- 1114 Villányi út 11-13, Budapest
Gabor Egry
Institute of Political History, Scientific (Research) Department, Department Member
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Imre Kertesz Kolleg, AlumnusNew Europe College, NEC Europa Fellow, AlumnusStanford University, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Department Memberadd
Research Interests:
Magyarország összeomlásának és a rákövetkező impériumváltásnak a politika- és diplomáciatörténetét már alaposan feltárta a történetírás. Sokkal kevesebbet tudunk arról, hogy miként élték meg az eseményeket mindazok, akiknek ritkán jut... more
Magyarország összeomlásának és a rákövetkező impériumváltásnak a politika- és diplomáciatörténetét már alaposan feltárta a történetírás. Sokkal kevesebbet tudunk arról, hogy miként élték meg az eseményeket mindazok, akiknek ritkán jut szerep a történelemkönyvek lapjain. Dokumentumválogatásunk azt mutatja be, hogy a Romániához került területek lakói számára milyen tapasztalatot jelentett az összeomlás és az új állam kiépítése, mik voltak a legfontosabb és közvetlenül megélt problémáik. Betekintést adunk a többségiek sokszor a kisebbségiekkel azonos gondjaiba, valamint az új állam erőforrásainak korlátozottságába, ami az azonnali románosítást is akadályozta. Mindezek és a dualista Magyarország középosztályi kultúrájának és közigazgatásának hagyománya, valamint az egykori birodalmi lét tapasztalta sokszor kínáltak váratlanul tág teret a kisebbségiek túlélési stratégiái számára is.
Research Interests:
A significant difference exists between the Hungarian and Romanian point of view in connection with the investigating the ethnic balance of power between the two main people of Transylvania, the Hungarians and Romanians in the 20th... more
A significant difference exists between the Hungarian and Romanian point of view in connection with the investigating the ethnic balance of power between the two main people of Transylvania, the Hungarians and Romanians in the 20th century. The censuses, taken in 1910 by the Hungarian authorities, in 1930 by the Romanian authorities and finally in 1941 in devided of Transylvania by both of Hungarian and Romanian authorities, generated a long debate between Hungarian and Romanian
statisticians. The Hungarian statisticians accept the Romanian census in 1930 as a base of comparison, but all of them dispute the authenticity of the data regarding the national composition of Transylvania. This volume is aimed to complement the statistical results of the Romanian census in 1930 regarding the national compoosition of the Transylvanian population especially from the point of view of the Hungarian minority. The starting point was an archival collection in the National
Archives of Hungary which can help evaluatiing the authenticity of the Romanian census figures from in 1930. The biggest Hungarian political organization in Transylvania, the so called National Party of Hungarians appealed to its regional party organizations for documentating the irregularities during the time of data collection of the census. A part of this documentation was sent tothe Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, because the party of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania wanted to make efforts before the international organizations to prove that their complaints about fraud during the census had been justified. The documents allow for the a conclusion that in some cases the questionnaire of the ethnic data was manipulated and the Romanian state administration made efforts to separate from Hungarian minority specific ethnic and denominational groups,
like Jews, Germans from Szatmár (Satu Mare) region, Armenians, Gipsies and some part of Greek Catholics who were not necessarily of Hungarian origins, but during the times assimilated into Hungarians in their language and social habits. However, the documents also show that such efforts were limited and targeted at these peculiar groups. On the other hand, these documents throw light upon the question of the complexity of individual identification, during the census the intensity of the confession of minority attributes might be changed according to the social and professional status and might be depended on the local and regional circumstances.
statisticians. The Hungarian statisticians accept the Romanian census in 1930 as a base of comparison, but all of them dispute the authenticity of the data regarding the national composition of Transylvania. This volume is aimed to complement the statistical results of the Romanian census in 1930 regarding the national compoosition of the Transylvanian population especially from the point of view of the Hungarian minority. The starting point was an archival collection in the National
Archives of Hungary which can help evaluatiing the authenticity of the Romanian census figures from in 1930. The biggest Hungarian political organization in Transylvania, the so called National Party of Hungarians appealed to its regional party organizations for documentating the irregularities during the time of data collection of the census. A part of this documentation was sent tothe Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, because the party of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania wanted to make efforts before the international organizations to prove that their complaints about fraud during the census had been justified. The documents allow for the a conclusion that in some cases the questionnaire of the ethnic data was manipulated and the Romanian state administration made efforts to separate from Hungarian minority specific ethnic and denominational groups,
like Jews, Germans from Szatmár (Satu Mare) region, Armenians, Gipsies and some part of Greek Catholics who were not necessarily of Hungarian origins, but during the times assimilated into Hungarians in their language and social habits. However, the documents also show that such efforts were limited and targeted at these peculiar groups. On the other hand, these documents throw light upon the question of the complexity of individual identification, during the census the intensity of the confession of minority attributes might be changed according to the social and professional status and might be depended on the local and regional circumstances.
Research Interests:
A két világháború közti magyar kisebbségek története általában egyetlen szóban sűrűsödik össze: Trianon. Trauma- és hanyatlástörténetek sorjáznak, amelyek elsősorban a magyar önazonosságot fenyegető veszélyeket taglalják, a kisebbségiek... more
A két világháború közti magyar kisebbségek története általában egyetlen szóban sűrűsödik össze: Trianon. Trauma- és hanyatlástörténetek sorjáznak, amelyek elsősorban a magyar önazonosságot fenyegető veszélyeket taglalják, a kisebbségiek elnemzetlenítésére törekvő többségiekre és kiszolgáltatott magyarokra osztva a szereplőket. Ez a könyv más, jóval összetettebb megközeljtésre vállalkozik. Kiindulópontja az a két évtizedes fáradhatatlan törekvés, amely a kisebbségi magyarok magyarságtudatát éppen olyannak szerette volna megőrizni, ahogyan Budapesten elképzelték a magyarokat. Szereplői között, akik nem csak önmagukban, vagy Budapesthez viszonyjtva próbálták érvényre juttatni saját elképzelésüket a magyar önazonosságról politikusok, kormányzati tisztviselők, az erdélyi és szlovenszkói magyar elit, az új nemzedék vezetésre törő képviselői, a többségiek és az egyszerű emberek is ott sorakoznak.
Fő kérdésem arra vonatkozik, hogy a különböző magyarságfelfogások egyéni elfogadtatására irányuló politika miként látta ka magyarságot és környezetét és ezt miként tudták érvényre juttatni az egyénekkel szemben, akár a politikán túl, a mindennapokban is. Prága, Poszony, Budapest, Kolozsvár és Bukarest között olyan új közösségek jöhettek létre, amelyek korántsem feleltek meg a nemzeti egység kívánalmának és a legváratanabb helyzetekben egyesíthettek magyarokat és többségieket más többségiekkel szemben. Az egyének csak ritkán, többnyire végletekig kiélezett helyzetben voltak hajlandóak éppen olyan módon kifejezésre juttatni önazonosságukat, ahogy azt elvárták tőlük és még évtizedekig fennmaradtak, sokszor az új állam helyi képviselőinek segjtségével nemzetileg ambivalens gyakrolatok.
Az etnicitás folyamatos előhívhatósága és a kisebbségi magyarok találkozása Magyarországgal ugyanakkor fokozatosan egy új, Magyarországot különbözőként megjelenítő önzonossághoz vezetett. Ezt a revízió után nem volt egyszerű összebékíteni Magyarország valóságával, ahogy azzal sem, hogy a kisebbségi korszak személyes élményei immár csak egyetlen módon, sérelemként voltak elbeszélhetőek.
Fő kérdésem arra vonatkozik, hogy a különböző magyarságfelfogások egyéni elfogadtatására irányuló politika miként látta ka magyarságot és környezetét és ezt miként tudták érvényre juttatni az egyénekkel szemben, akár a politikán túl, a mindennapokban is. Prága, Poszony, Budapest, Kolozsvár és Bukarest között olyan új közösségek jöhettek létre, amelyek korántsem feleltek meg a nemzeti egység kívánalmának és a legváratanabb helyzetekben egyesíthettek magyarokat és többségieket más többségiekkel szemben. Az egyének csak ritkán, többnyire végletekig kiélezett helyzetben voltak hajlandóak éppen olyan módon kifejezésre juttatni önazonosságukat, ahogy azt elvárták tőlük és még évtizedekig fennmaradtak, sokszor az új állam helyi képviselőinek segjtségével nemzetileg ambivalens gyakrolatok.
