ECER 2017, Copenhagen, 23 August 2017

1. The Hungarian
School
Reform-
Committee
Actors of the Educational Policy
(1958-1960)
Lajos Somogyvári PhD
University of Pannonia Teacher Training Centre
Veszprém, Hungary
somogyvari.lajos@mftk.uni-pannon.hu ECER 2017, Copenhagen
www.uni-pannon.hu

2. • Topic of the presentation:
history and historiography
• The corpus
• Methodology
• Main aspects of the analysis
• Conclusion and further
researches
• References
Overview
Picture 1. Youngsters’ Collective Farm in Polgár (Public Education, 14
October, 1959, front cover)

3. Polytechnic Education in the Socialist Pedagogy:
A Forgotten Story
• School reform inspired by Khrushchev in 1958
Picture 2.
Khruschev to workers in Smolensk,
24 August, 1958
Cited from the Pravda: Rudman, 1959
• Sources of the topic
• The main question: Who made the decisions in the state
socialist education?
• The Hungarian School Reform-Committee (1958-1960) –
formed the main principles, translated the ideology into practice

4. The corpus of the research
• Three lists about the Committee (Hungarian National Archive)
1) 2 December 1958 (Javaslat a Bizottság összetételére, 1958)
László Orbán, 40 members
2) 1959 (Javaslat a Bizottság összetételére, 1959)
38 members
3) 28 July, 1959 (Iskolai Reformbizottság tagjai, 1959)
38 members
19 members were constant
MSZMP KB TKO to MSZMP PB
Total: 64 members
Confidential process, excluding publicity
The Committee as a unified body

5. Methodology
• Paradigmatic turn in the social sciences: from the structures to the
individual (Geertz, 1980; Cowman, 2012; Martin, 2014; Goldman, 2016)
• Importance of the biography in state socialism
• Prosopography
- Investigation of the common background characteristics of a group
of actors in history through a collective study of their lives
(Stone, 1971)
- Multiple carreer analysis
- Elitist and mass school

6. Using prosopography
• Process of the prosopographical analysis (Keats-Rohan, 2007)
1) Creating a biographical lexicon/dictionary
- Defining target group
- Collecting data
2) Analysis
Prosopograhic studies
• Studies in ancient history (Verboven, Carlier & Dumoly, 2007)
• Analysis about the recrutation of the professional and
scientific elites, making databases
(Karády & Nagy, 2003, 2004; Karády, 2008; Karády & Nagy, 2012; Nagy 2013;
Kovács, 2014; Biró, 2015; Kovács, 2016)

7. Main aspects of the analysis
• Sources and limitations creating the biographical lexicon:
Pedagogical lexicons (Hild & Stisser, 2015), databases, archontologies,
biographies, memoirs, archive records etc.
Lack of informations, false informations, stressing different biographic
elements etc.
• Aspects of the multivariete analysis
1) raw data: membership, actual position, name, sex (64)
2) date of birth (54)
3) original qualification (51)
4) Party membership (with the date of the affiliation) (32)
• Two levels of the analysis
1) As a collective group
2) Biographic patterns and individual careers

8. Age and generations
Table 1. Memberships based upon age cohorses
Male dominance
Fluctuation
Generation experiences (Koselleck, 2006) – most of the carreers
began before 1945

9. Positions and groups
1) Government (Ministries) – 12 → 16
Cultural Ministry, Departments and Ministries related to the labour market
(agriculture, heavy, light and building-industry, trade etc.)
2) Academics – 10 → 6
MTA (Hungarian National Academy) and universities
3) Public education – 6 → 2
Directors of elementary, secondary and vocational schools
4) Executive branch at the local-regional level – 4 → 6
Leaders of counties, districts and educational departments
5) Party control – 3 → 2
MSZMP KB TKO
6) „Transmission belt”: trade unions and mass organisations – 3
All Trade Union, Teachers’Trade Union, Communist Youth League
(Labour market – 2 factory-directors)

10. An example of the multipositional elite
• Definition (Lengyel, 1993)
• Positions of Gyula Kállai:
- State Minister (1958-1959)
- Chair of the School Reform-Committee
(1958-1960)
- Cultural and Ideological Secretary at
the MSZMP KB (1957-1959)
- Head of the of the Patriotic People’s
Front National Committee (1958-1989)
- Editor of the Társadalmi Szemle
(Social Review, 1958-1961)
- Member of the MSZMP PB (1957-
1975)
Picture 3. Gyula Kállai. Source: https://www.neb.hu/asset/phpljVnOz.pdf

11. The original qualifications
Table 2. Chart about the members’ original qualifications
26 members from the total 64 had academic degree: candidates
and doctors - engineers, education sciences, free and liberal arts

12. Labour movement and the Party
• „The movement heritage” as individual legitimation
(Szalai, 1994, p. 66)
• Central element of the communist biography - date of entrance
(Morgan, 2012)
• Internationalism, Soviet Union and home communists
• Involving illegality, connections, common political
socialisation and experiences – trustworthiness, lojality (vs.
expertise at positions)
• Biographical thinking as political activity – screening
processes
• Changes of the regimes (1944-1945, 1948)
• The case of „cripto-communists”
• Waves of the entering

