CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND HUNGARY AT THE BRUSSELS EXPO OF 1958- NATIONALISM IN THE DISPLAY OF SOCIALIST MODERNITY AND THE GLOBAL CULTURAL POLITICS OF THE COLD WAR.
The Brussels EXPO of 1958 was envisioned by its organisers as a platform to renew the intellectual, spiritual and moral powers of humanism after the horrors of the Second World War. In its post-War setting, it aimed to promote the new Man by crossing the anxious binaries of Cold War politics. In reality, however, it fed on these very anxieties with the USA and USSR using art, technology, architectural designs to further the propaganda of their respective competing antagonistic political worldview. But, some small countries like the Soviet satellite states of Czechoslovakia and Hungary made a significant impact through their pavilions on the millions of visitors. The death of Stalin in 1953 followed by the comparatively liberal policies of Khrushchev and the consequent political disturbances in Hungary and, political reforms in Czechoslovakia determined the content and styling of the pavilions at the Expo. Both the countries marked a shift from socialist realism and posited themselves through art, architecture or technological displays which were more abstract, innovative, individualistic, existential, humanistic and even avant-garde. Moreover, the local, regional, ethnic and even the national were strongly emphasized in the pavilions, some of which at times were bereft of the traditional symbolism of a socialist state. The emphasis on the national illustrated the contradictions in the ideology and action of politics in these east and central European countries in the light of the post-Stalinist era. These contradictions, not only helped to realign the dominance of socialism internally, but had global implications and intentions in the cultural Cold War, which were played out through the content and styling of the pavilions at the expo in Brussels.