This is the third installment in the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond,” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media.  This week’s contributor, Sylwia Szostak, completed her PhD in the department in 2014.

The majority of existing research on television, its functions, history, and development has been focused on the Western democracies, leaving the narratives of progress of the countries of the Eastern Europe largely unexplored.  This lacunae of research is making television from former socialist states “invisible,” to use Brett Mills’ notion explored in the journal Critical Studies in Television.  Recent years, however, have seen a growing interest in socialist television, demonstrated by the proliferation of edited collections on the topic as well as specialist conferences.

A huge milestone that pushes the field of socialist television forward is Loughborough University’s research project Screening Socialism.[1]  This project investigates the diverse cultures of television in five countries from socialist Eastern Europe: Russia, Poland, East Germany, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia.  It draws on archival documents, programme and schedule analysis, and oral history interviews, all to investigate television’s role in everyday life, the changing messages it disseminated to the public, as well as its role in forming public memory of the socialist period.  Researching the project in Polish archives, I came across material on television in socialist Poland that contributes to a better understanding of television’s placement in the socialist system, while challenging some of the ideas we commonly associate with socialist television.

Dziennik Telewizyjny (Television Daily) Evening News Edition Opening Credits, Channel 1 

Prevailing narratives typically associate socialist television with propaganda.  Propaganda was inarguably part of the paradigm of broadcasting in the socialist states, and news bulletins are the most straightforward example of this trend.  But it’s time to challenge notions of socialist television as simply an instrument of political control, and to demonstrate instead that socialist television was associated with a much wider range of social, political and cultural functions.

There is convincing evidence that in Poland, television was not only a provider of programing but was treated as a public institution to which viewers sent letters.  These letters not only expressed opinions about particular shows but also raised concerns over a variety of issues regarding public life as well as private problems.  Between 1967 and 1972, nearly two million viewers contacted Polish radio and television with a complaint or a request for an intervention. Putting this number in context, in 1967 there were around three million registered television sets in Poland.

A family with a child watching television on an Alga TV set (1977) (Courtesy of Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe. Click for full size.)

The letters included complaints about poor living conditions, uncomfortable work environments, and the functioning of public institutions including the service sector and public administration — as well as unjustified enforcement of rules and laws.  To deal with audience letters, television as an institution set up a special unit, Biuro Listów—the Bureau of Letters—whose role was to analyze letters and advise viewers accordingly, or take action with appropriate relevant institutions, executing the right of intervention on viewers’ behalf.  Additionally, the Bureau of Letters prepared bulletins with summaries of problems raised by TV viewers, summaries then passed on to Poland’s Communist Party and relevant public-administration institutions.

While viewers treated television as an arena for social critique and a platform to exercise control over public matters and social issues, the authorities treated audience letters as a way of monitoring social discontent with the public sphere.  In this sense, television functioned as a mediator between the state and its citizens.  And television fulfilled this role quite well: an audience study from 1974 revealed that 40.6% of respondents nominated Polish TV and radio (combined in the study) as an appropriate institution through which to file complaints.  This result placed television and radio as the second most-popular institutions people trusted to handle complaints, giving way only to national councils but ranking ahead of newspapers, work unions, courts, militia, and even the government.

Television served other functions within the public sphere of the socialist state as well; it gradually became an important part of the military life, for example.  At the end of the 1950s, the first television sets found their way into the lives of soldiers through bottom-up organic initiatives, where soldiers would buy their first television sets with money earned farming state lands.  But as the technology developed and television became more popular, Poland’s socialist authorities recognized the positive impact television might have on Polish soldiers.  Television viewing was becoming the most popular and attractive way for Polish soldiers to spend their free time.  This was considered to have positive impact on general conduct in the military barracks, as television was seen as distracting soldiers from causing trouble or seeking adventures outside the barracks.

