Open/Closed Hungary. Political and Cultural Orientation, 1914–1949

Open/Closed Hungary. Political and Cultural Orientation, 1914–1949

Ed.: István Feitl

István Feitl: Globalization and reclusion in the first half of the 20th century: the world and the Hungarian tides

The new technical universalism brought by the 19th and 20th centuries hailed a mass of insecurities on the societies. These we could summarize form the second part of the 20th century until nowadays under the term “globalization”, that could be either curse or simple issue of fact. Afront it, we could see a permanent defense, closing and conceptive narrowing of the political and cultural spaces that are based on national principles. The study analyses some aspects of social history and the history of ideologies of the globalization and the social defense against it.

Globalization as a phenomenon is the modernity itself, the formation and evolution of the new system of connections and trends. Physical move, the revolution of travel and consequently connections, the radical transformation of communications that has created a new approach to time and space, are all parts of it. The commodities, labour power and information have flown more freely, and it created and expanded the world market. Foreign worlds and alien cultures became closer neighborhoods, which generated concurrence and conflicts. Hence the counter-effect, the practices of defense and closing have stepped on stage. The world wars are condensed forms of this ambiguity, but with opposite results: after the first, national isolation and animosity had strengthened, following the second, supra-national factors have gained determinative importance for a long time.

From the point of view of the history of ideologies, these were highly contradictive progresses. Until the First World War the forces of amplitude were predominant, but after the war closing, even racist tendencies had intensified, particularly in Europe. Hungary was on the same path.

After 1945 had proved unsuccessful to join the anti-nationalist trend, since such experiments were blocked by the trauma of the war defeat and later on by Stalinist fanaticism. Hence an even stronger isolation had formulated from the end of the 1940s the ever before.

The political world

Péter Bihari: Enemy images and stereotypes. Concepts about enemies and allies during the First World War

The study aims at exploring the prevailing stereotypes and prejudices of the public opinion in Hungary during the First World War. It is far from being an easy topic, since wartime censorship makes a serious limit to our understanding.

To begin with, a great war always intensifies (existing) hatreds and attractions. The same happened in this case, the war served as a „mighty accelerator” of events, ideas etc.

The most important ally of Austria-Hungary – Germany – was overwhelmed with praises and compliments, at least from the beginning of the war until 1916. Everything they did was just perfect: the army, the homefront, the leadership, the organization; one can detect a real „Germanomania” in these years. The hightest German value was the strength of the „Volksgemeinschaft”, the union of the whole German people, an envy of most observers in Hungary. However, one tends to think that this „Germanomania” was, at least partly, an indirect critique of the Austrian half of the Monarchy, where nothing worked well enough, neither the army, nor the leadership, the organization or the „Volksgemeinschaft”. And, probably for the very same reasons, the German press also approved many things in wartime Hungary, thus making an indirect criticism of those slow and uncertain Austians.

If the Germans constituted the bright side of the war, the Slavs, escpecially the Czechs proved to be on the wrong side. They were the easiest scapegoats of the war; most failures or losses of the Austro-Hungarian army were attributed to the (alleged) neglect, even to the treason of Czech units.

The greatest traitors were necessarily the Italians, and the defensive war against the one-time ally of the Central Powers was indeed the only popular one. No wonder that the Hungarian press (or the Parliament) did not hesitate to paint everything in connection with Italy with the blackest colors. More or less the same is true to Rumania – also a former ally – which joined the war in 1916. Interestingly but typically, press and Parliament very strongly awoked historical arguments in condemning Italy and Rumania and turning the public opinion against them.

As for Hungary’s internal enemies, the animosity and agitation against the Jews grew extremely strong after 1916. As soon as the „Volksgemeinshaft” of the homefront collapsed, the search for scapegoats began. Jews were the most obvious target; wartime antisemitism fitted into previous stereotypes, it was enough to repeat and intensify them – with regard to the specific wartime circumstances. Thus Jews in general were accused as usurers, profiteers, shirkers etc. (and all these together). The nationalist press, polititians and clergymen quickly realised that anti-Jewish slogans had a special attraction to large segments of the population. Similar phenomena also emerged in Austria and Germany.

