Report on two “Popular Dynamics” workshops

Author: Katharina Kelbler, Institut für Kulturwissenschaft, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The collaborative research project “Adjustment and Radicalisation: Dynamics in Popular Culture(s) in Pre-War Eastern Europe,” which was started in 2023 by institutes in Berlin, Leipzig, and Potsdam, explores new developments in popular culture in Belarus, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary from a comparative perspective.(1) It focuses on the role of popular culture media and formats in the establishment of authoritarian and dictatorial forms of rule. To date, the project has organized two workshops at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. The first workshop in February 2024, “Popular Culture, Social Media and Populist Politics: Perspectives from Eastern Europe” (Part I), was mainly organized by project members and project fellows. It explored the connections between popular culture and populist politics. The second workshop in February 2025, “Digital Tools, Radical Views, Appealing Aesthetics: Comparative Approaches to Popular Culture from Eastern Europe” (Part II), continued this trajectory and expanded the project’s comparative perspective through a cooperation with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia.(2) This workshop focused on how digital media influence political and popular-cultural developments today.

The first workshop addressed the political instrumentalization of popular culture by populist and right-wing movements as well as the compensatory and resistive functions of different musical and stage-based formats. Popular rock and pop music play a key role in mobilizing large sections of the population. INDIRA ANNA HAJNÁCS (Leipzig) used the example of Hungary to show how folk music is specifically instrumentalized to spread right-wing populist narratives. In Russia, concert shows and stage spectacles are also instrumentalized to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine and normalize war narratives. MARINA SCHARLAJ (Dresden) demonstrated this vividly by analyzing recent pop songs and performances of so-called ethno-operas, which are intended to convey patriotic values and heroic images of battle.

In popular literature, the distribution of populist content is much more ambivalent. ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN (Potsdam) examined Polish light fiction and films to demonstrate how, on the one hand, the Holocaust is utilized as a political instrument to propagate the image of the righteous, heroic Catholic Poles in the Second World War. On the other hand, it breaks up traditional gender roles and the texts also focus on Jewish actors. KONRAD SIERZPUTOWSKI (Krakow / Berlin) also worked with literary examples to discuss how Polish right-wing publishers utilize laughter and humor to create patriotic “communities of laughter” and inspire collective affiliation with the help of comic outsider figures.

DARIA GANZENKO (Potsdam) addressed another aspect of humor. She looked at the prominent Russian comedian and satirist Mikhail Zadornov, who parodies images of the “Russian people” in his stage shows while also reproducing shared populist resentments and national pride. JOANNA STAŚKIEWICZ (Potsdam) discussed a completely different, emancipatory form of humor in the queer performance art of neo-burlesque in Warsaw, but also in Berlin and New Orleans, demonstrating how it parodistically questions traditional gender roles and heteronormativity. ALINA MOZOLEVSKA (Mykolaiv / Berlin) explored forms of humor, albeit in the format of the meme. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she analyzed how these funny images were employed on both sides of the front to create a collective identity and create new war narratives.

In a way, her presentation directly initiated the second workshop in February 2025. It addressed more thoroughly the role of digital media in popular culture. Here, the presentations on Bulgaria were of particular interest as this Southeastern European country receives little attention and is hardly researched in Germany.

NIYA NEYKOVA (Sofia) and MATTHIAS SCHWARTZ (Berlin) opened the workshop by reflecting digital tools and how they change our understanding of populism and popular culture. Neykova looks at Bulgaria to analyze how populist activists, influencers, and pop stars systematically undermine journalistic standards and democratic institutions with the help of social media. Schwartz looked at the much-discussed Russian pop song “Sigma Boy” (by Betsy & Masha Yankovskaya, 2024), to illustrate how social media platforms like TikTok transcend national borders, reshape communicative contexts, and generate antagonistic political messages.

MILLA MINEVA (Sofia) and OLEKSANDR ZABIRKO (Regensburg) explored the mobilizing effects of digital media. Mineva researched the social media platform Facebook, which is extremely important in Bulgaria, to demonstrate how meme culture and meme production in the country are radically changing the political landscape while reaching ever larger sections of the population. In contrast, Zabirko addressed how memes, images, and narratives are used in the Russian-Ukrainian war to discredit and demonize the respective opponent. He particularly focused on the figure of the zombie, which is adapted by various media formats – through memes, but also in pop songs and literary texts – to paint the enemy in a threatening light.(3)

Several contributions to the workshop explored the connections between popular music and the politics of history as well as the crucial role of social media. In her presentation, NINA WELLER (Berlin) examined the role of Slavic heritage in Belarusian popular music. While many ethno-folkloric and independent groups (many of whom are now in exile) emphasize the European roots of their Slavic heritage, many state-sponsored musical events focus on the motif of Soviet “brotherhood” and “sisterhood” of the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian people. However, Weller pointed out that, in recent years, the state music industry has adopted many folkloric and historical motifs that were previously reserved for the nationalist opposition. ALEKSANDRA KOLESNIK (Bielefeld / Berlin) gave a presentation on the significance of heritage-making in which she discussed the example of Ekaterinburg’s rock music heritage. The musealization of important locations and protagonists of the scene – some of whom are actively involved in this process themselves – could serve as an educational tool, as Kolesnik demonstrated using an interactive map of Ekaterinburg. However, it also promotes “nostalgia” tourism and a depoliticization of this underground culture. In her lecture, ZHANA POPOVA (Sofia) examined the autobiographical memories of the Bulgarian Estrada singers Lili Ivanova and Mitko Shterev, who, at the time, were extremely popular and loyal to the state. Popova analyzed their portrayal of the socialist world in contrast to the capitalist present after 1990, observing similar dynamics of nostalgic depoliticization and critical reappraisal. VYARA ANGELOVA (Sofia) examined the potential instrumentalization of sound as a political and military weapon. Through various examples of sound and music, she explained the diverse forms of sonification, ranging from torture practices to subtle combinations of musical styles to destabilize the enemy’s psyche.