Recognizing this role of television, relevant authorities passed decrees that guaranteed each military base a given number of TV sets, installed in barracks’ common rooms.  As such, television watching and easy access to the technology itself served as safe entertainment within the barracks, preventing social misconduct.  Over time, television found other uses within the military.  According to research conducted in 1969, 98% of high-rank military personnel believed television to have positive educational impact on soldiers, and soon TV was employed in planned educational activities for the military.  TV watching, in this instance, was seen as broadening general knowledge among soldiers as well as knowledge of politics and current affairs, acquainting soldiers with various forms of culture and art, and providing them with appropriate models for behaviour and social conduct.

This consideration of Polish television’s social functions in its early years, years that coincide with the height of socialism, demonstrate that socialist television was not only a channel for political propaganda but also an important part of the general narrative of progress and change.  Television was seen to have practical benefits for the military, and fulfilled the important role of mediator between the socialist state and its citizens, suggesting that socialist media aspired to be closer to the ideal of the public sphere then one might expect.

Understanding socialist television can inform research beyond this specific field.  The story of socialist television adds new dimensions to the debate about television’s functions, which are usually considered only in the commercial vs. public service binary, where the income-generating function of television is set against its educational potential.  Overall, the social functions envisioned for television in Poland contribute to key debates about television as a cultural and political formation.

[1]Screening Socialism is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Sabina Mihelj of Loughborough University. The project involves public lectures, conference talks and various publications, and will culminate in an international conference and a book on television in socialist Eastern Europe.

On January 2015, a new set of measures by the United States government opened a path towards the “normalization” of relations with Cuba after decades of mutual mistrust. However, as the expert in Cuban history Antoni Kapcia has argued, this should be seen as another milestone rather than a sea change in the long story of Cuban-U.S. relations. It is one thing to open up relations with the U.S. and another totally different thing to soften the internal power structure and the aggressive discourse towards the exile community in Cuba. Indeed, reconciliation between the “two Cubas” demands much more than political agreements or the abolition of the trade embargo. Since reconciliation is as much political as it is symbolic, it has to be preceded by a transformation of the public symbols and historic narratives that define what constitutes the imagined national community, and who is included or excluded from it. Cultural heritage and museums are tightly linked to the politics of recognition, defining the official discourses about past, present, and future. The politics of heritage have indeed played a fundamental role in this regard since the beginnings of the Cuban Revolution.

My IJCS paper “Transforming Ideology into Heritage: A Return of Nation and Identity in Late Socialist Cuba?” aims to shed light on the transformations of Cuban heritage policies in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This contradictory period is characterized by pragmatism and ideological ambiguity, as Cuba has been hovering in no-man’s-land, not clearly transitioning towards capitalism nor abandoning its communist past. Since Cuba has not enacted a complete break with the symbols and heritages of its communist past, it is still more appropriate to talk about heritage management under communism than about the management of the heritage of communism. The latter applies in Eastern European countries, where post-communism has been characterized by a frenzy of heritage destruction and the construction of new monuments, as well as the musealization of the communist past and a popular nostalgic drive for communist material culture.

Cuba, however, is comparatively closer to countries such as China, Laos, or Vietnam where the communist party leads the transition towards hyper-capitalist economies. The ongoing process could be proof that Cuba is moving in the same direction in terms of economic and heritage policies, although a few decades later. These states endured the Soviet collapse because, as in Cuba, their revolutions enjoyed local support and were grounded on nationalist and anti-colonialist ideas rather than ideas imposed by the Red Army, as in Eastern Europe. The commoditization of the communist past in these Asian countries is paralleled by a growing divergence between the official heritage discourse and the capitalist values and beliefs that pervade their societies. The question remains whether Cuba will follow their steps or whether the representational regime inherited from communism will still be the dominant symbolic and representational regime. If this were the case, it is not feasible to expect abrupt short-term changes in the official discourse of the Cuban leadership — although the erratic trajectory of the Cuban Revolution defies any attempt to foreshadow its future routes.

