Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1981 (9. évfolyam, 27-30. szám)

1981 / 27-28. szám

Hajdú, Tibor. THE HUNGARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979. No. 131 in the Studia Historica series of the HAS. 172 pages, maps, illus. $15.00 cloth.

This is an abridged version of the second part of the author’s two-volume history Az 1918-as magyarországi polgári demokratikus forradalom (The Hungarian Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1918. Published by Kossuth Kiadó' 1968.) The author describes the antecedents and the stormy history of the 133-day Soviet experiment in Hungary. He does this in a Marxian frame of reference, trying to show the implications this revolution had on other European attempts and on the Russian revolution itself. He traces the events from the proclamation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic to its collapse, paying due attention to chronological events and to the effects of the revolution on the neighboring entente countries. He reviews the relationship of the revolution to Marxist-Leninist theory in terms of its political, economic, and cultural policies and practices. A great deal of attention is paid to foreign military interventions which contributed heavily to the ultimate failure of the experiment.

Halasz, Zoltán, ed. HUNGARY: A Guide with a Difference. Budapest: Corvina, 1978.474 pages, maps, tables, illus. $12.80 cloth.

This is a country handbook providing in-depth description of some 18 topics which in their totality give an overview of contemporary Hungary. History, geography, government and social organization, economics, foreign policy, health care, education, the arts, mass media, and a score of other topics are covered in essays written by specialists, and appended by a tourist guide written by the editor. Although data are not documented (no references are given), the volume maybe useful as a reference book for contemporary overview presented in socialist terms. Though the government publishes annual reviews, they are less ambitious in scope and coverage as the present volume, which approximates Erdei’s Information Hungary (1968) in some respects.

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Handler, Andrew. BLOOD LIBEL AT TISZAESZLAR. Columbia U. Press, 136 South Broadway, Irvington, NY 10533,1980. 273 pages. $20.00 cloth. East European Monographs, no. 68.

In the summer of 1883 a group of Jews, most of them from TiszaeszlaV, Szabolcs County, went on trial in the city of Nyíregyháza. The charge was ritual murder. The news of the trial quickly gained world-wide attention. Its newsworthiness was exploited by journalists and politicians on both sides of the issue. The trial gave an early warning of coming outbursts of anti-Jewish emotions, “nurtured in the precarious gulf between law and practice.” The author tries to present the event in the broader framework of European political anti- Semitism with some indirect references to cultural differences, perceptions, and xenophobia. He suspects that the trial had such farreaching consequences as hastening the evolution of Zionism, since the Hungarian-born father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, happened to be in Budapest at the time of the trial. The trial ended with an acquittal of the defendants, i.e. a “not guilty” verdict was implied without being explicitly stated. The author extends his study to anti- Semitic expressions of the present and says that constitutional or ideological guarantees of the present government of Hungary have consistently failed to evoke similar responses in the people.

The author is assoc, prof, of history at the U. of Miami. Honko, Lauri and Vilmos Voigt, eds. GENRE, STRUCTURE

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BOOKS (Continued)

AND REPRODUCTION IN ORAL LITERATURE. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó', 1980. 188 pages, diagrams, biblio. $16.00 cloth.

Cooperative Hungarian and Finnish folklore studies developed in the 19th century, and were related mainly to the fields of linguistics and ethnography. Nevertheless, this is the first time that a joint Finnish-Hungarian collection of folklore studies has been published. The seven English and five German essays, written by outstanding Finnish and Hungarian experts of the field, are based on papers delivered at the Finnish-Hungarian folklore symposium, held at Budapest in 1977. They concern themselves with genre formation, structuring, and rules of reproduction, i.e. with the theory and various manifestations of folklore genres. (Genre being understood as a distinctive category of art or literature characterized by a particular style. Editor Voigt hastens to warn, however, that folklore genres do not exist as single and isolated entities, but rather are interrelated.) Problems of the communicative system of oral traditions such as folk epic, fairy tales, legends, laments, songs, etc. are discussed. The English language papers are as follows: The Lament. Problems of genre, structure, and reproduction by L. Honko; Two genres for expressing sorrow by Aili Nenola-Kallio; Two types of shamanizing and categories of shamanistic songs by Anna-Leena Siikala; Text and Melody in Samoyed epic songs

by Pe'ter Hajdú; Genre and context in narrative events by Mihály Hoppal; The structural schemes of a repertoire of fairy tales by Satu Apo; and On the communicative system of folklore genres by Voigt. Though each essay has a distinct bibliography, the 255 entries in Voigt’s essay is quite useful for those wanting to study folklore theory.

Voigt is prof, of folklore at the Eötvös L.U., and Honko is director of the Scandinavian-Nordic Institute of Folkore in Helsinki.

Kardos, Lajos and Csaba Pléh, eds. PROBLEMS OF THE REGULATION OF ACTIVITY. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980. 733 pages, charts, tables, diagrams, biblio. $44.00 cloth.

The volume contains the proceedings of the Fourth Meeting of Osychologists from the Danubian Countries, held at Visegrád in 1977. It is a translation of 46 papers read in Russian or German by 55 authors representing nine countries as follows: HAS 12; Hungarian academic institutions 15; Bulgaria 1; Czechoslovakia 2; East Germany 2; West Germany 5; Poland 2; Romania 3; Sweden 1, and Yugoslavia 3. Many of the studies are based on empirical research, others are concerned with theoretical aspects. Divided into eight sections, the volume focuses on the regulation of activity in discussing relationships between personality and cognitive processes; the regulative role of emotions; psycho-physiological aspects of cognitive processes; social psychology of groups and attitude organization; regulatory concepts about working activity; organic vs. cognitive approaches to motivation; regulation of learning and development; and verbal/nonverbal symbols in the regulation of behavior. The volume is a manifestation of growing interest in psychology as a discipline, a relative newcomer in the Hungarian academic system.

The editors are on the faculty of the Eötvös Loránd U.

Kostanick, Huey Louis, ed. POPULATION AND MIGRATION TRENDS IN EASTERN EUROPE. Westview Press, 1898 Flatiron Court, Boulder, CO 80301, 1977. 247 pages, charts, maps, biblios. $ n.a. cloth. In the Westview Special Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe series, and in cooperation with the Center for Russian and East European Studies, UCLA.

NO. 27-28, SPRING, 1981, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER