Underground Streams. Exploration

The 1956 Institute that works within the organizational framework of National Széchényi Library has assigned four main research areas for itself in 2011. One of them, Life-history reconstructions – conservative and right-wing careers and remembering strategies, was built mostly on the life interviews and working methods of the 1956 Institute Oral History Archive. The four essays of this volume present the first approach of that research. Life-history memories of the Christian middle class by Zsuzsanna Kőrösi and the analysis of Miklós Mester’s autobiography by Katalin Somlay are based upon the material of the life interviews kept in the Archive. András Lénárt’s work is a project of interviews with the students of a high school in Buda especially made for the present research. Réka Sárközy analyses a monumental documentary film made in the 1980s about World War II. These all are memory constructions recorded in different times, and imprints of the thoughts of people who either in the present or the past defined themselves as conservatives or perhaps right wing.

“As accustomed, we do not seek to draw an overall picture, the scale of our research being quite the opposite”, explains editor János Rainer M. in his preface. “At the same time we intend the same as two years ago: to offer questions and answers regarding the recent past that lead to worthy dialogues or contribute to them. We think that the crisis of the Hungarian democracy and the intellectual life within it is connected to our historical heritage. In this situation, there are quite a few who urge political, societal or even military programs. In our opinion research is at least as necessary as these if we want to explore and interpret the road that has brought us here. We have to understand the course of the underground streams, their getting to the surface, and their power to destroy the dam.”