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Women in the Hungarian Populist Youth Movement: The Szeged Youth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Background
During the conservative period in Hungary between the two world wars, three unusual young women, Erzsébet Árvay, Judit Kárász, and Viola Tomori, joined a vanguard of youth who claimed to lead a new generation of Hungarians. As members of the Szeged Youth, they took up the cause of the peasantry of the Great Hungarian Plain, an isolated and neglected population presumed to bear “original Hungarian characteristics.” Until recently, the relationship between gender and nationalism in studies on Eastern Europe has been neglected. Current developments in post-communist societies have sharpened our realization that historical periods are experienced differently and have different implications when seen from the vantage point of women rather than men. Intriguing questions are raised concerning these women's participation in the Szeged Youth Movement and their active role with the peasantry. In a society often characterized as restrictive and limiting, what was the experience of the young woman activist? Was she accepted by her peers as their intellectual equal? How did she feel about her final place in national affairs? These questions are elusive and complex, yet the example of the Szeged Youth Movement in the 1920s and 1930s provides a compelling study of the intersection of gender and national identity in the Hungarian context.
During the interwar period in Hungary, the question of the fate of the Hungarian “nation”—which included the Hungarian population in the territories lost after World War I—took precedence over all others. This was true in respect to women's issues as well. The peace settlement was viewed as a national tragedy, reviving fears that the Hungarians or magyarsag would disappear, swallowed up by the surrounding Germanic and Slavic peoples. Virtually the whole population believed that the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, which had reduced the Hungarian state to two-thirds of its former size, leaving 33.5% of the ethnic Hungarian inhabitants outside the borders, had been unjust and should be revised. The government under Prime Minister István Bethlen struggled to restore economic stability and to regain acceptance by the Western powers, on whom revision of the treaty depended. Certain moderate reforms were introduced, including the extension of the franchise to women and the broadening of educational opportunities. Yet, social insurance reforms for the urban populations were not extended to the masses of peasantry and rural proletariat, which still constituted over half of the population. In fact, the need to maintain the support of the large landowners precluded any extensive land reform, and Hungary remained a country of large estates.
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References
Notes
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39. Lengyel interview with Tomori.Google Scholar
40. Lengyel interview with Tomori.Google Scholar
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45. The unpublished poem is among the papers of Erzsébet Árvay.Google Scholar
46. Author's interview with Viola Tomori, Debrecen, 30 May 1988.Google Scholar
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53. Manuscript for speech given to Széchenyi Association, Margit Buday collection.Google Scholar
54. Many of their publications were published by the Szeged Youth Artistic College itself, financed primarily by the sale of Buday's “Little Calendar.” Each year the calendar published a new set of previously unpublished folk songs, illustrated by Buday's unique woodcut technique which blended traditional peasant motives with modernist influences.Google Scholar
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