CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
The First Eastern Bloc Censorship Research Group Conference
16–18 October 2026
Faculty of Philology, Pomorska 171/173
Aula A1
(with symoultaneous interpretation to Polish and French)
9:30–10:00 Registration
10:00–10:30 Opening Ceremony with the Reading of the Address by Rector Rafał Matera to the Participants
10:30–11:20 Robert Darnton (Harvard University): Keynote Lecture
*
11:20–12:50 PANEL 1
Mykola Ryabchuk & Natalia Bilotserkivets
Flexible Rigidity of the Late Soviet Censorship: Insiders’ Perspective
Maxim Lukin
“If the Editors Submitted Good Material, the Censor Would Not Have to Intervene”: Soviet Editors Between Writers and Censors in the Post-Stalin Period (1953–1985)
Klara Buda
Fashioning Dissent: Extravagance, Internal Exile, and the Politics of Appearance in Communist Albania
Patrick Mougenet
Beyond Borders: Censorship, Transnational Counter-Circulation and Reappropriation of Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), across Europe’s East–West Divide and the Americas
- Moderator: Mateusz Świetlicki
4 × 15 min + 30 min Q&A
*
12:50–14:00 Lunch Break
*
14:00–15:30 PANEL 2
John Bates
Could the GUKP Have Done a BBFC? The Transformation of Censorship Bodies in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries
Monika Bednarczuk
Institutional Censorship and Self-Censorship of Esoteric Subjects in Socialist Poland: Major Questions and Developments
Joanna Hobot-Marcinek
Censorship of the Student Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s: Mechanisms of Confrontation
Ana Batinić
In the Whirlwind of History after the Pivotal Year of 1945: Croatian Female Writers before the Court of Honor of the Croatian Writers’ Association
- Moderator: Joanna Wojdon
4 × 15 min + 30 min Q&A
*
15:30–15:50 Coffee Break
*
15:50–17:20 PANEL 3
Stefanie Lemke
Censorship in Times of Shrinking Civic Space in Europe: The Role of Judges
Mikhail Suslov
Regime Ideology Co-production in Russian Universities
Olga Gradinaru
Nested Silences: Penal Battalions, Jewish Soldiers, and the Afterlives of Soviet Censorship in Archive and Film
Lucia Dragomir
Foreign delegations, Romanian Interpreter-Guides during the Communist Era: between Surveillance, Censorship and Self-Censorship
- Moderator: Jakub Dąbrowski
4 × 15 min + 30 min Q&A
*
17:20–18:00 Material Culture Exhibition
Coffee Break & Networking
Attendees present their own research alongside relevant books, historical artifacts, and everyday objects from the Eastern Bloc.
(Aula A4 & 1.18)
9:15–10:20 PANEL 4A
(1.18)
Tetiana Kachak & Tetyana Blyznyuk
War, Identity, and New Forms of Censorship: Ukrainian Children’s Literature Amid Contemporary Political and Cultural Challenges
Ekaterina Shatalova
With(out) a Censor: Children’s Books in Putin’s Russia
Snizhana Zhyhun
Children’s and Young Adult Literature (1922–1940) in the Special Collection of the Ukrainian Book Chamber
- Moderator: Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk
3 × 15 min + 20 min Q&A
9:15–10:20 PANEL 4B
(Aula A4)
Eszter Balazs
World War Memory on Screen in Late Socialist Hungary: Documentary Film between Toleration and Censorship
Magdalena Budnik
Andrzej Wajda and His Works in the Documents of PRL Censorship: On Selected Examples
Alina Popescu
Dressing Socialism: Fashion, Censorship and the Politics of Appearance in Romanian Cinema
- Moderator: John Bates
3 × 15 min + 20 min Q&A
*
10:20–10:40 Coffee Break
*
10:40–11:20 Nicole Moore (University of New South Wales, Canberra): Keynote Lecture
*
11.30-13.00 PANEL 5A
(Aula A4)
Miklós Áron Sükösd
From Soft Dictatorship to Illiberal Hegemony: Media Control and Censorship in Hungary in the Kádár Era and under the Orbán Regime in Comparative Perspective
Mónika Mátay
The Orbán Affair
Luca Bagnolini
Between Censorship and Anticommunism: Soviet Films in Italy during the Early Cold War
- Moderator: Stefanie Lemke
3 × 15 min + 20 min Q&A
11:30–13:00 PANEL 5B
(1.18)
Timea Andrea Lelik
Two Grammars of Control: Fashion, Femininity, and Censorship in Kádár’s Hungary and Ceaușescu’s Romania
Andrea Březinová
Brno Fashion Scene in the 1980s: Liběna Rochová and Michal Švarc
Johana Felixova
Guidance or Censorship? International Fashion Congresses as a Space for Negotiating the Acceptable and Unacceptable in Socialist Dress
- Moderator: Alina Popescu
3 × 15 min + 20 min Q&A
*
13:00–13:30 Coffee Break
*
13:30–14:30 ROUND TABLE The Eastern Bloc Censorship – 25 Years Later
Joanna Wojdon, Anne Etienne, Nicole Moore, Robert Darnton, Mykola Riabchuk
- Moderators: Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk & Stefanie Lemke
*
14:30-14:45 Coffee Break
*
14:45–16:45 PANEL 6
(Aula A4)
Jakub Dąbrowski
On the Productivity of Prohibition
Adriana Campara
Embodied Time: Rethinking Contemporary Visual Art through Temporality
Mila Dragojević
A Brief Opening between the Party and Society in Former Yugoslavia
Joanna Rzepa
Censorship and Shoah: Holocaust Testimonies in the Polish People’s Republic
Natalia Kowalska-Elkader
Censorship, Institutional Control, and Radio Art Experimentation in PRL: Eugeniusz Rudnik and the Polish Radio Experimental Studio
- Moderator: Anne Etienne
5 × 15 min + 45 min Q&A
*
16:45–17:00 Coffee & sandwich “to go”
*
19:00 Conference Gala Dinner: the Loom Hotel
9:00–10.00 PANEL 7
(Aula A4)
Prerecorded and online presentations
Liudmila Sharaeva
Hybrid Mechanisms of Cultural Censorship in Contemporary Russia (2000–2022)
Manuella Pacillo
Censorship without Censorship? Accreditation, Information Control and Press Freedom at the Nuremberg Trial
- Moderator: Alina Popescu
4 × 15 min + 30 min Q&A
*
10:00-10:30 In Their Own Words: EBCRG & Friends on Censorship
*
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
*
10:45–11:45 EBCRG Open Meeting
Mateusz Świetlicki, Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk & Karolina Kołodziej
Burn, Ban, Save: A Conversation on Censorship, Book Destruction, and Children’s Literature
11:45–13:00 General Closing Session: Takeaways, Future Planning & Networking
13:00 Conference Closing
*
13:00–15:00 EBCRG Closed Meeting (only for EBCRG members)








