Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1984 (12. évfolyam, 39-42. szám)

1984 / 39-40. szám

ARTICLES & PAPER (Continued)

Konrád, György, “Censorship in Retreat." Index on Censorship 83:2, pp. 10-5.

This periodical devotes five full pages to Konrad’s article including three inserts, one dealing with the expulsion of Bill Lomax, British sociologist from Hungary, and the other two with a recent government crackdown on dissident writers and publishers. The author focuses on changes that occurred in regard to the intensity of law enforcement in the area of censorship. Censorship is understood broadly involving the total personality and his or her dependence from the central source of power: the state. There is no neutral position. The society consists of what the author calls “etatised men”: they are dependent on the state for livelihood, leading a life of all-pervading censorship. They have learned that in order to live they have to lie or at least not say in public what they say in private life. The situation has changed during the past 5 to 10 years inasmuch as censorship today no longer demands enthusiasm for the system but it still leaves the individual writer in depression. The author who is perhaps Hungary’s best-known novelist, is in the paradoxical position of saying that censorship has now passed its zenith in East Central Europe, while some of his work could be published only abroad. □

Lengyel Cook, Maria Sophia and Robert Repetto, “The Relevance of the Developing Countries to Demographic Transition Theory: Further Lessons from the Hungarian Experience.” Population Studies (London) 36: (March 1982) 105-28.

Variations in marital fertility and nuptiality in 48 Hungarian provinces over the period 1880-1910 were investigated to test competing hypotheses about the economic and social/ cultural sources of the European demographic transition. Models were constructed to compare three explanations: (1) the conventional hypothesis of demographic transition emphasizing infant mortality, urbanization, education, and modernization; (2) the recent re-interpretation including cultural (ethnic) factors; and (3) an hypothesis drawn from the literature on contemporary demographic transitions which emphasize poverty and economic inequality. These models were tested and compared through multivariat statistical analysis, using statistics for four census periods. It is suggested that explanations of demographic transition during the 19th century which omit these economic variables, are incomplete. Lengyel Cook is an associate with the Harvard Center for Population Studies, and Repetto is assoc, prof, of population and economics at Harvard U. □

Moore, Patrick, “Philately and Politics in Eastern Europe.” American Philatelist 98: 1 (January 1984)41-45.

The author surveys the policies of East Central European states in issuing postal stamps and toward philately in general. He also discusses, “how politics have been reflected, intentionally and otherwise, in those stamps.” Postal stamps serve two purposes in East Central Europe, besides actually paying postage: they consititute a source of revenue from sales to collectors, and as a political-educational tool, i.e., they are to acquire hard currency and make a political point. A good example of the latter is an 1981 Romanian souvenir sheet that depicts a geographic map of Southeastern Europe emphasizing the “geographical unity" expressed by Greater Romania, with Northern Bucovina, Bessarabia, Southern Dobruja, and the Pannonian Plain to the Tisza River. Politically motivated are for example the 1981 Hungarian issue

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depicting statues of the Madonna and Child, or the 1982 issue honoring the Hungarian chapel at the Vatican. Hungary alone in Eastern Europe philatelically marked the 250th birthday of George Washington. Stamps became a means of direct political rivalry when the Soviet Union issued a stamp calling for the release from prison of a Greek Communist leader, and the Greek Government responded with a stamp honoring Imre Nagy.

Two more articles concern themselves with Hungarian history and politics:

“Hungary; its stamps reflect a tragic history and a proud, independent people,” and Ira Zweifach “The elusive first issue of Hungary,” Scott Stamp Monthly, November 1983, pp. 12-14 and 105.

These two illustrated articles describe the earliest Hungarian stamps in a historical setting. It is general knowledge among philatelists that the first Hungarian stamps were issued in 1871. What is not generally known is that the country actually prepared to issue a stamp in 1848, in the year when the war against Habsburg domination commenced. When Austria, with Russian help, crushed the revolution, Austrian postage stamps came into use until 1871 when the first lithographed Hungarian stamps were issued. They are now some of the rarest and most expensive items in European philately. Cl

Nehler, Gregory L. “A Hungarian Community in Limbo.” Paper, presented at Tulipános Láda, The Treasure Chest of Hungarian Culture. Chicago, May 22, 1981.

The author, after learning some Hungarian at Szeged and reading into Hungarian culture sources intensively, surveyed the Hungarian ethnic groups of South Bend, Indiana. He observed that different immigrant groups learned English with different intensity and proficiency. Some of those who immigrated early in the century found it not necessary to learn English well, since communication in Hungarian could be maintained at work, at shopping, and at home. Those who arrived in the early 1950s show great variation in linguistic adjustment, while the post-1956 immigrants mastered the language best. The author observed that Hungarian language knowledge is diminishing in spite of language maintenance efforts on the part of ethnic institutions. He concludes that “so long as these institutions exist some semblance of Hungarian communal life will be observed.” The author is at Indiana U. and published (with Miklós Kontra) a more extensive paper on related topics in the Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 53 (1961) 105-111. □

Sakmyster, Thomas. “From Habsburg Admiral to Hungarian Regent: The Political Metamorphosis of Miklós Horthy, 1981-1921,” East European Quarterly 17:2 (Summer 1983) 129-148.

Admiral Horthy’s role in Hungarian history has been beclouded by ideologically biased writings at both ends of the political continuum. Thus, a detached statement on an important phase of post-World War I history and its principal political actors is welcome. The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyze Horthy’s pragmatic change of heart between 1918 and 1921, and to try to relate Horthy’s experience to that of other Central European conservatives. Horthy changed “from traditional conservatism to a new right-wing radicalism and finally to an unusual hybrid form that combined elements of both. Forthis reason it is difficult to apply to Horthy any of the traditional political labels:

NO. 39-40, SPRING-SUMMER 1984 HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER