Századok – 2014
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Szabó Róbert: A Liberális Internacionálé (Liberal International) Magyar Csoportja, 1949-1994. Magyarok egy nemzetközi pártszervezetben IV/983
1004 SZABÓ ROBERT lektív jogai tekintetében is. A magyar csoport kérésére az LI külön figyelmet fordított a csehszlovákiai magyar kisebbségre és pártjaira; támogatásuk nyomán felvette mind a két szlovákiai magyar liberális pártot megfigyelőként. Létszámuk és a hazai politikai élettől való kényszerű elszakadásuk miatt azonban nem sikerült elérniük, hogy Magyarországon létrejöjjön egy független liberális csoport. THE HUNGARIAN GROUP OF THE LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL 1949-1994 Hungarians in an International association by Szabó Róbert (Summary) After World War II, from 1947 the international organisations of the political parties were reestablished. At the founding session of the Liberal International, formed earliest, Hungary was represented by an emigre diplomat. After the summer of 1949 there remained no room in Hungary for the representation of liberal ideas. It was some among the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian emigres, mostly driven after the Revolution of 1956 to various countries in Western Europe, who continued to endorse the idea of liberalism and of a free and independent Hungary in the different branches of the Liberal International and the Hungarian Group of the Committee of Exiled Liberals. The members of the group represented the idea of a free Hungary at congresses and other major events organised by the LI in Western and Northern Europe, Canada and the US, as well as in the major leading bodies of the organisation. They attained there their chief goal, namely to maintain the attention of the free world in the matter of the countries under the Soviet yoke. They ensured that the LI should deal continuously with the situation of human rights, and even set up a Committee of Human Rights which condamned the Romanian Communist Dictatorship by repeated manifestos directed to the governments of the world. Their activity yielded fruit in that they manged to convince the majority of the delegates in the LI of the importance of collective rights for the national minorities. Yet, on account of their small number and isolation from political life in Hungary, they failed after the fall of the communist regime to establish in Hungary an independent liberal group. They supressed activity abroad as well, upon a decision of the LI itself, after political conditions in Hungary had moved towards freedom.