The study tries to draw attention to the general rudeness and hate-scenes of the public opinion during the war-years; as if there were a „bellum omnium contra omnes”, or rather a hatred of every one (each social group) against every one else, while nearly everybody blaimed the authorities for the sad state of the homefront.

Finally, mention must be made of the wartime surge of social-darwinism, racism and eugenics – in Hungary just like in many other countries. „Turanism” was a Hungarian specialty which – as a new war-aim – tried to find an appropriate place for Hungary as a „Turanic” race. The concept was obviously aimed against the Slavic and the Jewish population, but even against the German „Mitteleuropa”-idea.

Pál Pritz: Europe and Hungary 1914–1945

Inspired by the essence of Polybius’s, St. Augustine’s and Hegel’s views of history, the author tried to find the axis of 20th century history. He found it in the struggle for democracy.

However, the interwar era was a period of extremities.

1945 did not only bring about the victory of democracy in many countries. Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti was the first in the Communist movement to outline the programme of the transition to a people’s democracy. This programme genuinely contributed to the defeat of Fascism. Nowadays it is fashionable to emphasise that German National Socialism was profoundly different from Italian Fascism. In hindsight, the marked differences look evident. But this distinction cannot make us ignore the fact that for those who were fighting Hitler and his allies (including Hungary), the essence was not the difference but the essence itself. They pointed out that extreme rightist totalitarian regimes sprouted from capitalism. That is why they wanted to have a kind of democracy in the new world after the victory that would be different in quality from bourgeois democracies.

These aspirations were most apparent in Italy. The constitution enacted in 1948 (and basically still in force) stipulates that the democratic republic “is based on labour”.

In 1965, derived from the Constitution, the Italian Constitutional Court declared that it was the responsibility of the state to intervene in the economy in order to increase the number of workplaces.

The practice in the Soviet Union and its satellites seriously compromised the concept of people’s democracy. But even this might not raise impassable barriers to the objectives that the enormous sins of world capitalism, which definitely degrade its remarkable achievements, will be annihilated on the way of transition to real people’s democracies.

This is what the author considers as the sense of the struggles of the interwar period.

József Vonyó: “… Italian orange tree cannot thrive in Hungarian soil…”: Gömbös’ ideological views and their sources

The Hungarian Prime Minister, Gyula Gömbös was often accused, both by contemporaries and later generations, of having simply mimicked the politics of Mussolini and Hitler. Gömbös resented this and often stressed that his politics had originated in uniquely Hungarian conditions and sought to address country-specific problems. This paper presents a comparative study of the key elements in the three leaders’ ideological constitution and the institutional characteristics of the three countries’ governments and governing parties. Moreover, it contrasts the political career of the three national leaders and the conditions that determined how they could exercise power.

Gömbös did not mimic. The apparent similarities of his ideological and political views to those of Hitler and Mussolini reflected independent responses to social challenges very similar in nature and origin to those observed in Italy and Germany. Gömbös could not copy the two dictators, as the core of his views was formulated long before he had the chance to meet them. The few components he adopted from the German and Italian models were adapted to the Hungarian conditions.

Éva Petrás: The Vatican and the Hungarian Catholic intelligentsia – The road of the Hungarian Catholic intelligentsia towards Christian Democracy

In my essay I have examined the relationship of the Vatican’s social doctrine and its reception in Hungary among Catholic intellectuals between the two world wars.

The modern Catholic social doctrine was born at the end of the nineteenth century as a reaction to the emergence of the industrial proletariat. It raised not only the problem of a new segment of the society suffering economic marginalisation but also challenged the Catholic church’s capacity of re-establishing its place in the modern world.

A Catholic approach was elaborated to show a “third way” in order to exceed the dichotomy of contemporary liberalism and socialism. It expanded its focus of attention to the political, philosophical and cultural problematic ideas of the nineteenth and later, the twentieth centuries. Its main tenets were expressed in the encyclicals of popes Leo XIII and Pius XI.

