Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 423

Title

Miklós Szabó Monday Free University Lectures

Date(s)

1918 - 1983

Description Level

Fonds

Extent and medium (processed)

25 Digital container, 0.03 linear meters

Context

Name of creator(s)

Szabó, Miklós

Archival history

The collection contains digital copies of approximately 12 hours of audio recordings created by Attila Jankó. He transcribed and edited the recordings, and published them in a book. The recordings were digitized at OSA.

Content and Structure

Scope and Content (Abstract)

The collection contains digital copies of approximately 12 hours of audio recordings and transcripts of lectures delivered by the historian Miklós Szabó in Szeged in 1983. The lectures were delivered and taped in the apartment of and by the mathematician Attila Jankó.

For several years at the end of 1970s and early 1980s, the historian Miklós Szabó gave unofficial history lectures in private homes and hidden seminar rooms primarily in Budapest. Organized within the frame of the Monday Free University, a famous clandestine seminar series on various topics in history, philosophy, literature and political economy, his lectures attracted large audiences especially from the democratic opposition movement. Because of the relatively open nature of the lectures, agents of the state secret police infiltrated the audience quite early on, and informed the authorities about the proceedings. In the mid-1980s, the political content of the seminars became more prominent, and the audience began to use these occasions to manifest against the Communist regime in Hungary. Following a decision by the Politburo of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party on the ‘internal opposition’, lecturers and members of the public were persecuted, while the authorities attempted to dissolve the seminars.

Topically, the lectures cover the history of the Hungarian Communist Party from 1917 to the early 1980s. The recordings are invaluable in documenting both the recent history of Hungary and the period of proliferating political counter-culture of the Kádár régime.

Some of the typewritten outlines to his Budapest lectures are kept in a separate collection at OSA.

Accruals

Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Conditions governing access

Open for research.

Conditions governing reproduction

OSA policies apply.

Languages

Hungarian

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

MP3 audio files and .doc files

Allied Materials

Publication note

Szabó Miklós: A jó kommunista szilárdan együtt ingadozik a párttal. Szerkesztette: Jankó Attila. Szeged: JATE Press, 2013.

Description Control

Archivist's note

Processed by Csaba Szilagyi, January-February, 2014.