The document summarizes research on representations of youth in socialist Hungary during the 1960s. It analyzes how state media and journals constructed categories like "hooligans," "gangs," and "hippies" to portray and interpret nonconforming youth behavior. Through analyzing party records, articles, photos and drawings from the era, the research found these categories were used both to depict real criminal acts but also fashion trends or political stances in a moral panic. Interpretations often focused on influences like the West or avoiding work. Debates showed ambivalence over how to view emerging youth cultures and a desire to promote socialist ideals of collective work.

1. Discrepancies
between Ideal
and Real Youth
in Socialist
Hungary
Images of Hooligans, Gangs,
and Parties
Lajos Somogyvári PhD
University of Pannonia Institution of Social Sciences
Veszprém, Hungary
somogyvari.lajos@mftk.uni-pannon.hu
www.uni-pannon.hu ISCHE 2018, Berlin
PREFORMED PANEL: THE “NEW MAN”: A SOCIO-BIOLOGICAL PROJECT OF COMMUNIST

2. Overview
• Questions and hypotheses
• The corpus
• Theoretical background
• Main findings: images and
interpretations
• Conclusion and further
researches
• References
Picture 1. Member of a gang. Source: Mihály Pető: Mintha bilincsbe
nyújtaná (As his hands were in handcuffs). Gyermekünk (Our Child),
1970/8, 27.

3. Questions and problems
• Crossing the boundaries: (re)presenting non-conform
symptoms of the youth
• Opposition of the New Man?
• Ongoing traditions: Back to the roots (Lenin, Krupskaia etc.)
& hooliganism and the anthropological-biological language
Picture 2. Over the Youth Park. Budapest, 1969. (Dávid Sándor, Fortepan 6604)
Picture 3. Bem Quay 4. The band Mini, Budapest, 1970. (Dávid Sándor, Fortepan 06635)

4. Hypotheses
• Three main categories to represent:
- Hooligans
- Gangs
- Hippies
• Every element might have got political
dimension – actors and contexts (the power to
interpret)
• Categories had got different aspects and foci –
changing nature
Picture 4. Discussion: Should we
belong to the hippies or gammlers?
(Source: Ludas Matyi/Matyi the
Goose-boy, 1968)

5. Goals and the corpus
• How these categories were constructed, created, communicated and
formed by several discourses?
• Verbal and visual sources – various genres
I. Party decrees and records
II. Journals (control and transmit ideology) – essays, reports, travelogues,
jokes, interviews, reviews, conferences etc.
A, Népszabadság – the central daily journal
B, Pajtás, Magyar Ifjúság – journals for the youth
C, Család és Iskola, Gyermekünk – pedagogical journals
D, Ludas Matyi – satirical magazine
III. Photographs, caricatures, cartoons, other drawings (Coupe, 1969;
McQuiston, 1993) – humour, irony
• Methodology and topics – iconography (Depaepe & Henkens, 2000;
Paedagogica Historica special issue, 2017, no. 6.), and excluded
individuals & groups (Tenorth, 2001)

6. Limitations
• Time
The long period of 1960’s: 1957-1970
• Nature of the sources
Representations, outside image (adult viewpoint)
Lack of self-perception (except: Horváth, 2009)
Language of the ideology (Kotkin, 1997 – categories →
classification and social regulation)
Adapted to the description – „to act like a hooligan”
• Differentiation and division
Dual character of the categories
e. g. real hooligans vs. fake hooligans (inside, essential existence
vs. outside, imitation, fashion)
• Waves and dominant narratives (problems of the younger
generations)

7. Theoretical background
• Moral panic (Cohen, 2011; Hunt, 1997; Janssen, 2010)
- role of the media
- deviancy and stereotypes
- dangerous to the social order
• Construction of social identities (Fitzpatrick, 2000; Hellbeck, 2009)
- Us and Them (Koselleck, 1985)
- everyday civilization – mutual effects
- social status – determining the personality
• Ideal childhood, youth culture and the reality (Kelly & Shepherd,
1998; Kelly, 2007)
- consciousness
- orientation
- work and collectivist idea
Controversies and contraries: faces of the problematic youth