The social doctrine was modified in the first half of the twentieth century due to the worldwide crisis of capitalism. The 1930s have a special position in this context. This decade witnessed an epochal change in the life of the Hungarian Catholic Church, too. The adaptation of the papal social doctrine started exactly at the time, when the Hungarian society, its political and cultural life was re-structured.

The essay examines the emergence of an alternative, social Catholic political thought of the Hungarian lay Catholic intelligentsia, which was based on the papal social doctrine but often contrasted and defined itself in contradiction with the official Catholic interpretation. The historical contextualization and analysis of the intellectual products of a circle of the Catholic intellectuals contributes to the distinguished understanding of the Roman Catholic initiative between the two world wars in Hungary.

Zoltán Paksy: Adaptation or an original idea? The origins and sources of Hungarian right-wing radicalism

In this study, the three main sources of the Hungarian far-right philosophy and ideology are presented. The first signs of anti-liberal conservatism appeared in 1870s and the 1880s in the circles of the Hungarian political elite. This period was the time of an industrial revolution and the modernism that spread due to economic changes. Former nobility and some of the civic society echoed the new-coming ideas that came out on the losing side of the social and economic transition, strongly opposing liberal views seen to be represented by the Jewish meritocracy. Thus the ideology of the anti-liberal conservatism has gained antisemitic content.

The second source is the radical christian- socialism, which gained ground in the 1890s in the country and was set and around the political dispute on civil marriage. These views were also opposing cultural changes triggered by liberal ideas of the Jewish community on the grounds that these were thought to have sabotaged the ethics and morals of Hungarian society. Two of the main representatives of this right-wing philosophy were Béla Bangha, a Jesuit priest and Ottokár Prohászka , catholic cardinal. The most radical members were matching christian socialism with national socialism in the 1930’s.

Finally, eugenics is regarded as the third source which was based on Social Darwinism. This idea appeared in Hungary during World War I propagating that the mingling of Jewish and Hungarian blood results in biologically damaging consequences like the birth of sick offspring. These two ethnic groups therefore must be separated, naturally by limiting the options of the Jewish people. The country’s most famous representative of this ideology was Lajos Méhely, academic zoologist and university professor in the 1920s.

Péter Konok: Patterns, languages, orientations. Some foreign sources of the Hungarian Left in the early 1930’s

The study analyses some features of the international context of the Hungarian left tendencies in the late 1920’s and especially in the early 1930’s; from social democracy through official communist movement to the organizations of the „far left”. The focus is not particularly on their active and concrete connections with foreign organizations and super-organizations (the Comintern for example), but more on the influences on them, the transfers of ideas and intents, and on how they interpreted these influences and formed specific Hungarian internationalist answers, which sometimes fitted well the international standards, sometimes altered significantly. These influences were partially “encoded” by the knowledge of languages among particular social strata – German knowledge, for example was rather common between traditional workers in Budapest with German or Jewish origin; Russian was a result of political activity; and in Hungary Esperanto, the “international language” had a major influence on labour movements as well. Translations were essential in the formation of influences and answers, so the study gives some examples to the selection of translational sources and the channels of illegal or semi-legal distribution. According to the author, the original variegation of tendencies and currents that characterised the Hungarian left milieu during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, mainly transformed and faded for 1935, both because of state repression and sectarianism. New internal and international challenges were emerging – and a new kind of cooperation became necessary; anti-fascism, as a struggle for life, for survival, mainly replaced the former heterogeneity of the left milieu.

