The forced assimilation Gypsy policy in Socialist Hungary (original) (raw)
Related papers
Execution of Forced "Gypsy" Assimilation Policy in Hungary during the Socialist era
Treatises and Documents, Journal of Ethnic Studies, 2022
Following World War II, Hungary fell under the influence and surveillance of the Soviet Union. This resulted in the Hungarian Workers' Party assuming complete control over the nation. After the defeat of the 1956 Revolution, the ruling party reformed as the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, and after a few years of preparatory work, it composed its Roma policy of forced assimilation. This study presents the Roma policy of the single party state as carried out in the county of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén. This county had the largest Roma population and was simultaneously designated for major socialist industrialisation and social engineering. Following the transition to democracy in 1989/90, numerous sociological and anthropological studies were conducted in the region, and this location remains highly emphasised in Hungarian social sciences. In presenting the nationwide Roma policy, I have used my source publication, while in examining policy execution in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, I have relied on the county archives.
Nationalities Papers, 2017
Although the repression and elimination of Roma from Hungarian society in the 1940s did not reach the same extent as in the German and Austrian part of the Third Reich, their characterization as lazy and work-shy, used to justify their persecution, was similar. This paper establishes the presence of racial hygienic discourse related to Roma during the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s in Hungary, and traces its survival and influence on regional policy-making in the postwar period. It furthermore explores the transformation and adaptation of racism and eugenics to the socialist ideology of equality based on citizens' participation in productive work in the early state socialist period, including the first Party declaration on the situation of Roma in Hungary in 1961. Specific attention is paid to the role of medical experts who discussed the “radical solution of the Gypsy-question” in the early 1940s and the immediate years following World War II. Reflecting on wider tr...
Influences, Pressures Pro and Con, and Opportunities. Studies on Political Interactions in and Involving Hungary in the Twentieth Century, 2014
Offi ce, felt that using the name of a prime minister would call too much attention to it on the part of Romania's intelligence and counter-intelligence services. Th is they would have preferred to avoid, since the Hostel/College, which in part did operate as a place where students lived, but did not really off er accommodations to foreigners in general, only to ethnic Hungarians coming from Romania.
From the vanguard to the margins: workers in Hungary, 1939 to present
2014
This volume is dedicated to the work of the late British historian, Dr Mark Pittaway (1971-2010), a prominent scholar of post-war and contemporary Central and Eastern Europe in general and Hungary in particular. Breaking with orthodox readings on Eastern bloc regimes, which remain wedded to the 'totalitarianism' paradigm of the Cold War era, the essays in this volume shed light on the contradictory historical and social trajectory of 'real socialism' in the region. Mainstream historiography has presented Stalinist parties as 'omnipotent', effectively stripping workers and society in general of its 'relative autonomy'. Building on an impressive amount of archive material, Pittaway convincingly shows how dynamics of class, gender, skill level, and rural versus urban location, shaped politics in the period. The volume also offers novel insights on historical and sociological roots of fascism in Hungary and the politics of legitimacy in the Austro-Hungarian borderlands.
The Development of Roma Politics in Hungary 1989-95
Doctoral Thesis, University of Portsmouth, 1998
Since at least the middle of the eighteenth century, government policy in Hungary aimed at the assimilation of the country's Roma into the majority population. In the late communist period policy switched towards supporting Roma identity and led to the creation in the mid-1980s of the first organisations aimed explicitly at promoting the interests of the Roma in local and national decision making fora. The fall of communism radically altered the environment and methods of Roma politics. The first five years of postcommunism saw the passage of a comprehensive charter of minority rights which included the creation of a novel system of minority self-governments. The thesis places the adoption of minority rights as the basis of policy towards the Roma population within the historical context of State-Roma relations in Hungary. It also examines the role rights played in conditioning the development of Roma politics by encouraging its expansion but also in restricting its agenda and in creating the framework within which it operated. Despite the close relationship between minority rights and Roma politics, the thesis argues that it contains a fundamental contradiction because minority rights were constructed as means of reducing demands upon the state to resolve the disadvantages faced by the vast majority of the Roma population, whilst Roma politics requires such inequalities to be addressed.