8. The „Fascist Hooligan”
Convention, topos from the 1930s
Counter-revolution (1956):
An imaginery enemy
Fight against the socialism
with weapons
(see internationally: 1961, 1969)
The official definition:
- originated in the former system: bourgeoisie, aristocracy before 1945
- immorality, avoiding work
- criminal activities and scandals
Könyvégetés Budapesten 1956-ban – részlet egy propagandamontázsból
(Burning books in Budapest – element of a propaganda montage.) ÁBTL
A-2112_026_001

9. Everyday Rebellion? Youngsters in the 60’s
Demeter Balla – Károly Chochol: Hosszú haj
(Long Hair). Család és Iskola (Family and
School), 1968/10. 3.
Margit Wagner: Ezek most azt hiszik, hogy ők a
nagyok! (They think, they’re trendy!)
Gyermekünk, 1970/8, Albert Kresz: Mi ez?
(What is this?) Család és Iskola, 1968/5, 14.
Gyermekünk (Our Child), 1969/6. 5.

10. Interpreting the New Tendencies of the Youth Culture
• „causeless scandals, rage and
fireworks during the beat-
concerts”
• volume and rhythms of the
pocket radio, the „narcotizing
effect” of the music
• „acoustic LSD”
• acceleration, alienation and the
city-life
• In spite of all these: „I love the
beat music, because it clearly
express about the turmoil of
our age”
Albert Kresz: Miért félsz a csendtől? (Why are you afraid
of silence?) Család és iskola, 1968/8. cover.
Péter Popper: Miért félsz a csendtől? (Why are you
afraid of silence?) Család és iskola, 1968/8, 28-29.

11. Gang from a Different Perspective
• State Security Service-action
• Moscow Square-Gang (Kalef)
• Accusations: nationalism, antisemitism,
anti-Soviet tendencies, counter-
revolutionary ideas, adoration toward
Hitler and the Western culture
• Goals: provocations and joint actions,
incorporating spies, elimination of the
gang
Secret photos about the members of the
gang (1964) – Tabajdi, 2013: 78-79.

12. An Ordinary Gang
• Combining 27 trials (reports from
the Népszabadság) – juvenile
delinquency
• Characteristics of a typical gang:
- Masculine nature – women were
mostly objectives of the sexual
abuse
- Western influence: see the
nicknames (e.g. Hands up-Gang)
- Crimes (robbery, theft etc.) and
vandalism
- Low intellectual ability and family
background (origins as determining
factor) – importance of the class
- Emigration
- Avoiding work, lifestyle-deviancy
(dangerous)
Variable Proportions
Male 82%
Female 18%
Under 18 70%
Between 18-24 30%
Theft/robbery 52%
Vandalism 7%
Assaults 4%
Sexual abuse 5%
Organized operation 64%
Contemporary research about the trials,
related to the gangs (National
Criminalistics Institute) –
Népszabadság, 31 July 1968, 8.

13. Debates about Youth – Hippies in the late 1960’s
• Evolution of the problem: 1967 → 1969
• 1968 in Hungary (Murai & Tóth, 2018)
• Special type of articles: letters from the readers, experts, politicians and
youngsters
• „I am a hippi, made in Hungary. (…) The real hippi is progressive,
supporting freedom and hate the war (…) I do not want go school or
have a job, only hanging out with the guys…” (Veronika, Gy. Magyar
Ifjúság, 1969)
• Some titles: Együttes munkával, kölcsönös megértéssel (With
Collective Work and Mutual Understanding), Csak a bizalom
légkörében (Only in the Athmosphere of Trust), A mindennapi munka
tekintélyéért (To the Prestige of Everyday Work)
• „We are fed up with hooligans, hippies and teenager-mothers! There
are enough normal and modest youngsters – rather write articles about
them!”
(Magyar Ifjúság, 1970/5, 5-6.)
András Mészáros: Visszafelé (Backwards?) Ludas
Matyi (Matyi, the Goose-boy), 1968.

14. Conclusions and Further Research
• Ambivalent attitudes and
approaches – every informal
group could be dangerous
• Patchwork identities? Puzzle?
• Functions and roles of the youth
in the post-war Era
• Fashion and consumption and
socialist culture (Bren &
Neuberger, 2012): new research
direction – new patterns.
Convergence? (Apor, 2013)
• 1970’s – emerging importance of
the youngsters
• Comparative context
• Mass media
Házibuli (Party at Home) Gyermekünk, 1970/1. 18-19.

15. References
Apor, Péter (2013): Autentikus közösség és autonóm személyiség [Authentic Community and
Autonom Individuality]. Aetas, Vol. 28, No. 4. 22-39.
Bren, Paulina & Neuburger, Mary (2012, ed.): Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold
War Eastern Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.
Cohen, Stanley (2011): Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers.
Abingdon-New York.
Coupe, W. A. (1969): Observations on a Theory of Political Caricature. Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 11/1, 79-95.
Depaepe, Marc & Henkens, Bregt (2000): The History of Education and the Challenge of the
Visual. Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 36. No. 1. 10-17.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila (2000, ed.): Stalinism: New Directions. Routledge, London – New York.
Hellbeck, Jochen (2009): Revolution on my Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge – London.
Horváth, Sándor (2009): Kádár gyermekei - ifjúsági lázadás a hatvanas években [Children of
Kádár: youth revolt in the 1960s]. Nyitott Könyvműhely, Budapest.
Hunt, Arnold (1997):’Moral Panic’ and Moral Language in the Media. The British Journal of
Sociology, vol. 48. No. 4. 629-648.
Janssen. Wiebke (2010): Halbstarke in der DDR. Verfolgung und Kriminalisierung einer
Jugendkultur. Berlin.
Jegyzőkönyv a Politikai Bizottság 1960. május 24-én tartott üléséről [Record of the Political
Committee 24 May 1960]. MNL OL 288. f. 5/184. ő. e.

16. References
Kelly, Catriona & Shepherd, David (1998, ed.): Russian Cultural Studes: An introduction.
Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York.
Kelly, Catriona (2007): Children's World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890-1991. Yale University
Press, New Haven – London.
Koselleck, Reinhart (1985): Futures past: on the semantics of historical time. MIT Press,
Cambridge – London.
Kotkin, Stephen K. (1997): Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization. University of
California Press, Berkeley – Los Angeles – Oxford.
McQuiston, Liz (1993): Graphic agitation: social and political graphics since the sixties.
Phaidon, London.
Murai, András & Tóth, Eszter Zsófia (2018): 1968 Magyarországon [1968 in Hungary].
Scoalr, Budapest.
Paedagogica Historica, Special Issue: Images and Films as Objects to Think With: A
Reappraisal of Visual Studies in Histories of Education, Vol. 53, Issue 6. (2017).
Tabajdi Gábor (2013): A III/III krónikája [Chronicle of III/III]. Jaffa Kiadó, Budapest.
Tenorth, H.-E. (2001): „A New Cultural History of Education”. A Developmental Perspective
on History of Education Research. In.: Popkewitz T. – Franklin B. M. – Pereyra M. A. (ed.):
Cultural History and Education: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Schooling. Routledge,
London – New York, 67-83.

17. Appendix
• The presentation is supported by the ÚNKP-17-4 New
National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human
Capacities.
• About the sources:
- 14 Party regulations and decrees
- 639 articles
- 55 photographs
- 59 graphics
https://www.slideshare.net/TABILAJOS/hooligans-gangs-and-
hippies