Az etnicitás folyamatos előhívhatósága és a kisebbségi magyarok találkozása Magyarországgal ugyanakkor fokozatosan egy új, Magyarországot különbözőként megjelenítő önzonossághoz vezetett. Ezt a revízió után nem volt egyszerű összebékíteni Magyarország valóságával, ahogy azzal sem, hogy a kisebbségi korszak személyes élményei immár csak egyetlen módon, sérelemként voltak elbeszélhetőek.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A magyarországi, ezen belül erdélyi nemzetiségi pénzintézetek problémája szorosan összefügg a 19-20. századi nemzetépítések történetével. A mai köztudatban ugyan elsősorban a románok bankjairól él rögzült (nem egy szempontból torzult)... more
A magyarországi, ezen belül erdélyi nemzetiségi pénzintézetek problémája szorosan összefügg a 19-20. századi nemzetépítések történetével. A mai köztudatban ugyan elsősorban a románok bankjairól él rögzült (nem egy szempontból torzult) képként, hogy a 19. század végén, a 20. század elején tevékenyen hozzájárultak a románság térnyeréséhez, a magyarság térvesztéséhez Erdélyben, földvásárlásokkal, kulturális egyesületek, a román egyházak támogatásával. A kortársak számára azonban egyértelmű volt, hogy az erdélyi szászok pénzintézetei még inkább a nemzetépítés szolgálatában állnak.
Könyvem célja annak feltárása és bemutatása, hogy az erdélyi szászok pénzintézeti rendszere milyen szerepet játszott a szász nemzet 19. századi átalakulásában, a modern szász nemzet megteremtésében. Megpróbálom nem egyszerűen igazolni, hogy a szász pénzintézetek a kisebbségi nemzetépítés fontos eszközeivé, a kisebbségi társadalom nélkülözhetetlen struktúráivá lettek, hanem ezen túl bemutatni a pénzintézeti rendszer kiépítésének folyamatát és a nemzetépítésben betöltött konkrét szerepét is. Mindehhez az alapot a szász társadalom átalakulásának, a rendi nemzetből modern nemzetiséggé válásának rövid bemutatása adja. A szászok a 19. század eleji rendi különállásuk elvesztése után egy tudatos és intenzív intézményépítési politikával képesek voltak új, a korszak liberális Magyarországának jogrendjébe beilleszkedő, a nemzeti különállást mégis megvalósítani képes, megfelelően strukturált intézményrendszert életre hívni és működtetni. Az egyháztól a különböző profilú (gazdasági, kulturális, városszépítő, jótékony stb.) egyleteken és a Szász Néppárton át a pénzintézetekig terjedő intézmények sora képes volt a kisebbségi társadalomnak keretet adni és a közösség saját magára vonatkozó döntéseit legitim módon meghozni, majd azokat megvalósítani.
Az intézményrendszerbe betagozódó pénzintézeti szféra kiépítése, akkor még elsősorban népjóléti hangsúlyokkal, a korai, tradicionális takarékpénztárak megalapításával kezdődött, 1835-ban és 1841-ben. (Brassó, Nagyszeben) Ezt követően, válaszul a különböző társadalmi igényekre, fokozatosan egyre bővült a különböző pénzintézeti típusok köre. Az első Schulze-Delitzsch típusú szövetkezetek a városi iparos és kereskedő csoportok igényeinek kielégítését vállalták fel, a földhitelintézet és a két régi takarékpénztár átalakulása, a záloglevél-kibocsátás megkezdése a mezőgazdaságból élők és a városi ingatlantulajdonosok felé nyitott, a falusi Raffeisen-szövetkezetek a kistelepülések agrárnépességét kapcsolták be a hálózatba, a szász pénzintézetek által közösen alapított Vereinsbank pedig befektetési és telepítőbanki feladatokat látott el. Mindezt úgy, hogy számos esetben a németországi „know-how” átvételével úttörő szerepet vállaltak egyes pénzintézeti típusok magyarországi meghonosításában. (Hagyományos takarékpénztárak, a kétféle hitelszövetkezet.)
A 20. század elejére kiteljesedett hitelszféra többféle módon segítette a szász nemzetépítést. A közvetlen hitelkapcsolatok előnyeiből (többek között a bankok által kínált kedvező feltételek révén) részesedtek az egyházközségek, az általuk fenntartott iskolák, a falusi gazdák. Tevékeny szerepet vállaltak nagy infrastrukturális beruházások (vasútépítés, vízerőmű, villamos stb.) előkészítésében és megvalósításában, pénzügyi-finanszírozási segítséget nyújtottak a szász evangélikus egyház és a szász Univerzitás likviditási nehézségeinek áthidalásában, a földvásárlásokban, a telepítésekben és támogatásaik révén a különböző egyletek működésében. Mindezeken túl jelentős szerepük volt a szász társadalom átalakításában is. A pénzintézetek adtak új, modernebb, a kor kihívásaihoz igazodó keretet a falusi közösségek önszerveződésének és az egész szász társadalmat átfogva megteremtették a lehetőséget, hogy a szász gazdasági nemzetépítés fontos politikai döntéseit a gyakorlatba is átültessék. A 20. század elején a Szász Néppárt elnöki tisztét betöltő Dr. Karl Wolff egyúttal a legnagyobb szász bank vezérigazgatója és az egyház világi főgondnoka is volt. Más pénzintézetek vezetői is egyszerre töltöttek be gazdasági, egyházi és politikai funkciókat. Wolff és társai mindezen intézményekre támaszkodva arra is képesek voltak, hogy már-már önálló gazdaságpolitikát valósítsanak meg – a pártelnök egyúttal a szászok „pénzügyminisztereként” is működjön –, anélkül, hogy megkérdőjelezte volna az államjogi berendezkedést, Magyarország egységét.
Könyvem célja annak feltárása és bemutatása, hogy az erdélyi szászok pénzintézeti rendszere milyen szerepet játszott a szász nemzet 19. századi átalakulásában, a modern szász nemzet megteremtésében. Megpróbálom nem egyszerűen igazolni, hogy a szász pénzintézetek a kisebbségi nemzetépítés fontos eszközeivé, a kisebbségi társadalom nélkülözhetetlen struktúráivá lettek, hanem ezen túl bemutatni a pénzintézeti rendszer kiépítésének folyamatát és a nemzetépítésben betöltött konkrét szerepét is. Mindehhez az alapot a szász társadalom átalakulásának, a rendi nemzetből modern nemzetiséggé válásának rövid bemutatása adja. A szászok a 19. század eleji rendi különállásuk elvesztése után egy tudatos és intenzív intézményépítési politikával képesek voltak új, a korszak liberális Magyarországának jogrendjébe beilleszkedő, a nemzeti különállást mégis megvalósítani képes, megfelelően strukturált intézményrendszert életre hívni és működtetni. Az egyháztól a különböző profilú (gazdasági, kulturális, városszépítő, jótékony stb.) egyleteken és a Szász Néppárton át a pénzintézetekig terjedő intézmények sora képes volt a kisebbségi társadalomnak keretet adni és a közösség saját magára vonatkozó döntéseit legitim módon meghozni, majd azokat megvalósítani.
Az intézményrendszerbe betagozódó pénzintézeti szféra kiépítése, akkor még elsősorban népjóléti hangsúlyokkal, a korai, tradicionális takarékpénztárak megalapításával kezdődött, 1835-ban és 1841-ben. (Brassó, Nagyszeben) Ezt követően, válaszul a különböző társadalmi igényekre, fokozatosan egyre bővült a különböző pénzintézeti típusok köre. Az első Schulze-Delitzsch típusú szövetkezetek a városi iparos és kereskedő csoportok igényeinek kielégítését vállalták fel, a földhitelintézet és a két régi takarékpénztár átalakulása, a záloglevél-kibocsátás megkezdése a mezőgazdaságból élők és a városi ingatlantulajdonosok felé nyitott, a falusi Raffeisen-szövetkezetek a kistelepülések agrárnépességét kapcsolták be a hálózatba, a szász pénzintézetek által közösen alapított Vereinsbank pedig befektetési és telepítőbanki feladatokat látott el. Mindezt úgy, hogy számos esetben a németországi „know-how” átvételével úttörő szerepet vállaltak egyes pénzintézeti típusok magyarországi meghonosításában. (Hagyományos takarékpénztárak, a kétféle hitelszövetkezet.)
A 20. század elejére kiteljesedett hitelszféra többféle módon segítette a szász nemzetépítést. A közvetlen hitelkapcsolatok előnyeiből (többek között a bankok által kínált kedvező feltételek révén) részesedtek az egyházközségek, az általuk fenntartott iskolák, a falusi gazdák. Tevékeny szerepet vállaltak nagy infrastrukturális beruházások (vasútépítés, vízerőmű, villamos stb.) előkészítésében és megvalósításában, pénzügyi-finanszírozási segítséget nyújtottak a szász evangélikus egyház és a szász Univerzitás likviditási nehézségeinek áthidalásában, a földvásárlásokban, a telepítésekben és támogatásaik révén a különböző egyletek működésében. Mindezeken túl jelentős szerepük volt a szász társadalom átalakításában is. A pénzintézetek adtak új, modernebb, a kor kihívásaihoz igazodó keretet a falusi közösségek önszerveződésének és az egész szász társadalmat átfogva megteremtették a lehetőséget, hogy a szász gazdasági nemzetépítés fontos politikai döntéseit a gyakorlatba is átültessék. A 20. század elején a Szász Néppárt elnöki tisztét betöltő Dr. Karl Wolff egyúttal a legnagyobb szász bank vezérigazgatója és az egyház világi főgondnoka is volt. Más pénzintézetek vezetői is egyszerre töltöttek be gazdasági, egyházi és politikai funkciókat. Wolff és társai mindezen intézményekre támaszkodva arra is képesek voltak, hogy már-már önálló gazdaságpolitikát valósítsanak meg – a pártelnök egyúttal a szászok „pénzügyminisztereként” is működjön –, anélkül, hogy megkérdőjelezte volna az államjogi berendezkedést, Magyarország egységét.