Egry Gábor: National Interferences. Minority Hungarians and the Varieties of Hungarian Nationalism in the Thirties

The Treaty of Trianon brought into existence Hungarian minority groups in the successor states. The nationalizing aims and policies of the new elites led to diverging social prcess that drifted them apart from Hungary, while the Hungarian government considered it essential to preserve the Hungarianness of these groups in order to support revisionist claims. New, in their tendency more ethnic concepts of the nation emerged and it coincided with the success of political movements in Europe that promoted an organic, ethnic nationalism as Zeitgeist. The first generation of minority Hungarian youth that came of age in the late twenties was brought up under multiple influences from Hungary’s elite, the nationalizing education system of their respective states, the intellectual currents in these societies and the dominant ideas in Europe. The idea that their respective minority communities were more democratic, more equal, more united in their national sense and thus also models for the renewal of Hungary was a result of what they saw and experienced in surprisingly strange Hungary and at home. Meanwhile organic nationalism and its respective view of the community became dominant in Hungary’s politics too, envisioning a coming social renewal and elimination of social differences along nationalist lines, similar to the ones developed among the minority Hungarians. The aim of my study is to analyze this web of intellectual influences and confluences and show how a prospective Hungarian minority elite became conduit of ideas to and from Hungary. Finally, when large groups of Hungarians were re-annexed before and during WWII this sameness of the vision of society and the apparently different stages of the renewal enabled some of them to successfully organize their regional communities in opposition to the center’s power.

Intellectual and cultural impacts from the outworld on Hungary in the interwar period

László Z. Karvalics: Distilled Decades: Patterns of Information Culture in the World and in Hungary (1910–1945)

After describing the six main information megatrends of the late 19th and early 20th century, the paper demonstrates, that, surprisingly, from an information point of view Hungary was in the international forefront in almost every aspects around the Millenium years. However, the country has totally lost its position before the Second World War. Trying to collect the reasons behind the rapid peripherization, we could find a so-called distillation mechanism. Analyzing the information scene with the stock (the information asset in objects and brains), the flow (dissemination of new knowledge, communication, the quality of change of meanings, etc.) and the information infrastructure, this innovative scheme provided an answer. Despite of the leading positions in several fields, despite of high stocks and flows on critical information domains, the main transformation mechanism was the distillation, instead of multiplication. Stock without flow and flow without stock results consistent and almost automatic strategic loss. The painful distillation forces are consequences of the absolute and relative underdevelopment of the Hungarian society: its extreme unequal nature blocked almost every flows and limited the stock.

More than interesting, that the contemporary Hungarian society produces very similar tendencies, losing its position in Information Society rankings.

Balázs Sipos: World-images, cultural registers and the presence of America in the Horthy era. Possibilities of the adaptation of transnational and connective history

The so called Americanization of Hungary between the world wars was basically a cultural phenomenon, mostly by the emergence and circulation of some elements of the American lifestyle, mediated by movies, novels, information from or about America. Almost parallelly anti-Americanism had also strengthened, based on the idea that although Europe has a cultural and moral advantage over the USA, by the use of its economic power the USA will colonize Europe in the not so far future.

Form the one hand, the study analyses the USA-images of some Hungarian popular, or “elite” (sophisticated) and mediocre (medium level) media, presenting what phenomena were reputed to be American by their origin in Hungary (e.g. modern “girl”, listening jazz, water-skiing, cocktails, pragmatism), and how Hungarians conceived the “exceptionality” of the USA. The study instantiates that all the popular, mediocre and sophisticated media used the same bricks to build their images of the USA. From the other hand, the study tries to elaborate a new method of the historical research of publics by the reconstruction of the interpretations of the USA of two groups of the public of a popular medium, the movie newsreel.

Beatrix Visy: Open and closed world literature

„The history of the European literature” from Mihaly Babits is a summary of his perception on world literature of more decades and a summary of his subjective approach. He had great influence as a poet, essay writer, and journal editorial in his era, and this world literature in subject is a very important print of all the symptoms and „taste” of this era indeed.

The openness of the work is coming from the unclassifiable genre of the title – history of literature – which clearly multiplies the possible meanings of it, while its closure is coming from how Babits defined world literature and how this concept is put into narrow frames. For him, world literature is not all national literatures but a unified, coherent process which has to do only with the greatest artists.

