The heritage of cultural opposition to state socialism is today an important resource for social reflection and innovation in Europe, in part given the emergence of regimes with authoritarian tendencies. The mission of COURAGE has been to help spread knowledge of and interest in this resource and ensure that its significant symbolic potential is realized. Study and ongoing discussion and debate of the heritage of cultural opposition will counter one-sided interpretations of state socialism and the exclusion of important groups and individuals from narratives of this history. COURAGE offers valuable knowledge about the practices of freedom under authoritarian governments and the strategies that were adopted to resist the pervasive forms of suppression used by these governments. Cultural opposition under state socialism was remarkably creative. A nuanced grasp of these examples of cultural creativity under adverse conditions can help stimulate innovative acts and initiatives today.
To achieve these goals, the COURAGE project created an intelligent living database, – the COURAGE Registry – which describes and connects collections of counterculture and non-conformism under State Socialist authoritarian systems in Eastern Europe in the former socialist countries. This continuously growing portal is available online in 16 languages at
http://cultural-opposition.eu/registry/(opens in new window). The collections contain artefacts from an array of initiatives that were in some form hostile to or critical of the ideology of the regimes, including (but not limited to) non-conformist art; anti-establishment religious movements; civic initiatives for unofficial education and publication; underground punk and rock music; green movements; and novel spiritual practices. The history of these collections studied in their broader social and cultural context reveals an alternative history of the regime changes, since the civil initiatives to which these collections testify contributed to the collapse of the dictatorships.
The COURAGE Registry promotes the discovery of collections which have been scattered and hidden because official cultural politics under state socialism forbade or barely tolerated any systematic archiving of countercultural or non-conformist phenomena.
Furthermore, the Registry allows archives and museums to map materials similar to their holdings in Europe and launch joint projects across borders and cultures. For example, it lets them organize exhibitions together, exchange duplicate materials to diversify their holdings, or apply for grants together.
Finally, the database contains the provenance and history of collections, the profiles and stories of the people and organizations who contributed to creating and maintaining the collections, and key events in the histories of the collections (e.g. exhibitions based on the holdings). This encourages an approach to history that highlights the contributions of ordinary citizens to cultural opposition against oppressive regimes.