Research Interests:
Erdély, a „magyarabb magyarok” földje, évszázadokig a „nemzeti állam” őrzője, a „magyarság védőbástyája”, a nemzeti mítoszok tündérkertje. Amikor a második bécsi döntést követően északi része újra magyar szuverenitás alá került,... more
Erdély, a „magyarabb magyarok” földje, évszázadokig a „nemzeti állam” őrzője, a „magyarság védőbástyája”, a nemzeti mítoszok tündérkertje. Amikor a második bécsi döntést követően északi része újra magyar szuverenitás alá került, elképzelhetetlennek tűnt, hogy lakói ne kizárólag magyarként tekintsenek magukra, ne a nemzeti egység jegyében határozzák meg önmagukat. A mindennapok azonban hamar felszínre hozták azt is, ami nem összekötötte, hanem elválasztotta Erdélyt és az anyaországot. A kisebbségi lét, a két évtizedes külön történelem, az első világháborút követően megfogalmazott saját ideológiák, az „erdélyiség” – párosulva a regionális elit pozícióőrzésével – nem csak egy társadalmi monopóliumra törekvő pártot hívott életre, hanem egy határozottan megfogalmazott és képviselt ideológiát is, ez pedig egy elkülönülő erdélyi identitás megfogalmazását is céljául tűzte ki.
A kötet arra keresi a választ, hogy milyen módon próbálta enyhíteni-oldani ez a sajátos, a korszak jobboldali szociális reformeszméihez kapcsolódó ideológia és az „erdélyiség” mint identitás, a nemzeti egység és a tényleges „szétfejlődés” feszültségeit, hogyan viszonyult az anyaországhoz és a kisebbségekhez? Miként alakult ki az egykor demokratikus tartalmú erdélyiség „színeváltozásával” egy szuprematista, nagymagyar és paradox módon mégis elkülönülő eszmeiség az immár többséggé lett magyarság elitje körében?
A kötet arra keresi a választ, hogy milyen módon próbálta enyhíteni-oldani ez a sajátos, a korszak jobboldali szociális reformeszméihez kapcsolódó ideológia és az „erdélyiség” mint identitás, a nemzeti egység és a tényleges „szétfejlődés” feszültségeit, hogyan viszonyult az anyaországhoz és a kisebbségekhez? Miként alakult ki az egykor demokratikus tartalmú erdélyiség „színeváltozásával” egy szuprematista, nagymagyar és paradox módon mégis elkülönülő eszmeiség az immár többséggé lett magyarság elitje körében?
This is an article review which offers a critical reading of Aliaksandr Piahanau's argument on coal and territorial realignment of Hungary after the WWI.
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In this article, I analyze practices of defining and applying concepts of ethnicity, loyalty and state security in Greater Romania. While state policies were based on a basic assumption of the equation of ethnic belonging and loyalty... more
In this article, I analyze practices of defining and applying concepts of ethnicity, loyalty and state security in Greater Romania. While state policies were based on a basic assumption of the equation of ethnic belonging and loyalty (Romanians being loyal, non-Romanians disloyal), the complexity of the very administrative apparatus and the problems of unification opened up a space in which the concepts of loyalty and ethnicity were contested. The case studies of the use of the term irredentist and the language exams of minority officials in the mid-1930s shed light on a related but different question. The basic equation of loyalty and ethnicity resulted in the use of an otherwise empty concept of irredentism as a term to denote little more than ethnic “otherness,” a vagueness that enabled local authorities to apply it deliberately, either to restrict or to permit members of minorities to engage in activities that had some bearing on questions of identity. The ways in which the lang...
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Interview with Gabor Egry, a young historian at the Institute for Political History (Politikatorteneti Intezet) in Budapest, Hungary -- October 26, 2008
Research Interests: Psychology and Interview
Citizenship in Austria-Hungary was regulated by separate laws in both halves of the Monarchy. In Cisleithania an etatist-imperialist logic, in Hungary an ethicizing one defined its development until the World War I, without abandoning... more
Citizenship in Austria-Hungary was regulated by separate laws in both halves of the Monarchy. In Cisleithania an etatist-imperialist logic, in Hungary an ethicizing one defined its development until the World War I, without abandoning the principle of nominal equality of all citizens. The peace treaties, however, brought ethnicization one step further with the so-called cizizenship option right. While it obliged the new states to grant citizenship who held pertinency (illetőség, Heimatrecht, indigénat) on their new territory at a certain date, everyone was also entitled to apply for and acquire the citizenship of the state where his ethnic kin was the majority, a provision that implicitly bound citizenship to ethnic belonging. It was also to facilitate swift migration between successor states, although optants were only the second wave of migrations, after refugees took to the road from the end of 1918.
In my article I analyze how migration decisions, pertinency and citizenship was entangled. While states were supposed to follow the logic of ethnicity and preference co-ethnics, their practice was often bureaucratic, end the process of citizenship acquisition more etatist than ethnicist. In their turn, individuals used loopholes of the legislations and the peculiarities of the institution of pertinency to establish some room for manoeuvre for themselves and their final goals often contradicted the ethnic logic of the new citizenship regulations. Finally, I argue that the changes in citizenship at the end of World War I contributed to a surprising development: the institution of pertinency, a legal status anchoring individuals in just one locality, became transnational, stretching through borders and keeping the former imperial space intact. Tens of thousands of people remained members of communities in other states without being able to acquire a new citizenship, and the new states identified them through this legal status instead of their ethnicity.
In my article I analyze how migration decisions, pertinency and citizenship was entangled. While states were supposed to follow the logic of ethnicity and preference co-ethnics, their practice was often bureaucratic, end the process of citizenship acquisition more etatist than ethnicist. In their turn, individuals used loopholes of the legislations and the peculiarities of the institution of pertinency to establish some room for manoeuvre for themselves and their final goals often contradicted the ethnic logic of the new citizenship regulations. Finally, I argue that the changes in citizenship at the end of World War I contributed to a surprising development: the institution of pertinency, a legal status anchoring individuals in just one locality, became transnational, stretching through borders and keeping the former imperial space intact. Tens of thousands of people remained members of communities in other states without being able to acquire a new citizenship, and the new states identified them through this legal status instead of their ethnicity.
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... Title: Interview with Gabor Egry. Authors: Egry, Gabor. Keywords: interview. ... Description: Interview with Gabor Egry, a young historian at the Institute for Political History (Politikatorteneti Intezet) in Budapest, Hungary --... more
... Title: Interview with Gabor Egry. Authors: Egry, Gabor. Keywords: interview. ... Description: Interview with Gabor Egry, a young historian at the Institute for Political History (Politikatorteneti Intezet) in Budapest, Hungary -- October 26, 2008. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/11561. ...
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Communal debts and their licensing represented an important intersection of the private sphere, local-communal, and central administrations in post-1867 Hungary. An ever-growing range of tasks delegated by the state, the necessity to... more
Communal debts and their licensing represented an important intersection of the private
sphere, local-communal, and central administrations in post-1867 Hungary. An ever-growing range of tasks delegated by the state, the necessity to invest in city development
and schools, health care, social assistance, to establish the conditions of economic growth, all demanded financial commitment from city governments. New loans were taken from banks in Budapest and upon approval from higher organs, ultimately the Ministry of
Interior, creating another tie to the central state. The liquidation of these debts after 1918
was meant to resolve an issue inherited from Hungary. While seemingly an opportunity
for the new Romania to strengthen its control over territories populated by ethnic
minorities, the process was anything but simple and localities were mainly left on their
own, in a sense recreating the situation before 1918.
sphere, local-communal, and central administrations in post-1867 Hungary. An ever-growing range of tasks delegated by the state, the necessity to invest in city development
and schools, health care, social assistance, to establish the conditions of economic growth, all demanded financial commitment from city governments. New loans were taken from banks in Budapest and upon approval from higher organs, ultimately the Ministry of
Interior, creating another tie to the central state. The liquidation of these debts after 1918
was meant to resolve an issue inherited from Hungary. While seemingly an opportunity
for the new Romania to strengthen its control over territories populated by ethnic
minorities, the process was anything but simple and localities were mainly left on their
own, in a sense recreating the situation before 1918.
