Is Peace a Human Right? The Democratic Opposition and Peace in the 1980s
Evenings on Peace Square, Pt. 3.
The Peace Group for Dialogue explicitly defined itself as a non-opposition organization. This, however, did not prevent the regime from seeing it as a Trojan horse for the democratic opposition. At the same time, there were significant differences between the positions of the opposition and those of the Dialogue.
How did the democratic opposition in Eastern Europe approach the question of peace? Why did they fail to find common ground? What defined opposition activity, and where did the opposition and the regime draw its boundaries? What did it mean to be a leftist in the 1980s, and what were the prospects for democratizing and humanizing the regime?
Participants:
Miklós Haraszti, writer, member of the democratic opposition, and founding editor of the samizdat journal Beszélő
Ferenc Ruzsa, philosopher and Indologist, one of the leading activists of the Dialogue
Fanni Svégel, ethnographer, post-doctoral researcher
Moderator: Zsolt Enyedi, political scientist and sociologist (Department of Political Science, CEU), former member of the Dialogue
The event will be held in Hungarian.
The exhibition On Peace Square – The Peace Group for Dialogue is open free of charge through October 25, 2026 at the Blinken OSA Archivum’s Centrális Gallery.
The series is organized in cooperation with the Blinken OSA Archivum, the Historical Archives of the State Security, and CEU’s Department of Political Science.