CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Wittmann, Niklas Mortimer Franz |
|---|---|
| Title | From Red to Green? The Relationship between Democratic Opposition and Environmentalism in the Hungarian People's Republic and the GDR |
| Summary | The fact that environmental movements played a major social and political role in the late socialist period throughout the Eastern Bloc has been documented within several local contexts, but has rarely been explored comparatively. This thesis looks towards a better understanding of the Hungarian environmental movement, particularly the Danube Circle, by placing it in an asymmetrical comparison with the East German Umweltbewegungen. Further to this, it analyzes the concepts of political ecology which formed part of the intellectual background of the environmental movements in Eastern Europe but which never came to the fore explicitly. This has important consequences beyond proving the obvious point that environmentalism did not mean the same thing on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Firstly, it points towards entanglements and negotiations between ecological critiques in these very different contexts. Secondly, it leads us to a better understanding of dissident politics in East- Central Europe in the period leading up to the regime change. This work goes on to argue that environmentalism and political opposition in Hungary were closely connected, but that one should not be reduced to the other. Instead, it should be read as a shifting platform of disparate concepts and traditions that converged for a short time to challenge the regime (but which subsequently went separate ways). By drawing on insights from the study of social movements and engaging in a comparison, the thesis looks to explain its unlikely success. |
| Supervisor | Balázs Trencsényi |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/wittmann_niklas.pdf |
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