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The Treaty of Trianon (hereinafter Trianon), the enormous losses of territory and co-ethnics, and the shaking of Hungary’s status as a dominant power in the Carpathian Basin imputed a tragic understanding of contemporary Hungarian history... more
The Treaty of Trianon (hereinafter Trianon), the enormous losses of
territory and co-ethnics, and the shaking of Hungary’s status as a dominant power in the Carpathian Basin imputed a tragic understanding of contemporary Hungarian history on the Hungarian society, invoking the idea of a trauma lasting even today. Trianon’s understanding became a divisive issue for political parties after 1989, highlighting the ever-deeper divisions between right and left-liberals, since 2010. Its “overcoming” is a flagship project of the government’s politics of identity, with modest success so far. Thus, the 100th anniversary was a crucial moment as a test case for a self-professed nationalist, traditionalist, conservative political force for manifesting a comprehensive politics of memory. In the light of the newly built monument at the heart of Budapest, with the Hungarian names of all localities on the territory of pre-1918 Hungary inscribed on its wall, a cautious shifting back to territorial revisionism was expected.
In this article, I will argue that even with such tendencies being, obviously, present, the official commemorations were crafted with a surprising message, that attempts to turn the canonical understanding of Trianon upside down and reframe it into a common catastrophe of Central Europe. Doing so places the consequences in the context of the decolonization of history, the present decline of empires, and the emergence of nation-states while combining it with important tropes of the traditional, anti-liberal and revisionist Trianon discourse. Nevertheless, the result is a transparently political message that is not only driven by easily visible actual political goals (V4 and Central European cooperation), but one that detaches the politics of memory from historical references and legacies and creates a set of shallow symbols for utter instrumentalization, to recombine at will, in a vulgarised sense of post-modernism.
territory and co-ethnics, and the shaking of Hungary’s status as a dominant power in the Carpathian Basin imputed a tragic understanding of contemporary Hungarian history on the Hungarian society, invoking the idea of a trauma lasting even today. Trianon’s understanding became a divisive issue for political parties after 1989, highlighting the ever-deeper divisions between right and left-liberals, since 2010. Its “overcoming” is a flagship project of the government’s politics of identity, with modest success so far. Thus, the 100th anniversary was a crucial moment as a test case for a self-professed nationalist, traditionalist, conservative political force for manifesting a comprehensive politics of memory. In the light of the newly built monument at the heart of Budapest, with the Hungarian names of all localities on the territory of pre-1918 Hungary inscribed on its wall, a cautious shifting back to territorial revisionism was expected.
In this article, I will argue that even with such tendencies being, obviously, present, the official commemorations were crafted with a surprising message, that attempts to turn the canonical understanding of Trianon upside down and reframe it into a common catastrophe of Central Europe. Doing so places the consequences in the context of the decolonization of history, the present decline of empires, and the emergence of nation-states while combining it with important tropes of the traditional, anti-liberal and revisionist Trianon discourse. Nevertheless, the result is a transparently political message that is not only driven by easily visible actual political goals (V4 and Central European cooperation), but one that detaches the politics of memory from historical references and legacies and creates a set of shallow symbols for utter instrumentalization, to recombine at will, in a vulgarised sense of post-modernism.
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Es ist einfach und herkömmlich, und auch nicht ohne Grund, den Vertrag von Trianon als nur einen Höhepunkt der jahrhundertelangen ungarisch-rumänischen Feindseligkeiten zu betrachten, Feindseligkeiten, die logischerweise später zu... more
Es ist einfach und herkömmlich, und auch nicht ohne Grund, den Vertrag von Trianon als nur einen Höhepunkt der jahrhundertelangen ungarisch-rumänischen Feindseligkeiten zu betrachten, Feindseligkeiten, die logischerweise später zu anderen Krisen, wie dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und dem Zweiten Wiener Schiedsspruch führten. Dass beide Staaten sich gegenseitig als Opponenten, von Zeit zu Zeit als auch Feinde wahrgenommen haben, ist in der Historiographie gründlich dokumentiert.
Das Verlust Siebenbürgens, und damit etwa 1,4 Millionen ungarisch-sprachiger Einwohner des Landes, symbolisch sehr gewichtiger Städte und Regionen wie Klausenburg/Kolozsvár/Cluj, Nagybanya/Frauenbach/Baia Mare, Szeklerland, und auch von Wirtschaftszentren wie dem Banat oder Großwardein, schockierte die ungarische Gesellschaft und Politik zutiefst. Die Wirkung des Friedensvertrags war umso erschütternder, als im System der ethnischen Auto- und Heterostereotypen der Ungarn die Rumänen seit Jahrhunderten als minderwertig und für Staatsbildung ungeeignet betrachtet wurden, was auch bedeutete, dass einer der Grundpfeiler der ungarischen Selbstwahrnehmung infrage gestellt wurde. (Solche Stereotypen gab es natürlich auch umgekehrt, da in der rumänischen Selbstwahrnehmung die Ungarn als asiatische Barbaren, als Hunnen betrachtet und den lateinischen Rumänen gegenübergestellt wurden.) Deswegen war der Verlust der Provinz nicht nur ein praktisches Desaster, es war auch symbolisch unvorstellbar und untragbar, einen Teil (Zentral)Europas dem Balkan anzuschließen.
Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es keinesfalls überraschend, dass Ungarn während der Zwischenkriegszeit Revisionspläne pflegte und Rumänien und die Rumänen propagandistisch in finsteren Farben malte. Rumänien reagierte mit Hysterie auf den ungarischen Irredentismus, die manchmal auch zu willkürlichen Sicherheitsmaßnahmen gegen nationale Minderheiten führte. Doch wenn man das Leben in Siebenbürgen genauer anschaute, konnte man konstatieren dass wesentliche Elemente aus Österreich-Ungarn in der Provinz überlebten und sich im Alltagsleben häufig manifestierten. Jenseits des Alltags waren politischer Regionalismus und kultureller “Transsilvanismus“ die Erscheinungsformen dieses Phänomens. In diesem Essay versuche ich dessen Überleben bis heute zu erklären.
Das Verlust Siebenbürgens, und damit etwa 1,4 Millionen ungarisch-sprachiger Einwohner des Landes, symbolisch sehr gewichtiger Städte und Regionen wie Klausenburg/Kolozsvár/Cluj, Nagybanya/Frauenbach/Baia Mare, Szeklerland, und auch von Wirtschaftszentren wie dem Banat oder Großwardein, schockierte die ungarische Gesellschaft und Politik zutiefst. Die Wirkung des Friedensvertrags war umso erschütternder, als im System der ethnischen Auto- und Heterostereotypen der Ungarn die Rumänen seit Jahrhunderten als minderwertig und für Staatsbildung ungeeignet betrachtet wurden, was auch bedeutete, dass einer der Grundpfeiler der ungarischen Selbstwahrnehmung infrage gestellt wurde. (Solche Stereotypen gab es natürlich auch umgekehrt, da in der rumänischen Selbstwahrnehmung die Ungarn als asiatische Barbaren, als Hunnen betrachtet und den lateinischen Rumänen gegenübergestellt wurden.) Deswegen war der Verlust der Provinz nicht nur ein praktisches Desaster, es war auch symbolisch unvorstellbar und untragbar, einen Teil (Zentral)Europas dem Balkan anzuschließen.
Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es keinesfalls überraschend, dass Ungarn während der Zwischenkriegszeit Revisionspläne pflegte und Rumänien und die Rumänen propagandistisch in finsteren Farben malte. Rumänien reagierte mit Hysterie auf den ungarischen Irredentismus, die manchmal auch zu willkürlichen Sicherheitsmaßnahmen gegen nationale Minderheiten führte. Doch wenn man das Leben in Siebenbürgen genauer anschaute, konnte man konstatieren dass wesentliche Elemente aus Österreich-Ungarn in der Provinz überlebten und sich im Alltagsleben häufig manifestierten. Jenseits des Alltags waren politischer Regionalismus und kultureller “Transsilvanismus“ die Erscheinungsformen dieses Phänomens. In diesem Essay versuche ich dessen Überleben bis heute zu erklären.
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For a long time since 1945, the Horthy-era was defined as fascism, a notion that lost all its credibility with the change of regime in 1989. As a reaction to Communist politics of history, its association with radical right was almost... more
For a long time since 1945, the Horthy-era was defined as fascism, a notion that lost all its credibility with the change of regime in 1989. As a reaction to Communist politics of history, its association with radical right was almost impossible, even though the new wave of fascist studies around the millennium could have provided new impetus for the study of the ideological landscape of interwar Hungary. The growing number of works dedicated to the radical right of this period remained cautious with labelling those lines of thoughts within Hungarian politics.
