Baják László Ihász István: The Hungarian National Museum History Exhibition Guide 4 - The short century of survival (1900-1990) (Budapest, 2008)
Room 20. The Rise and Fall of Communism (1945-1990). István Ihász
116,000 private vacation homes registered and in 1981 the five-day working week was introduced, which to offset temporarily meant a rise in the working day from 8.5 to 9 hours. The weekend became linked with an extension of the village way of life and self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetable produce. The seeds of entrepreneurship were already being sown in the 1960s with permitted homestead ownership: in one's own garden around one's home, centuries-old peasant traditions were reawakened through small-scale horticulture, consumption and retail. Throughout the entire period Hungarian cultural policy was determined in the intellectual leadership of György Aczél, who applied what he called the "3 Ts principle" - támogat, tűr, tilt = support, tolerate, ban - when exercising censorship over literary works and journalism, fine and applied art plans and film and stage productions. Thus supported, Hungarian films have achieved much, with exceptional results in universal film culture. Since the 1 st Pécs Feature Film Review in 1965, around 600 films have been made, the most outstanding direction work generally being an analysis of responsibility and the relationship between power and the individual as well as a confrontation with so-called national life-and-death questions. Premieres were given a high state profile, raising the numbers of film-goers from 150,000 to as many as one million. The assault of the domestic rock music invasion heralded a new era in the 60s, in which young people, in expressing their non-conformism, took over from the angry opposition of conservative power. With their long hair and denim jeans, young people were wearing the great levelling fashion of the age, which was at the same time a rebellion against bourgeois clothing. (As denims were hard top come by in Hungary they became a kind of status symbol.) The top bands in the early Hungarian beat movement (Illés, Omega and Metro) not only revolutionised light music, but by expressing the attitudes of young people in the Hungarian language became cautious, universally understood, popular pioneers of "another way of thinking". A few years later rock and beat became split into a tamed majority (now and then even a privileged elite) and a mixture of reluctantly tolerated/censored periphery (Syrius, Kex, Beatrice etc.). In order to keep the "wild youths" under control, the Young Communists introduced in 1967 the Revolutionary Youth Days. Those in power, for years neurotic over March 15 with its nationalistic overtones, attempted to create a balance by celebrating it together with the communist internationalism of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic (March 21) and the "liberation" of 1945 (April 4). ("We are celebrating three Springs"). János Kádár (1912) was the Party's first secretary, to become secretary general (1956-1988). He carried to the end of his days three great burdens: in 1949 he had assisted in persuading László Rajk "in the interests of the Party and the international movement" to accept guilt in the show trial, and as Minister for the Interior was present at his execution; the reprisals of 1956 and the execution of Imre Nagy; and the unfit situation whereby he had been made Hungary's polit7960s electrical appliances window display (exhibition detail)
