The Visegrad Lenses

This short remark by Kádár reveals much more than a  moment of political instruction. It shows how deeply ideological language shaped everyday communication and expectations in the late socialist period. For the nations behind the Iron Curtain, Orwellian ‘Newspeak’ was not only an interesting thought experiment, but an everyday reality. It defined how people were expected to speak, think, and behave in public life. For history teachers and students today, such texts and sources offer an entry point into understanding the symbolic power of language in authoritarian systems. The Making Visegrad Histories Digital Erasmus+ project established a  common Central European platform of experts, educators, historians, academicians, databases, and source collections to share and contrast the parallel experiences of the period of 1948-1989. This article explores how this international project, including digital, inquiry-based history education approaches, can help learners uncover and interpret this kind of ideological vocabulary, while comparing different perspectives and experiences from the socialist past across the Visegrad region. Keywords: communism, Visegrad Region, history education, multiperspectivity, inquirybased learning, international cooperation, digital learning being redefined. The titles of these annual events, such as Why History Education?, What is History For?, and The Complexity of History, clearly express this shift. They reflect how history teaching today must deal not only with the past, but also with the major challenges of the present – political polarization, globalization, and new technologies.

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