My article argues based on this recent literature and the turn in fascist studies inspired by Roger Griffin, that the new nationalism of the post-WWI period was rather generic Fascism in the form of the „fajvédo” ideas, present in Hungary from very early, since 1919. Thus, it developed parallel with Italian new nationalism, even predated Mussolini’s takeover, it was no imitation as the discredited literature claimed. Furthermore, from the thirties its important tenets regarding a new, harmonious, hierarchical and markedly corporatist society based on the preservation of the dominance of the traditional middle-class, became mainstream, even appearing in government programs too.
My article argues based on this recent literature and the turn in fascist studies inspired by Roger Griffin, that the new nationalism of the post-WWI period was rather generic Fascism in the form of the „fajvédo” ideas, present in Hungary from very early, since 1919. Thus, it developed parallel with Italian new nationalism, even predated Mussolini’s takeover, it was no imitation as the discredited literature claimed. Furthermore, from the thirties its important tenets regarding a new, harmonious, hierarchical and markedly corporatist society based on the preservation of the dominance of the traditional middle-class, became mainstream, even appearing in government programs too.
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This chapter analyses how everyday ethnicity in interwar Transylvania reinforced Romanian regionalism in the province. Starting from the concept of everyday ethnicity, it introduces the idea of everyday regionalism, which was in that... more
This chapter analyses how everyday ethnicity in interwar Transylvania
reinforced Romanian regionalism in the province. Starting from the concept of everyday ethnicity, it introduces the idea of everyday regionalism, which was in that particular area tightly connected to practices otherwise perceived as non-Romanian ones. Due to common socialization and the existence of a common middle-class milieu (a legacy of dualist Hungary), performative acts, such as leisure activities, that were understood as manifestations of Hungarianness enabled the Romanian middle-class to delineate its own community from the Old Kingdom. In doing so it also created a temporary new group, including both Romanians and Hungarians. Within the lower classes similar phenomena existed, but the means to express difference were
more vulgar. With the help of a regionalist political discourse, a new form of loyalty and Romanian identity emerged, one based on the idea of authenticity of Transylvanian Romanians, and excluding Old Kingdom Romanians.
reinforced Romanian regionalism in the province. Starting from the concept of everyday ethnicity, it introduces the idea of everyday regionalism, which was in that particular area tightly connected to practices otherwise perceived as non-Romanian ones. Due to common socialization and the existence of a common middle-class milieu (a legacy of dualist Hungary), performative acts, such as leisure activities, that were understood as manifestations of Hungarianness enabled the Romanian middle-class to delineate its own community from the Old Kingdom. In doing so it also created a temporary new group, including both Romanians and Hungarians. Within the lower classes similar phenomena existed, but the means to express difference were
more vulgar. With the help of a regionalist political discourse, a new form of loyalty and Romanian identity emerged, one based on the idea of authenticity of Transylvanian Romanians, and excluding Old Kingdom Romanians.
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A tanulmány a hétköznapi azonosulási gyakorlatokat vizsgálja a két világháború közötti Székelyföldön. Míg a régió szimbolikusan közel esett Magyarországhoz, a székelyeket pedig a leghitelesebb magyaroknak tekintették, a valóságban azonban... more
A tanulmány a hétköznapi azonosulási gyakorlatokat vizsgálja a két világháború közötti Székelyföldön. Míg a régió szimbolikusan közel esett Magyarországhoz, a székelyeket pedig a leghitelesebb magyaroknak tekintették, a valóságban azonban a távolságok határozták meg a viszonyt, a földrajzi helyzet és az elmaradottság következtében. Nagy-Románia számára a székelyek a másság archetípusaiként működtek, az állam ezért a különbségeket fokozódó nemzetiesítéssel próbálta legyűrni. A székely–román eltérések mindazonáltal magyar–román választóvonalakként nyilvánultak meg.
Az erős diszkurzív és politikai különbségtétel mögött a hétköznapi gyakorlatok és interakciók főképp az etnicitás esetlegességére és szituativitására mutatnak rá. A tanulmány az identifikáció és a hétköznapi etnicitás megközelítéseire építve, valamint Rogers Brubaker és társai, illetve Jon Fox és Cynthia Miller-Idriss tipológiáit használva, rámutat arra, hogy “a magyarság” és “a románság” egyéni értelmezései hogyan kapcsolódtak bizonyos társadalmi miliőkhöz, hogyan tárult fel a nemzetiesítő állam bonyolultsága, és az etnicitáshoz társított gyakorlatokat hogyan használták fel csoportok kijelölésére saját nemzetükön belül. A rurális világban az embereknek és az állam alkalmazottainak olyan közömbösségeket és szokásokat kellett kezelniük, amelyeket a helyiek nem tekintettek etnikaiaknak, és csak a külső személők számára tűntek azoknak. Ugyanakkor, a régió etnikai és társadalmi összetételéből kifolyólag, a középosztályi gyakorlatok döntően a magyar etnicitás kifejezésével estek egybe, amelyeket a kevés román is elfogadott a társadalmi státusz és presztízs jeleiként. Így ők az ókirálysági románokkal szemben is ki tudták fejezni különbözőségüket.
(Replika 105 (2017-12-15), 91–106)
Az erős diszkurzív és politikai különbségtétel mögött a hétköznapi gyakorlatok és interakciók főképp az etnicitás esetlegességére és szituativitására mutatnak rá. A tanulmány az identifikáció és a hétköznapi etnicitás megközelítéseire építve, valamint Rogers Brubaker és társai, illetve Jon Fox és Cynthia Miller-Idriss tipológiáit használva, rámutat arra, hogy “a magyarság” és “a románság” egyéni értelmezései hogyan kapcsolódtak bizonyos társadalmi miliőkhöz, hogyan tárult fel a nemzetiesítő állam bonyolultsága, és az etnicitáshoz társított gyakorlatokat hogyan használták fel csoportok kijelölésére saját nemzetükön belül. A rurális világban az embereknek és az állam alkalmazottainak olyan közömbösségeket és szokásokat kellett kezelniük, amelyeket a helyiek nem tekintettek etnikaiaknak, és csak a külső személők számára tűntek azoknak. Ugyanakkor, a régió etnikai és társadalmi összetételéből kifolyólag, a középosztályi gyakorlatok döntően a magyar etnicitás kifejezésével estek egybe, amelyeket a kevés román is elfogadott a társadalmi státusz és presztízs jeleiként. Így ők az ókirálysági románokkal szemben is ki tudták fejezni különbözőségüket.
(Replika 105 (2017-12-15), 91–106)
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This article analyzes national loyalty and identification by examining the language exams administered to minority public officials in Romania in 1934 and 1935. The exams aimed at testing officials’ knowledge of the state language, but... more
This article analyzes national loyalty and identification by examining the language exams administered to minority public officials in Romania in 1934 and 1935. The exams aimed at testing officials’ knowledge of the state language, but given the broader political context they were more than a survey of linguistic skills. Examinees were singled out as non-Romanian and subjected to an additional requirement not demanded from their ethnic Romanian colleagues, interpreting the use of the official language as a sign of loyalty. Drawing upon theories of loyalty as a historical concept, the paper analyzes how the particular situation of minority public officials was reflected in these texts and how they created a specific identification for themselves, composed of important elements of their minority ethnicity but also expressing their identification with the state and its modernizing goals as members of a unified, professional public body. The language exams signaled the emergence of a specific category of minority public servants who were part of both the minority group and the middle-class functionaries of the Romanian state. Nationalist public discourse on both sides—Romanian and minority—have denied and erased the history of these hybrid loyalties and identities, but the languages exams help us to recover them.Hunagr
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The concept of security and the security culture of the state are always social constructs reflecting the outcome of interactions between state and society. Key categories of security, like dangerous social groups and activities are... more
The concept of security and the security culture of the state are always social constructs reflecting the outcome of interactions between state and society. Key categories of security, like dangerous social groups and activities are usually negotiated through these interactions. Politicians, secret agents, gendarms, denunciators, journalists, or the indicted, all shape the broader social meaning in a dynamic way. While in Greater Romania the state attempted to extend its control to ever broader segments of society in order to fend off perceived threats it had to rely on its own personnel and on people who cooperated in this effort, creating room for maneuver for everyone involved in this process. Due to its scarce resources the state could not even control entirely its own representatives, who often pursued a personal agenda different from the state’s own goals. Irredentism, associated with ethnic minorities exemplifies this situation quite well. In an effort to preempt any threat from national minorities with a kin-state gradually led to the association of irredentism with ethnicity, without having control over the latter’s exact meaning. Thus, its practical application depended on a series of factors, personal and structural ones, that finally led to a confusion and to the emptying of the concept that was applied without consistency. It was exactly this development that reconstituted the gap between state and society that actively engaged each other in the resulting process of negotiation. Under the surface of the rule of law and against the backdrop of the image of an ever more powerful state security apparatus, state and society defined together those informal rules of everyday co-existence that were often meant to hide reality from the watchful eyes of Bucharest.
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The paper outlines how the portrayal of “us” and “them” changed during the interwar period in the relational web from Prague to Bucharest. The collapse of the Monarchy had shaken some of the foundations of national self-perceptions and... more
The paper outlines how the portrayal of “us” and “them” changed during the interwar period in
the relational web from Prague to Bucharest. The collapse of the Monarchy had shaken some of the foundations of national self-perceptions and brought to the fore hitherto insignificant groups
either as active protagonists of politics of identity or as significant others. Nevertheless, the old representations of each other had changed less markedly. The real novelty of the period was that
the appearance of Hungarian minorities and their politics of identity enabled the creation of some temporary group constructs that transcended traditional ethnic boundaries and redefined ethnicity
on a more region-centred basis.
the relational web from Prague to Bucharest. The collapse of the Monarchy had shaken some of the foundations of national self-perceptions and brought to the fore hitherto insignificant groups
either as active protagonists of politics of identity or as significant others. Nevertheless, the old representations of each other had changed less markedly. The real novelty of the period was that
the appearance of Hungarian minorities and their politics of identity enabled the creation of some temporary group constructs that transcended traditional ethnic boundaries and redefined ethnicity
on a more region-centred basis.
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Book review.
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The article’s aim is to analyze how parts of the gastronomy renewal movement in Hungary are connected to nationalist politics of identity in Hungary. Based on insights from the study of everyday ethnicity, banal nationalism and... more
The article’s aim is to analyze how parts of the gastronomy renewal movement in Hungary are connected to nationalist politics of identity in Hungary. Based on insights from the study of everyday ethnicity, banal nationalism and comparative memory studies in CEE it shows how the nationalist anti-communist concept of history that constitutes a cornerstone of the identity of the right is inherent in the gastronomy movement. It is a-historic and manifestly mythicizing, finding the lowest point of gastronomy history in the Kádár-era, a period also excluded from national history in the great narrative of the right. This adjustment enables the movement to overturn existing hierarchies and infuse the public discourse with its own language with the help of politics but at the price of obligatorily lending its support to political PR action that contradicts its own promoted values.
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In many respects, the change of sovereignty occurring in the wake of WWI subverted the order of things established in Transylvania in the days of the Dual Monarchy. In some cases it only involved a sheer reversal of roles: the province... more
In many respects, the change of sovereignty occurring in the wake of WWI subverted the order of things established in Transylvania in the days of the Dual Monarchy. In some cases it only involved a sheer reversal of roles: the province continued to be governed from the outside, with the nationalizing role and practices of state administration remaining unchanged except for their content, to serve the purposes of Romanianisation instead of Magyarisation. In other respects, however, the new sovereignty brought (theoretically) truly substantial changes. Broadly speaking, social policy changed. In the age of dualism the primary goal had been to preserve rather than extend social and economic positions considered to be Hungarian. In contrast, for the leaders of Greater Romania modernization of Romanians seemed feasible at the expense of ethnic minorities (land reform, nationalisation of companies, policies regarding cooperatives and banking, etc). But the new government also sought to restructure everyday life in a more direct way. New rules were set up to define the rhythm of life (working days - public holidays - religious holidays), the Romanian re-ethnicisation of public spaces went its own way just as the makeover of the linguistic landscape or the re-regulation of opening hours of bars and restaurants. At least from the perspective of the state, all this was quite inseparable from the fact that Greater Romania was intended as a nationalizing state. However, it’s administrative capacity remained limited and its structural shortcomings opened up a space for negotiating ethnicity in everyday life.
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EGRY, Gábor: Transylvanian Federation, Hungarian People’s Community, Transylvanian Party: A Historian’s Take on the Social Vision of Miklós Bánffy’s Trilogy While presenting the evolution and... more
EGRY, Gábor: Transylvanian Federation, Hungarian People’s Community, Transylvanian Party: A Historian’s Take on the Social Vision of Miklós Bánffy’s Trilogy While presenting the evolution and coherence of Miklós Bánffy’s personal perceptions, the study makes an attempt at locating the social vision of his Transylvanian Trilogy on the map of the early 20th-century Hungarian and ethnic Hungarian history of political ideas. The analysis is based on an exploration of the relationship between multiple temporal planes. The events of the plot take place in the first decades of the 20th century, and the protagonists are in many respects based on the person of Bánffy. The novel, however, was written in the thirties, but the last volume came out only a few months before the re-annexation of Northern Transylvania to Hungary. The temporal plane of the novel can thus be both retrospective and one addressing the moment of writing, while it is also possible to reconstruct the views that the author held at the time in which the plot is set. The latter fact gives rise to the question as to what extent the trilogy can be construed as a life story, and how much this might have influenced the tableau of society showed in the novel.The ideal society of the novel mainly reproduces the perceptions of turn-of-the-century agrarians, estate-oriented, organizing organically, but under the leadership of an aristocratic elite - an approach also represented by Bánffy as a politician. This, however, apparently changed due to the idea of service to the people - an idea which was, in turn, embraced in 1939 by the Hungarian People’s Community, with Bánffy at its helm.A shift, relative to Bánffy’s own views, may also be perceived as regards the ethnic issue. While he insists that the social engineering conducted by the Romanian middle class is ruthless and he would prefer to solve the issue in a patriarchal manner, he suggests that minority Hungarians should consider Romanian national self-organization as something exemplary. The overall picture is that of a relatively firm outlook, a coherence one would expect in the case of a life story.
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Book reviewo on Bárdi Nándor: Otthon és haza. Tanulmányok a romániai magyar kisebbség történetéről, Pro-Print Kiadó, Csíkszereda, 2013, 608 oldal
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In this article, I analyze practices of defining and applying concepts of ethnicity, loyalty and state security in Greater Romania. While state policies were based on a basic assumption of the equation of ethnic belonging and loyalty... more
In this article, I analyze practices of defining and applying concepts of ethnicity, loyalty and state security in Greater Romania. While state policies were based on a basic assumption of the equation of ethnic belonging and loyalty (Romanians being loyal, non-Romanians disloyal), the complexity of the very administrative apparatus and the problems of unification opened up a space in which the concepts of loyalty and ethnicity were contested. The case studies of the use of the term irredentist and the language exams of minority officials in the mid-1930s shed light on a related but different question. The basic equation of loyalty and ethnicity resulted in the use of an otherwise empty concept of irredentism as a term to denote little more than ethnic “otherness,” a vagueness that enabled local authorities to apply it deliberately, either to restrict or to permit members of minorities to engage in activities that had some bearing on questions of identity. The ways in which the language exams were administered indicate the existence of a large group of non-Romanian public officials who were treated by their colleagues and immediate superiors as equal members of a public body serving the nation state, people who in exchange redefined their loyalty and identity as one based primarily on this professional group membership while still preserving their ethnic belonging. These deviations from the basic equation also reveal how the layered and geographically diverse nature of the state administration influenced the contested nature of the ethnic categories.
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This study investigates the emergence of Greater Romania from below, paying attention to certain aspects of ethnicity and nationalizing. The establishment of the new state, with its rules and practices, was a slow process that left... more
This study investigates the emergence of Greater Romania from below, paying attention to certain aspects of ethnicity and nationalizing. The establishment of the new state, with its rules and practices, was a slow process that left considerable room
for local groups and individuals to negotiate their positions vis-à-vis the nationalizing efforts. The analysis of how citizenship options were used to individual advantage, the conflicts that arose regarding the nationalizing of border zones and their inhabitants,
and the local differences of symbolic conquests reveal the importance of local contexts and their social elements. From the perspective of these events the realities of Greater Romania are best described as an overarching legal fiction that disguised
a series of local settlements and compromises regarding the nationalizing attempts. Encounters usually interpreted as expressions of national indifference were also driven by ethnicity, only the meaning and content of ethnicity remained permanently
contested. One can detect two types of “nationally indifferent” behavior. One was prevalent primarily among the middle class, a claim for the power to define one’s ethnicity, and another was characteristic of the lower urban social strata and the
peasantry, where it could have meant real neglect or indifference not only to the norms of proper behavior, but also to the categories used by the state, but still not negligence of differences.
for local groups and individuals to negotiate their positions vis-à-vis the nationalizing efforts. The analysis of how citizenship options were used to individual advantage, the conflicts that arose regarding the nationalizing of border zones and their inhabitants,
and the local differences of symbolic conquests reveal the importance of local contexts and their social elements. From the perspective of these events the realities of Greater Romania are best described as an overarching legal fiction that disguised
a series of local settlements and compromises regarding the nationalizing attempts. Encounters usually interpreted as expressions of national indifference were also driven by ethnicity, only the meaning and content of ethnicity remained permanently
contested. One can detect two types of “nationally indifferent” behavior. One was prevalent primarily among the middle class, a claim for the power to define one’s ethnicity, and another was characteristic of the lower urban social strata and the
peasantry, where it could have meant real neglect or indifference not only to the norms of proper behavior, but also to the categories used by the state, but still not negligence of differences.
