Culturally, spiritually, dependence on the Soviet Union in the countries of the region appeared in models of Soviet-conform Marxism broken down into local power relations, mostly representing a narrow power elite. In Eastern European societies, however, there were forces, oppositionists, economists, scientists, artists committed to democracy who were interested in the Western, pro-development orientation. The confrontation of these two fronts, the re-negotiated balance again and again, forms the dynamics of double talk. This contradictory phenomenon of dual orientation was constantly on the agenda in the 1960s and 1970s, and as the basic pattern of the era, although to varying degrees, it defined the life and culture of Eastern European societies.

The constraint between the two world systems, but also the compulsion of development, forced the majority of the communist powers in Eastern Europe, including the Hungarian political leadership, to continuous self-correction, which over time provided more room for maneuver for the natural forces of these systems, the economy, science and art. Our volume undertakes to better understand the constant change in the situation and evaluation of art in the socialist period by examining this process of self-correction.