Itt-Ott, 1988 (21. évfolyam, 1/107-3/109. szám)
1988 / 2. (108.) szám
IN MEMÓRIÁM GYÖRGY RÁNKI The international historical community has lost one of its most respected practitioners; Hungarian historians mourn their courageous and liberal leader, and our little association1 misses its most helpful and inventive protector. György Ránki held many positions and honors. He was, among other things, the vice-president of the 13 member International Committee of Historical Science, the executive organ of the world association of historians; had he lived longer, he might well have become the first Hungarian president of the association. He was also the president of the department of philosophy and history at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the director of Hungary’s Institute of History, professor at the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest, and professor of Hungarian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. In truth, who else but György Ránki could have achieved the signal feat of being simultaneously professor at an American university and director of an academic institute in a socialist country? And who else could have performed all these duties cheerfully, modestly and efficiently? György was our best colleague and our best friend. We in the United States feel woefully diminished by his sudden departure, as do the members of the Institute of History in Budapest, or friends and colleagues everywhere. For the last seven years, György Ránki spent every second semester at Indiana University. While there, he taught successfully; he organized dozens of conferences; and he invited scores of guests from Hungary. He moved heaven and earth so as to bring over as many Hungarian scholars as possible, the young and the old, the experienced and the relative beginners. He wished to acquaint American and Hungarian scholarship with one another. A noted Hungarian historian of the Ottomans, Ferenc Szakály, wrote in his obituary that Ránki was a one person reception committee, chauffeur, administrator, keynote speaker, moderator, host and jack of all trades to his visitors and friends. He was indeed all of that: no one can forget his smiling face at Indianapolis airport having driven all the way from Bloomington. He worried about every detail and always made sure that even a late arrival would get dinner. He did not gossip, and he seemed to hate no one, yet he knew well how to scold. If he was intolerant, it was only intolerance of ineptitude and pettiness. György Ránki had been to Auschwitz as a young boy; thereafter he owed his recovery to the generosity of Sweden. Beginning in 1949, he studied at the newly founded Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest, where he formed a lifetime friendship with Zsigmond Pál Pach, his teacher, and Iván Berend, his fellow student. Later he studied history at Budapest University. He received the Kossuth Prize at 31. Soon thereafter he became deputy director of the Institute of History, of which he was made director in 1986. Meanwhile, he wrote twelve major books, some in collaboration with Iván Berend, others alone. Most of these works deal with the economic history of East Central Europe or that of Hungary; many were translated into other languages, among them English. Yet the monograph he liked most was his immensely popular History of the Second World War, a major work in which he broke with the Communist tradition of nearly ignoring the Western and the Pacific theaters of war and heaping abuse on the Anglo-Americans. His, in contradiction, was an enjoyable and objective history. Gyuri wrote hundreds, perhaps thousands of journal and newspaper articles; he appeared regularly on Hungarian radio and television. I happened to be in Budapest when he discussed on television the status of Hungarian historiography in the United States. In his talk, he put careful emphasis on the qualifications and scholarly achievements of Béla Király, until that time only the subject of wild attacks in the Hungarian media. Ránki’s latest book, entitled Center and Periphery, analyzes the historic role of the East European economy, and it takes issue with the famous 'The American Association for the Study of Hungarian History 7