"Parties in opposition in inter war Romania frequently relied on extra-parliamentary action, mainly mass mobilization campaigns to prove their popular support. The National Peasant Party employed a discourse of identity as means of... more
"Parties in opposition in inter war Romania frequently relied on extra-parliamentary action, mainly mass mobilization campaigns to prove their popular support. The National Peasant Party employed a discourse of identity as means of politics of identity bound to negative everyday experiences of its leaders and supporters, delimiting itself from the Old Kingdom and its representatives the liberals. The characteristics of Transylvanians and Old Kingdom Romanians were essential in the concepts of inherently democratic Transylvanians, and oligarchic, despotic, Balkan type Old Kingdom ones. As a result Transylvanians emerged as the authentic Romanians, whose destiny was to liberate Old Kingdom peasants from foreign rule. Besides, the party used the memory and experience of the revolution of 1918 to legitimize the use of extralegal means against the liberal governments and gradually redefined democracy in this sense. This set of factors generated a self-feeding cycle in which mass mobilization reinforced the necessity for a politics of identity that positioned the party – identical with the nation – in a binary opposition to the „others”, a process that drove NPP farther from parliamentarism, contributing to the fall of the supposedly parliamentarian system. "
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The study gives an overview of the constructions of Transylvania and their relations during the interwar period. It presents the distance as well as the closeness to Transylvania and the process of establishing the boundaries of... more
The study gives an overview of the constructions of Transylvania and their relations during the interwar period. It presents the distance as well as the closeness to Transylvania and the process of establishing the boundaries of Transylvania, where the boundaries are not only meant in a geographical sense. Its point of view is distinctly Transylvanian, and it looks at how the various Transylvanian actors of history, from everyday people to the political elite, tried to find a place for themselves and their region in the world; where they drew the dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’; and what were the differences, which were present in the social space and simultaneously forming identity discourses or even rooting in them, and the experiences relating to them. In order to capture this process, the study amplifies Rogers Brubaker’s triadic system of correlation into a quadrangle by mentioning the regional elite of the majority as a separate actor.
This system of correlations is dynamic, in which the various forms and practices of separation and identification might be present depending on the circumstances. The various groups might merge creating an opposition against someone or they might be separated from each other according to their characteristics or interests. Their boundaries can be crossed or they can be completely impenetrable; the main idea is that they identify themselves as a group standing against another group and they assign that particular group certain common characteristics. This can be true for both the cases of everyday encounters and the discourses of the political elite. Within the framework of these relations and system of relations the regional elites wanted to turn around the hierarchy within the nation and they considered their own regional group as the authentic representative of the nation. This was reinforced by the everyday encounters as well. However, against the other nation the support of the centre was needed. But since both the regionalist discourse and the encounters ethnicised the differences between the groups of Hungarians and the groups of Romanians, the question arises whether this proves the potential of separate nation-buildings.
This system of correlations is dynamic, in which the various forms and practices of separation and identification might be present depending on the circumstances. The various groups might merge creating an opposition against someone or they might be separated from each other according to their characteristics or interests. Their boundaries can be crossed or they can be completely impenetrable; the main idea is that they identify themselves as a group standing against another group and they assign that particular group certain common characteristics. This can be true for both the cases of everyday encounters and the discourses of the political elite. Within the framework of these relations and system of relations the regional elites wanted to turn around the hierarchy within the nation and they considered their own regional group as the authentic representative of the nation. This was reinforced by the everyday encounters as well. However, against the other nation the support of the centre was needed. But since both the regionalist discourse and the encounters ethnicised the differences between the groups of Hungarians and the groups of Romanians, the question arises whether this proves the potential of separate nation-buildings.
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Research Interests: History, Nationalism, Republic, Nation, Hungary, and 3 moreFidesz, Politics of Identity, and Viktor Orban
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... Title: Interview with Gabor Egry. Authors: Egry, Gabor. Keywords: interview. ... Description: Interview with Gabor Egry, a young historian at the Institute for Political History (Politikatorteneti Intezet) in Budapest, Hungary --... more
... Title: Interview with Gabor Egry. Authors: Egry, Gabor. Keywords: interview. ... Description: Interview with Gabor Egry, a young historian at the Institute for Political History (Politikatorteneti Intezet) in Budapest, Hungary -- October 26, 2008. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/11561. ...
Summary of a thesis submitted for the title of Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
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Many historians are fascinated by the concpet of national indifference, an idea that energized a new wave of reserach on historical forms and social significance of modern nationalism. It’s aim is to reveal how people were often not... more
Many historians are fascinated by the concpet of national indifference, an idea that energized a new wave of reserach on historical forms and social significance of modern nationalism. It’s aim is to reveal how people were often not enthusiastic in embracing nationalism in their lives and how hard it was for nationalist activists to nationaloize their respective societies. Greater Romania offers an abundance of cases that are often hard to subsume under „canonical” nationalism, but the interpretation of which as signs of national indifference also seems reductionist, often rather obscuring than explaining the social phenomena and processes behind it. In this paper I will argue that such examples are not simply better understood with the help of rival analytical concepts, but they show that the concept of national indifference needs reconsideration in order to be able to offer the analytical insights it is supposed to deliver.
Presented at the workshop: "The concept of 'national indifference' and its potential to nations and nationalism research" Prague 5-6 September 2016
Presented at the workshop: "The concept of 'national indifference' and its potential to nations and nationalism research" Prague 5-6 September 2016
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Economic nationalism, the idea that national groups must have an inward looking national economy serving the purpose of nation building, and , especially in multi-ethnic states, competing for resources in order to strengthen the national... more
Economic nationalism, the idea that national groups must have an inward looking national economy serving the purpose of nation building, and , especially in multi-ethnic states, competing for resources in order to strengthen the national community in its struggle with rivals, gained traction in pre-WWI Hungary and Transylvania. It brought about a discursive unification and delimitation of national groups and their national property (Besitztum), dissecting existing political communities and transgressing political borders. Economic activity was perceived increasingly along this line of thought, state and private actors devised plans accordingly, especially concerning colonization and credit schemes and public actors tended to boost its positive effects for the respective nations.
Territorial changes after 1919 and transformation of the legal system in Romania, alongside with a reconfiguration of the roles in the national competition posed a challenge to participants of such actions. One thing, however, remained: efficiency of these endeavors was often judged by non-economic criteria, even if disguised for an economic assessment at the level of the whole entity. But the unification of Greater Romania brought to the fore additional dividing lines between “colonizer” and “colonized” Romanians too. My paper will use a few case studies (the aftermath of previous secret credit schemes and new ones initiated by Budapest, a comparison of the fate of Romanian and Hungarian community property forests in the peripheral regions) to analyze how the concept of national economy was adapted to these changes, how much different ideas of economic nationalism were capable to suppress economic efficiency in conducting business and how nationalizing policies had an occasionally paradoxical effect on the fate of companies, accompanied by an intricate transformation of the language of economics too.
Territorial changes after 1919 and transformation of the legal system in Romania, alongside with a reconfiguration of the roles in the national competition posed a challenge to participants of such actions. One thing, however, remained: efficiency of these endeavors was often judged by non-economic criteria, even if disguised for an economic assessment at the level of the whole entity. But the unification of Greater Romania brought to the fore additional dividing lines between “colonizer” and “colonized” Romanians too. My paper will use a few case studies (the aftermath of previous secret credit schemes and new ones initiated by Budapest, a comparison of the fate of Romanian and Hungarian community property forests in the peripheral regions) to analyze how the concept of national economy was adapted to these changes, how much different ideas of economic nationalism were capable to suppress economic efficiency in conducting business and how nationalizing policies had an occasionally paradoxical effect on the fate of companies, accompanied by an intricate transformation of the language of economics too.
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The project’s goal is to provide a new, overall narrative of how the Habsburg Empire was replaced by nation states at the end of WWI and reconsider in the light of its results categories and concepts like state and statehood, local,... more
The project’s goal is to provide a new, overall narrative of how the Habsburg Empire was replaced by nation states at the end of WWI and reconsider in the light of its results categories and concepts like state and statehood, local, regional and national, transition and transformation. A novel combination of historical comparison and histoire croisée enables the in-depth analyses of a set of local transitions in diverse regions (agrarian, industrial, commercial, urban, rural, multi-and mono-ethnic, borderland and mainland, litoral) and the combination of these results with the existing literature on other localities.
The team addresses four main themes: state, elites, identities and discourses. The focus is always local, the question is how these societies faced the momentous changes and found their place within empire and nation-state(s). It will look at interactions, cultures and especially rupture and continuity of people, norms, practices, institutional cultures in order to discover patterns of transitions and the social factors influencing them. Besides a typology of transitions, it also aims at gaining a new perspective on empire and nation-state from this crucial moment of collapse and state-building.