He narrowed down the borders of world literature to Europe only, to the Greek and Christian intellectual culture, which dynamics and eternal change is ensured by individualities, the “hero-genius” roles. So Babits’ world literature’ spatial limits carry intentional values, this is its canon-building principle. Dinamics of time, and its process-like is built on this static structure.

Babits’ mythic figures lose their constraints in space and time, and they become representatives of a higher metaphysical value. Thus in his work should be sought not only aesthetic considerations but it’s also an ethical position given to signals of political, intellectual, and cultural life crisis of the era, ripened for the 30s. The characteristic of the traditional canon-making practice is that prominent eras and creators from the past serves as role models of the present time, and this is especially true to Babits and his essayist contemporaries: ethical and aesthetic patterns point beyond the range of individual self-determination, and warn of the crisis phenomena of the era. But, with Babits, this is associated with a kind of Parakletos-role engagement, advocacy speech situation, which could justify the aspects beyond literary science, the subjective rhetoric and genre border crossings. This is the way how closed world literature can be so open on the level of connotation.

Béla Albertini: Hungarian press photos and the world between the world wars

The mediated images of the actual phenomena of the outer world mark the political and cultural life of each country.  In press photos one could find the combined elements of economy, politics, ideological, cultural, art, and accentually of the idiom of photography; all these together provide sensual and effective information. The interwar period was really outstanding on this field since that was the time when illustrated newspapers have conquered the worldwide public. The accelerating technical development of photography auspiciously met a worldwide general increase in the volume of the press releases. A lot of pictures had reached Hungary, especially through the photo agencies established in the beginning of the century. Besides – sometimes even despite of – it’s prevailingly conservative and authoritarian manner, which was the result of the contemporary political circumstances, the Hungarian illustrated press was rather variegated.

The pictures from foreign countries in Hungary illustrated mostly political events and personalities who embodied them. After seizing power, pictures of Mussolini and his family were presented remarkably often.

Pictures of the “New World” mainly imaged architectural, technical-technological novelties, public curiosities; America was presented in Hungary as the land of wonders. Generally the pictures, which were considered “juicy” that time, also came from America – Hungary only mediated those spectacles…

A generally conservative approach was dominant in the presentation of foreign cultural life and art, however at times some information broke through about modernization, mainly in fine arts (occasionally photography).

All this was animated, sometimes modified by the diverse political base of the different newspapers. The spectrum was wide, from the hardly covert communist tendency through the radicals, liberals and moderate conservatives until the extreme right. Hence the image of the outlands was manifold, even varicoloured during the researched epoch.

Tamás Gajdó: The “world theater” in Hungary, 1914-1944

The study presents the foreign impacts on Hungarian theatre between the world wars. During the first decade of the 20th century mainly German and Italian companies were on tour in Hungary. This tendency remained typical in the interwar period as well, nevertheless, also the Moscow Art Theatre acted in Hungary for a couple of occasions. But was the contemporary European drama present in Budapest? Analyzing the repertoire of the National Theatre and the private companies it is obvious that the Hungarian public was not interested in valuable literature, and the actors did not dare experiment. However, there are a few exceptions; Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Artúr Bárdos was a great public and professional success in 1936 in the Belvárosi Színház (City Theatre).

German guest directors arrived in Budapest – Karl Heinz Martin in 1927 and 1928, Hans Meissner in 1940 and 1941 and Heinrich George in 1942 – in vain; they had no impacts on the Hungarian theatre. They had to adapt to the short periods of rehearsal, and only a real intense work would have been able to reform the decades-long styles of acting.

The attempts to translate the European theatrical phenomena into Hungarian were counteracted, even with violent means, by the authorities. Although there was no censorship in the theaters, the authorities could ban plays – in most cases because of immoral offense, but it happened that a drama was indexed because it “contrasted Christian and Jewish social problems too vehemently and adversely”.

