• Communism and Elites In East-Central Europe: Destruction, Mutation, Conversion
• Conference in Paris at the Ecole normale supérieure, 2004., 2-3. April, 9 am - 6 pm (free entrance)
• Organized under the auspices of the History Department of the Ecole normale supérieure, in cooperation with the Hungarian Institute of Paris.
• The purpose of the conference is to provide a forum of discussion for the experts and the young researchers, from Central and Western Europe, studying different fields of social sciences, on the following four themes of discussion:
  • the consequences of the main political breaks (world wars, sovietization, fall of the communist regimes) on the composition of the elite, with an attempt to find the real turning points in social history.
  • the places and the institutions where the elite were formed
  • the self-fashioning of the elite, in an officially egalitarian society, and the ways of exerting their power.
  • the cultural practices of the elite, their relationship with religion and their social habits.

In each of these topics, the issues of communism will be approached from the double perspective of long-term national histories and of contemporary echoes of the communist experience.