A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historiae Literarum et Artium, 1. (Szeged, 1997)

Cornelius, Deborah S.: Women in the Interwar Populist Movement: The Szeged Youth

partment of commercial subjects within certain limits, and were admitted to School of Pharmacy - evidently a subject not popular with the men - without any reservations.

10 These young women were part of the generation of youth seen by the older generation as those who would „resurrect" Hungary. Under Minister of Religion and Public Education Count Kuno Klebelsberg's reform of higher education, a new generation of highly trained professionals were to prove Hungary's right to reclaim the former Hungarian Kingdom to the Westerns Powers. Young intellectuals, many from petty bourgeois and even peasant families, flocked to the universities, encouraged by the more open admission policies and the promise of a leading role in Hungarian society. Yet, upon graduation they faced the prospect of joining a growing surplus of intellectuals. It was not that Hungary had proportionally more graduates than other European countries. The problem was rather that existing positions in traditional careers, the civil service, government, education, churches, were monopolized by the older generation, swollen by the influx of civil servant from the successor states into truncated Hungary after Trianon.

11 Every year 2500 graduates left the universities, but positions were not available for even half this number.

12 In the first half of the 1920's, there had been hope that the government would make provisions for the new university graduates, but by the late 11920's the new generation had become disillusioned, the ranks of those still considered to be „youth" continued to expand to include men and a much smaller number of women in their 20's, 30's, and even early 40's. the age-category became so broad that the prominent Hungarian historian, Gyula Szekfű, divided „youth" into two cohorts: those in their 30's who had begun to find places for themselves within the system, and those in their 20's, the self-styled „new generation," who had become increasingly alienated. This new generation had come to condemn everything which the older generation had created since Trianon, rejecting the gentry ideology as well.

13 It was this group who became increasingly aware of the pressing economic and social misery building up in the countryside with the economic crisis in agriculture beginning in 1928. The sense that the older generation had misused the trust of the nation was expressed by the leader of the Szeged Youth, György Buday, expressed youth's accusation of misuse of the trust of the nation. He called on university youth to forge solidarity with the peasantry: Only the new generation is able and qualified to do this, for they are not guilty and have not participated in the mistakes, the hatred, of the recent decades of Hungarian politics and social life...

14 10 Julius Kornis, Education in Hungary. Teachers College, Columbia University (New York: 1932) 142-143. 11 Approximately 426,000 refugees from the lost territories had fled to Hungary, the majority from the broad middle level of the social structure: the gentry/bourgeois, and all those who had been employed in some manner by the state - including the myriad minor officials, teachers, railroad and postal workers. The Bethlen regime which derived much of its support from the gentry/middle-class found it essential to provide places for the refugees within the state administration. 12 Csaplár, 167. 13 Szekfu, 446. 14 György Buday, A szegedi tanya problémái. A M.Kir. Ferenc József Tudományegyetem Sajtótudományi Tanfolyamából. Szeged 1930. 7. 52