After the outbreak of the Second World War the Hungarian export of dramas atrophied, outland contracts of the Hungarian actors miscarried. This was only partially compensated by the efforts of the director of the National Theater, Antal Németh, who wanted to make German, Bulgarian and Swiss audiences familiar with The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách and Csongor and Tünde by Mihály Vörösmarty.

Mark Zahonyi-Abel: Foreign Films in the Horthy Era in Hungary

In Hungary in the Horthy era foreign films formed an important part of the motion picture scene. This essay aims to examine two things in more details: censorship and the composition of the Hungarian film market.

Motion pictures carry various political, ideological, aesthetic and various others elements, therefore it is important to study  after what kind of modifications and through what kind of checks the films get to the public in a given era. In the Horthy era the censorship of the final work was carried out by the National Motion Picture Examining Board [Országos Mozgóképvizsgáló Bizottság – OMB], the decisions of which reflect the values of the ruling powers of the era (respect for authority, Christian-national discourse).

The composition of the Hungarian film market can be described based on the official data of the OMB. Foreign works made up the majority of the films on the market, but the number of Hungarian films was steadily on the rise. The foreign films which the OMB controlled came first of all from the USA, West Europe and Central Europe and occasionally from other countries (Scandinavia, East Europe, Asia).

To counterbalance the dominance of foreign made films on the Hungarian film market the state worked out a film support system in which an extra charge had to be paid after the distribution of non-Hungarian films. The state spent this money on the development, the assistance, the rewarding of the Hungarian film industry.

József Vadas: International challenges, national reactions. International trends of applied arts in Hungary between the two World Wars

Miklós Horthy’s rise to power as the regent of Hungary (1920) established a neobaroque regime and society. This revivalism that was already prevalent as an artistic style between the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867) and World War I grew stronger in the lifestyle of the new society as well as in the religious arts promoted by the government. The interior design of the Christian middle class was influenced by this conservative style. In addition to the mainstream neobaroque, all other modern international trends made their way to the limited platforms offered by the educated bougeoise and progressive elite. The applied arts of Italy and Germany were the predominant source of these styles, in contrast to the earlier influence of Austria. The reason for this shift of preference was the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Horthy’s intentions of drawing closer to the Central Powers in order to break Hungary’s isolation following the Trianon Treaty.

The achievements of the most progressive school in the applied arts of the epoch, Bauhaus were marginalized in Hungary because it was seen as “cultural bolshevism”. The majority of Hungarian artists who taught and studied at this school (from László Moholy-Nagy to Marcel Breuer) therefore realized their life’s work abroad. Representatives of the school who returned or were educated in Hungary (Farkas Molnár, Sándor Bortnyik, Alfréd Forbát) could only appeal to a narrow layer of open-minded individuals. Their writings could be more or less freely published, however, their designs could at best be partially realized. Another factor limiting the flourishing of the applied arts was the stagnant economy of the country at the time. In the first half of the Horthy era decorative expressionism using baroque elements dominated, whereas in the second half art deco gained momentum, polarized between a “cosy” modernism and an exotic folklore. Lajos Kozma, the most brilliant and versatile artist of the day, made an outstanding contribution to all of the above trends.

Judit Anna Szatmári: Where did fashion come from between the two world wars?

The article discusses how international fashion industry of the era functioned and what effect it had in Hungary. The leading fashion capital was Paris, but after the economic crisis, in the 30’s other countries like England, Austria, Germany and the United States closed up as well.

The transmitters of the Parisian and international fashion for the costumers were the fashion magazines, first of all the Színházi Élet (Theatre Life) with its up to date articles, from the 30’s also illustrated with photos. There were also professional reviews for the tailors, like the Magyar Divatipar (Hungarian Fashion Industry) and the Női Divat (Women’s Fashion).

The fashionable dresses were worn by the famous actresses like Sári Fedák, Ilona Titkos and Lili Muráti, and by the leading ladies of the Budapest social life like Mrs. György Prónay and Lili Hatvany, whose pictures were regularly published, so they became icons in Hungary.