13. Party memberships I.
Name Date of entrance Party Changing to other Party
Gyula Hevesi 1916 MSZDP 1918 - KMP
Ottó Benedikt 1918 KMP
Sándor Szerényi 1921 KMP 1924 – FKP
Ödön Kisházi 1922 MSZDP 1948 – MDP
Márton Valkó 1930 FKP 1945 – MKP
István Simonovits 1932 KMP
Endre Bakonyi Sebestyén 1932 CSKP 1935 – MSZDP, KMP
László Földi 1935 KMP
Dezső Kiss 1936 MSZDP 1945 - MKP
László Orbán 1937 MSZDP 1938 - KMP
Pál Ilku 1937 CSKP 1945 – MKP
Ferenc Erdei 1939 NPP (1944 – MKP)
Valéria Benke 1941 KMP
Gyula Kállai 1941 KMP
György Gonda 1943 MSZDP
József Mekis 1944 MKP

14. Party memberships II.
Name Date of entrance Party Change to other Party
Lajos Cseterki 1944 MKP
Jenő Lugossy 1945 MSZDP (MKP) 1957 - MSZMP
Jánosné Bugár 1945 MKP
János Halász 1945 MKP
Ernő Péter 1945 MKP
József Szigeti 1945 MKP
Ferenc Várnai 1945 MKP
Győző Vidor 1945 MKP
Gyula Ortutay 1945 FKGP (MKP)
Rezső Trautmann 1945 MSZDP 1948 – MDP
Gyula Szekér 1945 NPP 1948 - MKP
József Fekete 1946 MKP
János Molnár 1947 MKP
Géza Szili 1947 MKP
Ferenc Orosz 1950 MDP
András Magyari 1952 MDP
Table 3. Party memberships

15. Continuities and discontinuities
• Hard vs. soft dictatorship
Continuity
• Joining to the Party before 1948
• Education and socialisation in the Horthy Era
Traditional institution of recruitment the elites – the Eötvös College
• Leadership with special expertise
e. g. administration of Ministry of Trading, Light Industry, Health (vs.
Ministry of Education)
Discontinuity
• Breakdowns in the careers: inprisonment in Stalinist
Soviet Union and Rákosi’s Hungary
e. g. Kállai and Kádár in the prison between 1951 and 1954 with the
same accusation

16. Conclusion and further researches
Conclusions
• Different sources, different emphasis
• Interest groups? Creating groups - homogenisation
• Different interests, changing positions, temporality
• Collective vs. individual level
• The Committee making-process has been still unknown – aspects of
the members’ selection
Further researching possibilities
- network-analysis
- argumentation, pros and contras
- role of the intellectuals in the Post-Stalin Era (Slapentokh, 2014)
- Connections between political power, interest groups, professions,
academics and experts (monopoly of power vs. shared and controlled
power)

17. References• Primary sources
Iskolai reformbizottság tagjai (1959) Javaslat a Politikai Bizottság elé oktatási rendszerünk felülvizsgálatára. MNL OL, 288
f. 33/1959/2. ő. e. MSZMP KB TKO, 1959. november 12. Melléklet, 1959. július 28.
Javaslat a Bizottság összetételére (1958). Jegyzőkönyv a Politikai Bizottság 1958. december 2-án tartott üléséről. MNL OL,
288 f. 5/106. ő. e. MSZMP PB, 1958. december 2. Melléklet
Javaslat a Bizottság összetételére (1959). Javaslat a Politikai Bizottság elé oktatási rendszerünk felülvizsgálatára. MNL OL,
288 f. 33/1959/2. ő. e. MSZMP KB TKO, 1959. november 12. Melléklet, dátum nélkül
• Secondary sources
Biró, Zs. H. (2015). Bölcsészdiploma és társadalom. Budapest: Gondolat.
Cowman, K. (2012). Collective Biography. In Gunn, S. & Faire, L. (Ed.), Research Methods for History (pp. 83-101).
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Geertz, C. (1980). Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought. The American Scholar, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 1980),
165-179.
Goldman, L. (2016). History and biography. Historical Research, Vol. 89, no. 245, 399-411.
Hild, A. & Stisser, A. (2015). A neveléstudományi lexikonok – a tudománytörténet kutatási anyagaként? In A. Németh, H. Zs.
Biró & I. Garai (Eds.), Neveléstudomány és tudományos elit a 20. század második felében (pp. 113-141). Budapest: Gondolat.
Karády, V. (2008). Educated Elites in Pre-Socialist Hungary – 1867-1948. Issues, Approaches, Sources and Some Preliminary
Results of an Overall Survey. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, Vol. 33, No. 2 (124), 154-173.
Karády, V. (2015): Egy szocialista értelmiségi „államnemesség”? Kandidátusok és akadémiai doktorok a hazai
társadalomtudományokban. In A. Németh, H. Zs. Biró & I. Garai (Eds.): Neveléstudomány és tudományos elit a 20. század
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Karády, V. & Nagy, P. T. (2003). Educational inequalities and denominations, 1910. Database for Transdanubia. Budapest:
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Karády, V. & Nagy, P. T. (2004). Educational inequalities and denominations, 1910. Database for Western-Slovakia and
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Karády, V. & Nagy, P. T. (2012). Educational inequalities and denominations, 1910. Database for Transylvania. Budapest:
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18. References
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