The IJCS paper attempts to ground these questions in terms of heritage by showing how heritage policies have been tightly connected to government interests. Late socialist Cuba has concentrated on creating a sense of historic depth, triggering a memory-war to reinforce the idea of siege by an external enemy — globalization and the U.S. — and reinforcing the geopolitical links with Latin American left-wing governments. In addition, national identity has been highlighted over the class identity that had formerly permeated Cuban discourse under Soviet influence. These transformations are encapsulated in what I call the transformation of ideology into heritage. This process implies that every new ideological shift is immediately given heritage status through monuments and museums. The twofold aim is to emphasize the significance and future endurance of the new ideology, and to make it look older and therefore to appear more legitimate. The transformation of ideology into heritage involves a construction of identity in exclusionary nationalist and dialectic terms, thus posing a challenge to reconciliation. The revolutionary insistence in defining Cuban identity against an external Other and to reinforce the sense of collective belonging can indeed be problematic if a transition towards more inclusive forms of discourse is intended in the new period.

Statue of Cuban intellectual and national hero José Martí in the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, Havana. Martí is holding the children Elián González and pointing with an accusatory finger to the US Interest Section, the potential future full-embassy of the US. This hostile symbology of the area illustrates the need to revisit public symbolic landscapes in Cuba if new political and social identities are to be constructed.

Reconciliation should not be limited exclusively to giving exiles the possibility to travel or live  in Cuba; it should consider their inclusion in the narratives and symbols of the nation, which still present them largely as traitors or “others” rather than as constituent subjects of the national community. Heritage has been fundamental in the negotiation of these identities, both in the island and abroad. In Miami, a parallel Cuban exile heritage industry has emerged where monuments and museums make different claims from the past, commemorating other Cuban stories, heroes, and values. On the island, an utterly ambiguous but clearly more open institution that could pave the way for reconciliation in heritage terms is the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad (Office of the City Historian of Havana), led by the charismatic Eusebio Leal. The Office revisits the Republican and Colonial pasts of Havana while restoring Old Havana and packaging it for international tourists.

The official discourse of the Office avoids state propaganda and aims to establish more friendly relationships with foreign cultural and political institutions. Certainly, the new Cuban-U.S. agreements will boost tourism and will probably force the Cuban government to follow the path of the Office in presenting a friendlier image for tourists through heritage representations. The maintenance of two images of Cuba for different target publics (domestic and foreign) will not be feasible to sustain as tourism rockets. However, it is unlikely that the regime will market the communist past and symbols because those have become the official “language of power” and representational regimes of the state (e.g., socialist realism).

Understanding the roots of this process is fundamental to current prospects of reconciliation with Cuban exiles, as Cuba will surely not get rid of the burdens of the past right away. The radical nationalist approach to heritage policies and the politics of recognition deriving from it distort history prevent the possibility of learning from past errors and conflicts. Because inclusion can only be successful by recognizing the narratives of others and representing them publicly, the endurance of exclusionary and acritical heritage policies hampers any move in this direction. Cuba is thus beset by a complex conundrum. If the revolutionary past is ignored and the country draws a line under the past to move on, the society that caused the Revolution might reproduce their conflict. But, if Cubans strive to deal with the heritage of the Revolution, they will most likely cling to partisan views and be surely conditioned by their involvement with the system in one way or another. The new turn in the Cuban-U.S. relations therefore opens more questions than it solves in terms of the future political and cultural trajectory of the Revolution and the question of reconciliation. Without doubt, however, heritage will be a terrain of struggle for Cubans, both on the island and abroad, in the years to come.

[For the full article, see Pablo Alonso González “Transforming Ideology Into Heritage: A Return of Nation and Identity in Late Socialist Cuba?,” forthcoming in International Journal of Cultural Studies. Currently available as an OnlineFirst publication: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/12/23/1367877914562712.abstract]