A Herman Ottó Múzeum évkönyve 49. (2010)

Kápolnai Iván: A KALOT agrárifjúsági mozgalom és Mezőkövesd

by Töhötöm Nagy, a fellow Jesuit from Transylvania, and by two lay persons, the lawyer György Farkas and the actor József Ugrin. KALOT founded twenty high schools offering theoretical and practical courses in farming adapted to the region's characteristic traits, as well as a network of village libraries. Some 32 thousand students from the country's villages had received training in various forms in the schools. In 1944, KALOT received permission from the Soviet and the Hungarian officials to continue its work, and it leaders, confonning to the Vatican's request, sought to establish a modus vivendi between church and state. Despite these efforts, in early June, 1

946, the new Communist Minister of Interior disbanded KALOT, which had half a million members in 611 local chapters. Although the agrarian youth movement was re-organised (but without its former leadership), it was not allowed to remain active for long. The young men of the peasantry in Mezőkövesd, most of whom were landless or owned dwarf-estates at best, had organised their association in 1908, and the establishment of the local KALOT chapter was begun fairly early, mostly due to the dynamic activity of Mátyás Kovács, an impoverished peasant, who regularly corresponded with the organisation's secretary. Lénárd Deák Bárdos, an eloquent speaker, a young priest of the Jesuit monastery in Mezőkövesd, continued to attend to the matters of the youth groups called Juventus even after the disbanding of KALOT. His activity was conceived in the spirit of responsibility for his fellow men to make the world a better place. He organised various lectures, inviting the best minds of each profession and cultural field. He also held Village Manresa spiritual exercises in the form encouraged by Jenő Kerkai. As a result, the Christian Democratic People's Party, whose ideology was closest to that of KALOT, received the highest number of votes in the 1947 parliamentary elections in Mezőkövesd. Efforts to revive KALOT have proven unsuccessful owing to the changes in the country's economic and social fabric and, not least, in public thought and morals. However, the organisational methods, the experiences gained from the high schools and other fields can prove useful even today. Iván Kápolnai 363