Hungarian Heritage Review, 1989 (18. évfolyam, 1-9. szám)
1989-01-01 / 1. szám
Special Jljeature-ÖDf-ÍElje-^dntll different cultures of the continent. All of Hungary’s archaeological excavations are coordinated under the Museum’s supervision. The Museum’s well-edited Folia Archaeologica publishes papers in numerous foreign languages. Valuable objects are deposited in the Christian Museum (Keresztény Muzeum) of Esztergom, the Museum of Contemporary History (Legujabbkori Történeti Muzeum), the Museum of Military History (founded in 1918), and the Museum of Theatrical History (founded 1952) all in Budapest. The reorganized library system, also under state control, helps in many ways to promote the goals of the historical sciences. The oldest library extant is the Benedictine Monastery’s at Pannonhalma whose inventory dating back to 1090 has been preserved. The largest is the National Széchényi Library (founded in 1801), having about five million items. The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Library of Lorand Eötvös University, as well as the Library of the National Assembly, all seated in Budapest, possess valuable collections too, especially in their manuscript divisions. Among ecclesiastical libraries, the Library of the Esztergom Cathedral (better known as the Bibliotheca of Esztergom) has world-renowned medieval collections. No serious study of the immense postwar literature can be made without first depicting some characteristics of its ideological background. Substantial theoretical studies prepared by Erik Molnár, Erzsébet Andies, Dezső Nemes, and Aladar Mod have tried to determine the objective of historical writing. In their consensus, historical writing is an educational means in the service of the socialist transformation of the society and accordingly historical writing should reflect the spirit of socialist patriotism and its inseparable concomitant; proletarian internationalism. Fortunately, this nonhistorical approach has fully materialized only in a few instances though its spirit more or less affected many historians. It is interesting to note that the treatment of pre-1526 topics has been more objective than the analysis of the issues of the later centuries, especially than that of the period of late feudalism. For instance, the social unrest of feudal peasantry in the sixteentheighteenth centuries has been so magnified and distorted in Marxist-Leninist literature that there seems to be no distinction at all between the anti-feudal goals of peasant movements and the national objectives of the Hungarian nation as a whole. Feudal peasantry has been described most unprofessionally from a historical vantage point as the flagbearer of national independence movements, though the peasantry of that period lacked any semblance of a well-developed national consciousness suitable for leading a nation’s struggles for independence. This task was exclusively consigned in history to the nobility. But many a historian has idolized the role of the peasantry in conformity with the Russian narodnik views which confused class warfare of the peasantry with the national indepedence movements. To identify the class warfare of the peasantry with the national independence movements led by the nobility was all the more possible because historians and sociologists up to about 1963 failed to define the concepts of the nation, nationality, fatherland, etc., much less to view them historically. They knew only the Marxist-Leninist concept of the nation and they forcibly applied it in all periods of history which resulted in a distorted picture of the nation and all of its relevant concepts. Due to the unhistorical notion of the nation and nationality Endre Arato’s otherwise welldocumented studies of the nationality question cannot be considered a historically well-based, realistic portrayals. In 1963, and the following years, the historical concept of the nation attracted the attention of many outstanding specialists. Among them Agnes R. Varkonyi, László Benczedi, and Karoly Vigh especially contributed positively to the realistic portrayal of the nation concept which, as they correctly pointed out, varied from period to period. Some of the practicing historians have remained unaffected from the Party-minded views and rather benefited from the official trend of historical and dialectical materialism — benefited to that extent that in opposition to bourgeois idealism their works based strictly on archival sources more realistically depicted life. As a result they enlarged the scope of investigation so that they were able to prepare quite well-balanced synthetic works on the country’s history giving adequate space to political, cultural, and above all economic (chiefly industrial) development. They have quite successfully depicted Hungary’s history within the framework of East Central Europe and in some instances injected the country’s historical occurrences into the framework of world affairs. All this has partly been a natural reaction to the Hungarocentrism of the preceding generation. In line with this anti-idealist trend, the labor movement has also come to the fore. It is all the more inportant because prewar research neglected this question in addition to social and economic issues in general. A series of documentary volumes relating to social history and the workers movement has been recently published. Though the selection of sources and their explanatory notes have been in many instances partial, they should nonethe less be regarded as positive contributions to historiography, as should the multivolume set of the Magyar Munkásmozgalom Története Válogatott Dokumentumai (Selected Documents Relating to the History of Hungarian Labor Movement). The Parttorteneti Közlemények (1955-), the official journal of Parttorteneti Intezet (Institute of Party History) illuminated several topics of the heretofore ignored labor and Party movement but its militant phraseology and attitude, and the counterselection of documents in most instances exaggerated anti-labor events in order to discredit completely the activities of the pre-1945 regime in the fields of social insurance, labor laws and legislation. Naturally, this one-sided approach could be materialized only at the expense of historical truth. Source publications and interpretations issued by the Institute of Historical Academy of Sciences are, in general, useful enterprises, as are the well-edited volume of Magyarorszag es a második világháború (Hungary and World War II. Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1959) and the similarly well-prepared series entitled Diplomáciái iratok Magyarorszag külpolitikájához 1936-1945 (Diplomatic documents relative to Hungary’s foreign policy 1936-1945) They contain some startling revelations. Final conclusions are often in line with Marxist-Leninist ideology and flagrantly disregard some basic facts so convincingly expressed in the sources. The New Series (Uj sorozat) of Értekezések a történeti tudományok kóréból contains monographic treatises concentrating heavily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century topics, Hungarian and foreign. Up to 1972, sixty-three books have appeared in this New Series. Acta Historica, a foreign language quarterly issued also by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is perhaps the most useful serial publication after Századok, a bimonthly, and Történelmi Szemle,a quarterly publication of the Institute of Historical Research. It is common knowledge that bibliography in the humanities and social sciences is in a state of crisis. The information explosion makes it virtually impossible for most individuals to keep abreast of new developments. These maxims cannot apply to — continued next page 20 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW JANUARY 1989