The project is informed by New Imperial history, the idea of phantom boundaries, everyday ethnicity, integrated urban history. At the methodological level, it builds on symmetrical comparison of the selected cases and on an asymmetrical one with the existing literature, while the object of comparison is the transition that we conceptualize as an “intercrossing”. Through analysing this ‘transformation from below’ and connecting for the first time what has remained scattered both in historiography and in the social representations, the project aims to write a new history of modern Eastern Europe as a common legacy for an integrated European history.
The project is financed by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant agreement 772264
Principal Investigator: Gábor Egry
The team addresses four main themes: state, elites, identities and discourses. The focus is always local, the question is how these societies faced the momentous changes and found their place within empire and nation-state(s). It will look at interactions, cultures and especially rupture and continuity of people, norms, practices, institutional cultures in order to discover patterns of transitions and the social factors influencing them. Besides a typology of transitions, it also aims at gaining a new perspective on empire and nation-state from this crucial moment of collapse and state-building.
The project is informed by New Imperial history, the idea of phantom boundaries, everyday ethnicity, integrated urban history. At the methodological level, it builds on symmetrical comparison of the selected cases and on an asymmetrical one with the existing literature, while the object of comparison is the transition that we conceptualize as an “intercrossing”. Through analysing this ‘transformation from below’ and connecting for the first time what has remained scattered both in historiography and in the social representations, the project aims to write a new history of modern Eastern Europe as a common legacy for an integrated European history.
The project is financed by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant agreement 772264
Principal Investigator: Gábor Egry
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A review of The Banat of Timișoara: A European Melting Pot. Ed. Victor Neumann. London: Scala Arts and Heritage Publishers, 2019. xvi, 495 pp. Notes. Index. Plates. Figures. Tables. Maps. $40.00, hard bound.
Preprint draft.
Preprint draft.
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A revioew of the book.
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Review of Kunt Gergely - L. Balogh Béni - Schmidt Anikó: Trianon arcai. Naplók, visszaemlékezések, levelek. Libri - Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, Budapest 2018.
Múltunk 2018/3, 207-217.
Múltunk 2018/3, 207-217.
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Review of Krisztián Ungváry's Magyar megszálló csapatok a Szovjetunióban.
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Nándor Bárdi's Otthon és haza is a summary of more than two decades of intense research on the history of Hungarian minorities. Nevertheless, the book is not a synthesis in which the author adopts one of the two typical approaches to this... more
Nándor Bárdi's Otthon és haza is a summary of more than two decades of intense research on the history of Hungarian minorities. Nevertheless, the book is not a synthesis in which the author adopts one of the two typical approaches to this issue, narrating it either as a story of tragedy, decline and heroism or as a sober, rational and resigned account of inevitable loss. Its nine chapters, each of which would qualify as a separate book on the basis of its richness, take different perspectives on the question of how a minority community was constructed out of a group of people separated from Hungary and attached to Romania.
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Bok review on Peter Siani-Davies. The Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Ithaca Cornell University Press, 2007. 315 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8014-7389-0.
Book review.
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Book review on Konstantin Pleshakov. There Is No Freedom without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down Communism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. 289 pp. $26.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-374-28902-7. and Bernard Ivan... more
Book review on
Konstantin Pleshakov. There Is No Freedom without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down
Communism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. 289 pp. $26.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-374-28902-7. and
Bernard Ivan Tamas. From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary, 1989-1994. Boulder: East European Monographs, 2007. v + 240 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-88033-605-5.
Konstantin Pleshakov. There Is No Freedom without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down
Communism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. 289 pp. $26.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-374-28902-7. and
Bernard Ivan Tamas. From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary, 1989-1994. Boulder: East European Monographs, 2007. v + 240 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-88033-605-5.
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An interview with Gábor Egry, chief director at the Institute of Political History in Budapest. Interviewer: Simone Benazzo.
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Konferencia program.
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Discussion forum on my book "Etnicitás, identitás, politika".
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National indifference is one of the most innovative notions historians have brought to the study of nationalism in recent years. The concept questions the mass character of nationalism in East Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth... more
National indifference is one of the most innovative notions historians have brought to the study of nationalism in recent years. The concept questions the mass character of nationalism in East Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Ordinary people were not in thrall to the nation; they were often indifferent, ambivalent or opportunistic when dealing with issues of nationhood.
As with all ground-breaking research, the literature on national indifference has not only revolutionized how we understand nationalism, over time, it has also revealed a new set of challenges. This volume brings together experienced scholars with the next generation, in a collaborative effort to push the geographic, historical, and conceptual boundaries of national indifference 2.0.
The first critical intervention of this volume is geographical, by extending the analysis beyond the original setting of national indifference in East Central Europe. This collection incorporates a much wider array of cases from Belgium and France in the west, to the former Habsburg territories in Central and Southern Europe, and finally to Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union in the east. Second, the volume re-periodizes national indifference. It was not only a nineteenth-century phenomenon, reducible to a short-lived developmental stage of nationalism. Rather, it survived well into the twentieth century, even into the post–Second World War age of nationalism. The third intervention is conceptual. We expand and disaggregate the national indifference paradigm to develop a more flexible and variegated approach that can better account for regional and historical variation.
This collection contains the following chapters:
- Introduction. National indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Maarten Van Ginderachter and Jon Fox /
- Too much on their mind. Impediments and limitations of the national cultural project in nineteenth-century Belgium
Tom Verschaffel /
- From national indifference to national commitment and back: the case of the Trentine POWS in Russia during the First World War
Simone A. Bellezza /
- Lost in transition? The Habsburg legacy, state- and nation-building, and the new fascist order in the Upper Adriatic
Marco Bresciani /
- National indifference and the transnational corporation: the paradigm of the Bat’a Company
Zachary Doleshal /
- Between nationalism and indifference: the gradual elimination of indifference in interwar Yugoslavia
Filip Erdeljac /
- Paths to Frenchness: national indifference and the return of Alsace to France, 1919-1939
Alison Carrol /
- Beyond politics: national indifference as everyday ethnicity
Gábor Egry /
- National indifference, statistics, and the constructivist paradigm: the case of the "Tutejsi" (‘the people from here’) in interwar Polish censuses
Morgane Labbé /
- Instrumental nationalism in Upper Silesia
Brendan Karch /
- ‘I have removed the boundaries of nations’: nation switching and the Roman Catholic Church during and after the Second World War
Jim Bjork /
- ‘Citizen of the Soviet Union – it sounds dignified’. Letter writing, nationalities policy, and identity in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union
Anna Whittington /
- Conclusion: national indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Jon Fox, Maarten Van Ginderachter and James M. Brophy
As with all ground-breaking research, the literature on national indifference has not only revolutionized how we understand nationalism, over time, it has also revealed a new set of challenges. This volume brings together experienced scholars with the next generation, in a collaborative effort to push the geographic, historical, and conceptual boundaries of national indifference 2.0.
The first critical intervention of this volume is geographical, by extending the analysis beyond the original setting of national indifference in East Central Europe. This collection incorporates a much wider array of cases from Belgium and France in the west, to the former Habsburg territories in Central and Southern Europe, and finally to Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union in the east. Second, the volume re-periodizes national indifference. It was not only a nineteenth-century phenomenon, reducible to a short-lived developmental stage of nationalism. Rather, it survived well into the twentieth century, even into the post–Second World War age of nationalism. The third intervention is conceptual. We expand and disaggregate the national indifference paradigm to develop a more flexible and variegated approach that can better account for regional and historical variation.
This collection contains the following chapters:
- Introduction. National indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Maarten Van Ginderachter and Jon Fox /
- Too much on their mind. Impediments and limitations of the national cultural project in nineteenth-century Belgium
Tom Verschaffel /
- From national indifference to national commitment and back: the case of the Trentine POWS in Russia during the First World War
Simone A. Bellezza /
- Lost in transition? The Habsburg legacy, state- and nation-building, and the new fascist order in the Upper Adriatic
Marco Bresciani /
- National indifference and the transnational corporation: the paradigm of the Bat’a Company
Zachary Doleshal /
- Between nationalism and indifference: the gradual elimination of indifference in interwar Yugoslavia
Filip Erdeljac /
- Paths to Frenchness: national indifference and the return of Alsace to France, 1919-1939
Alison Carrol /
- Beyond politics: national indifference as everyday ethnicity
Gábor Egry /
- National indifference, statistics, and the constructivist paradigm: the case of the "Tutejsi" (‘the people from here’) in interwar Polish censuses
Morgane Labbé /
- Instrumental nationalism in Upper Silesia
Brendan Karch /
- ‘I have removed the boundaries of nations’: nation switching and the Roman Catholic Church during and after the Second World War
Jim Bjork /
- ‘Citizen of the Soviet Union – it sounds dignified’. Letter writing, nationalities policy, and identity in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union
Anna Whittington /
- Conclusion: national indifference and the history of nationalism in modern Europe
Jon Fox, Maarten Van Ginderachter and James M. Brophy