Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1983 (11. évfolyam, 35-38. szám)
1983 / 38. szám
All / \11 AMCRICAN HUNGARIAN FOUNDATION HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER BOOKS Hollos, Marida and Bela C. Maday, eds. NEW HUNGARIAN PEASANTS: AN EAST CENTRAL EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE WITH COLLECTIVIZATION. Brooklyn Coll. Press distributed by Columbia U. Press, 562 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025,1983. x + 340 pages, maps, tables, illus. $25.00 cloth. (Brooklyn Coll. Studies on Society in Change, no. 26; and East European Monographs, no. 134.) This volume comprises 13 studies based on extended field research in Hungary within the past ten years. The authors are Hungarian ethnologists, British social anthropologists, and American cultural anthropologists. The Hungarian contributorsare members of the Ethnographic Research Institute of the HAS, who have worked as a team in coordinated but individually designed research projects in the village of Varsány. Each of the British and American authors spent one or more years in various villages investigating social change at the grassroots level. The common denominator of these studies can be found in their concern with directed change and with the transformation of the former Hungarian peasant into a person whose lifestyle formed and shaped by socialist society, had become radically different from that of his .»parents. Each author illuminates a different aspect of the composite picture of adaptation as affected by such factors as change in land ownership patterns, organization of production, and the process of distribution of produce. The volume tries to assess the consequences of this process in terms of altered patterns of human relations, changing attitudes and values, psychocultural factors, and shifts in demographic patterns. Hollos is assist, prof, of anthropology at Brown U., Maday is research prof, at American U. Nagy, Zsuzsa L. THE LIBERAL OPPOSITION IN HUNGARY, 1919-1945. Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó', 1983. 143 pages. $9.00 cloth. No. 185 in the Studia Historica series. The interwar period has been too close in time and the ideological-political changes that followed so dramatic that most historians shied away from tackling it. This slim volume conveys the feeling that the political arena and the media of the interwar period accommodated a large number of opposition groups and sophisticated politicians, who were more or less united in wanting social and political change, and in fighting against a shift to the right. They were anti-Nazi, because “national socialism was regarded as an attack against the prevailing bourgeois order, the same as communism.” Their opposition to Italian Fascism was somewhat milder, because it was considered an Italian domestic problem, while Nazism was viewed as a “global problem.” They also agreed that “it is impossible to govern a country without parliamentary parties, i.e., parliamentary opposition.” The fact that the liberal and less liberal opposition (with the exception of the communists) were not denied participation in the political process reflects on the use of “Fascist” as an adjective when describing the political structure and government of interwar Hungary. The author divided her book into two chapters: “Organization and Ideologies,” which discusses the roles of political parties such as the Social Democratic Party, the Christian Economic Party, the Smallholder Party, and such organizations as the Freemasonry, Feminist Association, and professional associations. The second chapter, “Political Struggles,” is mainly on political dynamics, on the fight for a liberal system, attempts to overthrow the Bethlen Government, and anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi activities. The author is a member of the Institute of History, HAS. András, Emerich and Julius Morel, eds. CHURCH IN TRANSITION: Hungary’s Catholic Church from 1945 to 1982. Hungarian Institute for Sociology of Religion (HIS). Ungarisches Kirchensoziologisches Institut, A-1140 Wien, Linzerstrasse 263/18, Austria, 1983. 434 pages. $15.00 paper. This collection of 28 studies is based mainly on articles published during the past 20 years in various periodicals, mainly in the HIS series Reports about Hungary. Some of the articles had been reviewed in the HSN (see no. 12, pp. 1 and 7; no. 16, p.8). The editors warn the reader about changes in circumstances, church-state relationship, personalities which took place during this period of time. “The hard course which the State adopted in the past in its battle against the Church has been replaced by refined approaches.” However, “the ideological position that religion is a reactionary approach to life.. .continues to be maintained.” The stated aim of this volume is “to show the gradual change which has taken place within the [Roman Catholic] Church itself, and especially in church politics.” The volume includes a wide variety of reports on the state of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary, essays about shortages in clergy (800 Hungarian priests and 1,700 nuns live outside the borders of Hungary), problems of theological training and religious education in public schools, evangelization, religious freedom, circumstances of priestly existence, church politics, the role of the laity, the role of base groups, the Uniate Church in Hungary, split among the Hungarian clergy, the pastoral care of Hungarian Catholics outside of Hungary. (At the time of publication of this volume, it was not known that Ladislaus Irányi would be appointed bishop for the care of Hungarians living outside of Hungary.) András is the director of the Hungarian Institute for Sociology of Religion; Morel lives in Innsbruck and is affiliated with the same institute. NO. 3Ö. WINTER 1963-1964, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER (Continued on Page 2)
