Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 4. (Budapest, 2009)
Recenziók
Abstracts 449 ÁGNES NAGY Housing: the boundary of private and public affairs in the early “people’s democracy” (Strife in a Budapest divided house between 1946 and 1949) The study looks at post-1945 political and social changes through behaviour and forms of action generated by everyday conflicts which were subject to legal redress through a specific institutional structure. In 1945, the official housing allocation system by which tenancies were controlled transformed the relationship between the private and public affairs. The civil-law contract between landlord and tenant was replaced by a relationship between the tenant and the official housing bureau. Although most blocks of flats, and therefore most dwellings, remained in private ownership until 1952, housing came immediately under public control. Tenancy became a matter affecting the relationship between the individual and the authorities: the individual’s approach to housing became interpreted as his attitude to public affairs and became subject to judgement on a public level. Consequently, “the housing issue” of that time, which corresponded to a set of conflicts generated and handled by a specific institutional structure, offers a special insight into political and social affairs in the years following 1945. Firstly, the formulation of grievances was a common topic of the discourse which shaped the relationship between the individual and society, the concept of public interest and the categories of community and enemy. Secondly, the strategies pursued by the protagonists of housing disputes tested the powers of various authorities and thus played a part in the formation of state control and regulation of everyday life. The story of a dispute involving a divided flat in József körút which broke out in 1946 and became a people’s court case lasting until 1949 reveals something of the everyday workings of the creation and operation of “democracy” in Budapest. Those on one side of the dispute - the family of an officer in the military political police (KATPOL) - attempted to make use of an institutional structure and means whose elements were connected to the Communist Party, in fact constituted the institutional foundations of the Party’s presence in the state apparatus. The question was whether the attempt to link acquisition of a house with labelling as a political enemy could succeed, thus institutionalising the exercise of political punishment into the everyday workings of the pursuit of individual interests.
