The Education of dissent: the reception of the Voice of Free Hungary, 1951-1956

Within the cultural history of the Cold War some attention has been paid to the history of western broadcasting to Soviet bloc countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Most of this work has concentrated on the institutional histories of individual radio stations and their relationships to politics. Little or no systematic attention has, however, been paid to the reception of those radio stations in their target societies. This article, which concentrates on the reception of the Voice of Free Hungary in that country during the early 1950's, lays the foundations of an approach to the social history of western broadcasting towards the Soviet bloc

A magyar forradalom új megközelítésben: az ipari munkásság, a szocializmus széthullása és rekonstrukciója, 1953-1958

1956-ról majdnem minden társadalmi csoportnak megvan a maga mítosza. A szerz? arra tesz kísérletet, hogy a levéltári források tükrében tárja fel a forradalom társadalmi gyökereit, illetve megmutassa, milyen okok miatt fordultak szembe a munkástömegek a rendszer politikájával. A tanulmány érdeme, hogy vizsgálja a munkásság bels? tagozódását, s bemutatja, hogy eltér? okok motiválták a bejárókat és a városi munkásokat, illetve az id?sebb, elit szakmunkásréteget és a periférián lev? munkásfiatalokat. A széles kör? elégedetlenség a Rákosi-rendszerben a munkásokat sújtó nyomorból (is) fakadt. Gazdasági követeléseik teljesítése így lényegesen hozzájárult a Kádár-rendszer viszonylag gyors konszolidációjához

A múlt lezárása a háború utáni Ausztriaban: Emlékezet, nemzetiszocializmus és 1945 értlemezése Észak-Burgenlandban

A cikk az osztrák nemzeti emlékezetben Ausztria második világháborús részvételér?l kialakított kép revíziójára tesz kísérletet. A szerz? - egy alaposan dokumentált burgenlandi esettanulmány alapján - arra a következtetésre jut, hogy a helyi közösség elfogadta a nácik rasszista, népirtó politikáját, vagy legalábbis beletör?dött abba, s a végleges kiábrándulás csak akkor következett be, amikor a totális háború már Burgenlandot is fenyegette

Introduction: workers and socialist states in postwar central and eastern Europe

The essays in this special issue by Jack R. Friedman, Sándor Horváth, Peter Heumos, and Eszter Zsófia Tóth, reflect a growing interest in the social history of industrial labor and industrial communities in postwar Central and Eastern Europe. While they approach their subjects in different ways and employing distinct methodologies, the essays suggest how the history of the working class and its relationship to postwar socialist state formation across the region might be rethought. They illustrate how the protracted construction and consolidation of socialist states in the region was negotiated on an everyday level by working-class citizens, and that this was a dynamic process in which state projects interacted with a variety of working-class cultures, that were in turn segmented by notions of gender, skill, generation, and occupation. The essays all demonstrate, in their different ways, how working-class Eastern Europeans were not simply acted upon by the operation of dictatorial state power, but played a role in state formation across the region. This role was characterized by an ambiguous relationship between workers and those in power who sought legitimacy by claiming that their states represented the interests of the 'working class.� Yet the policies those in power pursued often confronted working-class communities directly in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, as these essays suggest. This produced a complex relationship characterized by consent, accommodation and conflict that varied from locality to locality, state to state, and from period to period

The social limits of state control: Time, the industrial wage relation and social identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948-1953

The article argues that the Stalinist state in post-war Hungary aimed to use the wage relation as a central component of its policies to rationalise the organisation of production in industry. It attempted this by trying to discipline workers through the introduction of a form of "payment by results" which subordinated the workforce to the discipline of "clock time." In complete contrast to state intentions, the planned economy developed its own rhythms and it was to these that the workforce came to respond. These responses led to a high degree of informal conflict on Hungarian shop floors, a process which re-shaped worker identity, making it more particular in its nature. The implication behind this argument is that the Stalinist state was less powerful than many have suggested, and that research should focus more on the economy if the roots of social change under state socialism are to be found

Making peace in the shadow of war: The Austrian-Hungarian borderlands, 1945-1956

This article examines the process of state reconstruction in Austria and Hungary's borderlands that followed the Second World War. This process of state reconstruction was also a process of pacification, as it represented an attempt to (re)build states on the foundations of the military settlement of the war. The construction of legitimate state authority was at its most successful on the Austrian side of the border, where political actors were able to gain legitimacy by creating a state that acted as an effective protector of the immediate demands of the local community for security from a variety of threats. On the Hungarian side of the border the state was implicated with some of the actors who were seen as threatening local communities, something that produced political polarisation. These differences set the stage for the transition from war to cold war in the borderlands

The reproduction of hierarchy: skill, working-class culture and the state in early socialist Hungary

No abstract availabl

The politics of legitimacy and Hungary's postwar transition

This article presents a re-examination of Hungary's postwar transition from the perspective of the politics of legitimacy that were deployed by the various significant political actors. It argues that postwar state formation following Soviet occupation and legitimacy were closely connected. Hungary's Communists and their allies aimed to create a state based on the ideological formula of 'people's democracy', which in the Hungarian context led them to build a state based on the restricted social base of the industrial working class. They ignored or antagonized alternative political traditions, particularly those associated with the rural majority and middle classes that were instead mobilized by an alternative project that rested on a democratized conservatism. This created two visions of a potential postwar political order. The contest between these two visions generated the bitter political struggles that characterized the late 1940s and shaped the social roots of dictatorship in the country