The Hungarian fashion industry developed during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but after World War I., when the country lost its two-thirds, lots of the textile mills were gone, too. The most significant fashion house owners of Pest travelled twice a year to Paris (or to Vienna) to see the shows and to buy samples of the famous fashion houses. The professional life was promoted by the alliance of the tailors, the Nőiruhakészítők Országos Szövetsége (National Association of Dressmakers). It organized for example fashion shows from the newly bought Parisian models of the bigger fashion houses (like the Holzer, Förstner, Girardi, Vékey, Gréte, Rotschild, etc.) for the smaller firms and for the buyers to see the new trends.

The garconne-look of the roaring twenties was designed only in Paris, but in the 30’s other countries begun to design their own models. In Hungary there were some competitions as well, especially to promote the use of Hungarian textiles and folk motives. Instead of buying expensive French samples, tailors went to Vienna again. In the magazines even more American news were published because the actresses of the talkies were famous also in Hungary. At the end of the decade and in the 40’s the German influence was growing. By that time Budapest became one of the leading fashion capitals in the war-stricken Europe.

About the 1945–1949 era

Magdolna Baráth: Changes of the image of the Soviet Union in the coalition years

In the first part of the study the author examines how the anti-Soviet propaganda in the period between the world wars effected on the image of the Soviet-Union in Hungary. The Hungarian public opinion did not possess of reliable and exact informations about the situation in the Soviet Union. Thanks to this fact and the anti-Soviet propaganda there were a lot of prejudices in the Hungarian population concerning the Soviets.

The author drew special attention to that, how the behaviour of the soldiers of the Soviet Red Army in Hungary influenced on the image of the Soviet Union.

The study also examines, the Soviet and Hungarian political leadership what kind of mesaureas, methods and tools used in order to change the image of the Soviet Union in a favourable direction.

János Botos: What has the Hungarian public known about the Endlösung/Final Solution?

The study explores the depth, extend and accuracy of the knowledge of the Hungarian public on the persecution, deprivation, ghettoization, deportation and murder of the Jewry.

The facts and information stemmed from several sources. A part of the population had first hand experiences on the persecution of the Jewry as witnesses, most of them as passive bystanders, but some 200,000 of them as active participants in the process. Immediately after the war, the personal accounts of the survivors of deportations and ghettos –hitherto not stained with political overtones – depicted the persecutions from the angle of the sufferers, yet part of the population was hostile toward the returnees. The media – the press, the radio and the newsreels – distributed the stories of the survivors, party using them as additional source of information, to wide circles of audience. Moreover, various media outlets provided detailed reports on the prosecution of war criminals, on the related investigations, exhumations of the sites of mass-murder, on number of victims. These reports and the adjoined commentaries reflected the political stances of their authors. The texts published in memoirs, books and periodicals contained information in highly diverse, personal tone of the witnesses and survivors of the persecutions on their experiences and endured suffering. These texts published in the media, and very often also in the memoirs, carried traces of the political views of their creator. Out of the information published by the media, apart from the articles of newspapers and magazines, the newsreels and the programs of the Hungarian Radio reached the widest audiences. With the exacerbation of the Cold War, the options for the country – and consequently, of the channels of information – were strongly narrowed. The shutting of the country was coupled, in the case of the Holocaust, with the refusal to deal with the past. From 1947 on, articles and information in the media and public discourse on the Holocaust became gradually rare, and from 1950 completely disappeared for long years.

Éva Standeisky: The Alkotás and the world. Birth, life and death of a journal

The Alkotás was published from January 1947, as the journal of the Hungarian Art Council, the consulting organ of the Ministry of Religion and Public Education. The vice-president of the council, the reputed avant-garde artist and noted writer, Lajos Kassák was appointed to the editor of the journal. The multilingual journal had a nice make-up, it published black and white and color reproductions as well and provided up to par explanations of abstract artifacts and placed them into a context with great art products of former centuries. Kassák planned thematic issues; it favourably coincided with the demand that all arts would exhibit Hungarian and foreign performances, which were esteemed as really important. The issue about Picasso found its way to Picasso himself. After the war Picasso was a symbol of the progressive West, the promise of a democracy that is consummating towards socialism, opposite to the domestic mainstream, which preferred understandable and realistic depiction. Among the authors of the journal there were communists, members of other parties or apolitical people as well.

