": "Fővárosunk. Irta Táncsics Mihály. Hasonmás kiadás - Budapest Főváros Levéltára forráskiadványai 8. (Budapest, 1976)

On „Our Capital" by Mihály Táncsics

Mihály Táncsics (1799—1S84) was a writer and politician of peasanl origin, a soeialist-utopist, advocat of national independence and the elimination of serfdom, representative of the interests of the poor peasantry and the workers. First a serf, then an artisan, he later learned while serving at the same time. After finishing his studies, he worked as a tutor at aristo^'atic families, studying linguistics and writing text-books in the meantime. Disagreements whit the censorial authorities, friendship with progressive writers and the books he read all directed his attention towards politics. He advocated first Széchenyi's views of the bourgeois transformation of the country and later, with the publication of the Pesti Hírlap (The Pest Herald) those of Kossuth. In the wake of Owen, Fourier and Cabet, in 1843 he wrote down his systematized ideas of the communist society without classes and private property, expressing the instinctive desires of the rural and urban poor to abolish all kinds of exploitation. His utopistic communist views did not prevent him in realizing that bourgeois transformation had been made urgent by the natural flow of history. Back from his journey in Western Europe, he was sentenced to prison for offence against press-laws. He was freed from prison by the Pest people on 15th March 1848. After the victory of the revolution he published a weekly, expressing the interests of the peasantry and the workers. Although he subordinated his activity to the necessity of a national unity during the war of independence, his programme of the further development of the achievements of the revolution gave rise to fierce criticism. After the failure of the war of independence he was executed in effigie, and had to hide for eight years. In his underground leaflets he analysed the lessons of the war and the revolution, called to resistance against the Habsburg tyranny, and schemed an armed uprising. In 1857 he received pardon, but was arrested again in 1860 for the organization of the demonstration of March 15th and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.