The last two presentations addressed the connection between digital tools, conservatism, and populism. ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN (Potsdam) analyzed the online trend of the “tradwife,” which, in the Polish-speaking digital world, primarily appears in the form of the “tradgirl.” Drawing on youth novels, films, and other media, she revealed a constructed discourse on patriotic femininity that fetishizes gender difference and reproduces the image of women as caregivers and mothers with limited agency. VERONIKA HERMANN (Budapest) gave a lecture on global trends and local ideologies and how these constitute a powerful pop politics in Hungarian social media in which current issues are merged with a supposedly glorious past. Thus, populism and illiberality are fed into a popular cultural discourse and normalized with the help of digital tools.

In my view, the two workshops convincingly argued that, under digital conditions, common concepts of popular culture as a manipulative “culture industry” (Theodor W. Adorno / Max Horkheimer), subcultural subversion (Stuart Hall), or purely as a quantitative phenomenon (Thomas Hecken) are of little help to understand its specific qualities and effects. After all, the digital sphere is one in which various actors and different dynamics intertwine, which can both reinforce populist tendencies and undermine ideological instrumentalization of popular culture. Particularly in societies in transition, in which dictatorial or authoritarian forms of government are becoming increasingly attractive as a response to economic and political crises, such popular cultural phenomena like the ones discussed in the two workshops are playing an ever more important role and urgently require further research.

Conference overview:

Part 1 (15-16 February 2024)

Panel I

Aleksandra Szczepan (Potsdam): Sentimental Auschwitz and Righteous Gentiles: Holocaust Kitsch as a Political Tool in East-Central Europe

Alina Mozolevska (Mykolaiv / Berlin): Meme Wars: Weaponization of Popular Culture in the Russo – Ukrainian War

Panel II

Marina Scharlaj (Dresden): Pop Music, Politics and the Construction of War (Before and After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine)

Indira Anna Hajnács (Leipzig): Folk Music as a Projection Vehicle. Music and Populism in Hungary

Panel III

Konrad Sierzputowski (Krakow / Berlin ): Populism, Popular Culture, and Communities of Laughter in Poland (2015–2023)

Joanna Staśkiewicz (Potsdam): Burlesque as Queer Heterotopia. Queering Gender Constructions, Myths and Biography in Burlesque using Examples from Berlin, New Orleans, and Warsaw

Panel IV

Daria Ganzenko (Potsdam): Comedy of Resentment and Pride: ‘Russian People’ in Mikhail Zadornov’s Satiric Monologues (1989–2000s)

Part 2 (13-14 February 2025)

Panel I: Rethinking Populism and Popular Culture

Matthias Schwartz (Berlin): Adjustments to the Public: Rethinking Popular Culture in Digital Times

Svetla Koleva (Sofia) / Niya Neykova (Sofia): Rethinking Populism with Pierre Rosanvallon

Panel II: Popular Culture as a Weapon

Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg): Naming the Enemy: Popular Culture in Ukrainian and Russian War Rhetoric

Vyara Angelova (Sofia): Weaponizing Sound: Technology, Power, Cultural Codes

Panel III: Musical Heritage, Mapping Sounds

Zhana Popova (Sofia): The West and the Soviet Union in the Autobiographies of Bulgarian Estrada Musicians after 1990

Aleksandra Kolesnik (Bielefeld / Berlin): Signifying the Rock Heritage of Ekaterinburg (Russia): The Experience of Creating an Online Map

Panel IV: Mobilizing the Past and the Present

Milla Mineva (Sofia): Memes of the World, Unite! Travelling Memes and How They Mobilize Social Groups

Nina Weller (Berlin): Contested Past. Historical “Heroes” as Figures of Resistance in Pop and Protest Music

Panel V: Conservatism and Populism in Digital Media

Aleksandra Szczepan (Potsdam): Polish Tradwives: Popular Culture and Digital Media in the Service of Conservative Identities

Veronika Hermann (Budapest): Populism and Popular Media in Illiberal Hungary

Notes:
1. For further information, see: https://www.zfl-berlin.org/project/adjustment-and-radicalisation.html and https://popular-dynamics.org/ (20.05.2025).
2. The colleagues from Sofia participate in the interdisciplinary research project “Pop-culture, pop-politics: The Digital turn,” funded by the Research Fund of the Bulgarian Ministry of Research and Education. In October 2024, an international conference was also held on this topic. It engaged in interdisciplinary analyses of the intersectionality between media, cultures, and politics. See: https://conference.politpop.eu// (20.05.2025).
3. Some of these observations are already published the essay Oleksandr Zabirko, Zombies, Orcs, and Fascists. Naming the Other in the Context of Russia’s War against Ukraine, in: Viktoriya Sereda (ed.), War, Migration, Memory. Perspectives on Russia’s War Against Ukraine, Bielefeld 2025, p. 159-176, Open Access: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7587-0/war-migration-memory/ (20.05.2025).

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