The Alkotás was one of the representatives of the cultural variegation, which was able to form despite of the incredible material troubles of the time. The world at large was more open to the Alkotás than Hungary. Especially Hungarians in emigration read it. Came into power, the Communist Party was elaborating a unified approach to arts, with no place for the Alkotás.  There were no need in the new structures of power and ideology for an organization or an organ, such as the Hungarian Art Council or the Valóság, which were based on democratic principles, tolerant towards different artistic approaches and open to both East and West. The council was officially dissolved for 1950. Its journal had already discontinued earlier: its last issue was published in May 1948.

Róbert Takács: The Changing Image of the Intellectual West in the Coalition Daily Press 1945–1948

„By far we are trying to erect our line-poles” wrote the social democrat daily Népszava in 1946. It was not an easy task to restore the broken nets of cultural intercourse in the war struck Europe – and before the reconstruction could have brought its fruits another wave of seclusion began. The paper examines these four stormy years of post-war attempts to interpret the Western world and culture in the determining dailies of the Hungarian coalition parties. These efforts reflected the political and cultural values of the intellectuals gathering around the four parties: the communists, the social democrats, the smallholders and the National Peasants’ Party. All these newspapers went through considerable changes in these years – as the parties behind them. At the beginning all were common in requiring cultural transfers between Hungary and the West, however their attitudes were different. Szabad Nép, the communist daily represented the same Francophile approach as Népszava and the peasant radical Szabad Szó, but with a much more conscious ideological fixation. They were also common in their elitism of refusing mass culture which they more or less identified with ‘Americanism’. On the other hand the smallholders’ organ Kis Újság was much more open to American democratic values and culture. The great shift came in Autumn 1947 after the formation of the Kominform and the declaration of the ‘two camps” by Zhdanov. In the late 1947 debate on cultural openness and closure the two sides were the Népszava and Kis Ujság vs. Szabad Nép and Szabad Szó. From spring 1948 all the four coalition dailies became more and more one-sided and tendentious in mediating Western culture.

Zsuzsanna Demeter: The World-View of Humour magazines, 1945-1950

My comparison of caricatures that appeared in three different politically inclined humour magazines from 1945-1950 (the communist Ludas Matyi, Szabad Száj, associated with the Smallholder’s Party, and Pesti Izé, edited by social-democrats) focused on information and ideological content conveyed by these drawings in light of foreign policy issues affecting Hungary, her relations with other nations in East-Central Europe and the leading world powers at the time.

Similar tendencies were revealed in all three newspapers irrespective of their political affiliation. Between 1946 and the first half of 1947 they dealt primarily with internal affairs and devoted only a few drawings to foreign policy events that had a direct impact on Hungary e.g. resettlement, the deportation of Germans, the Paris peace talks and relations with neighbouring countries.

By the spring of 1947, relations between formerly allied world powers had deteriorated, accelerating the political divide between Europe and the world. Thereafter, the number of satirical cartoons commenting on international events multiplied, first in Ludas Matyi, then in Pesti Izé and then Szabad Száj in 1949. The caricatures now depicted a warmongering foreign enemy (American and British politicians and their allies), a threat to the “free world” and “democracy” as opposed to the peaceful camp led by the Soviet Union.

These drawings hardly differed from one another in terms of their message and modes of visual representation, mainly because artistic freedom was limited in issues of foreign policy. None of the drawings criticise the Soviets, who are presented exclusively as a positive example. Similarities in graphic representation can be traced to the fact that several cartoonists worked for all three newspapers so as to earn their living. Consequently, the pronounced anti-Western, anti-American and anti-imperialist propaganda characteristic of Ludas Matyi appeared in the other two periodicals as well.