students had the opportunity to examine pieces from the private samizdat collection of the course leader’s family. Andras Bozóki is Professor at the Department of Political Science at the Central European University, Vienna. His main fields of research include democratization, de-democratization, political regimes, ideologies, Central European politics, and the role of intellectuals. He is a research affiliate at the CEU Democracy Institute. He was a recurrent visiting professor at Columbia University (Deák Chair in 2004, 2009, 2015), a visiting professor at Smith College (1999-2000), Mount Holyoke College (2000), Hampshire College (2000), Nottingham University (1993), and other prestigious academic institutions. He is Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (DSc). He also served as the chairman of the Political Science Committee at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2011-2017). His books in English (authored and co-authored) include Embedded Autocracy (2024), Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals (2022), Hungary Turns Its Back on Europe (I: 2020, II: 2022), 25 Years after the Fall of Iron Curtain: The State of Integration (2014), Diversity and the European Public Sphere (2010), Anarchism in Hungary: Theory, History, Legacies (2006), The Future of Democracy in Europe (2004), Migrants, Minorities, Belonging and Citizenship (2003), Post-Communist
Transition: Emerging Pluralism in Hungary (1992, 2016), The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (2002), and many more. In 1989, he participated at the national roundtable negotiations. In 2005-6, he served as Minister of Culture of Hungary.
