Jancis Long and Alex Bandy
Dress Rehearsal for a Revolution?
[...]

Setting

The typed invitation to Kerékgyártó’s defense stated that it would be held at 3 pm at the Eötvös Loránd University science of history lecture hall on Pesti Barnabás utca. The "opponents" (the official readers who could be counted on to ask a few critical questions and finally recommend that the work be accepted) were László Mátrai, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science, and József Szigeti, a philosophy teacher and holder of the same kandidátus advanced degree sought by Kerékgyártó. The dissertation could be viewed at the Library of the Academy or at the University. The hearing would be open and all were welcome.

Not stated on the invitation were the members of the committee who would ultimately accept or reject the candidacy. These were the literary historian László Bóka, philosophy students Ágnes Heller, later an internationally known philosopher and critic, and István Hermann, pedagogy teacher Ilona Horváth (Mrs Endre Székely), linguist Zsigmond Telegdi, and György Nádor, a former rabbi, in 1956 a teaching assistant to the philosopher Béla Fogarasi. The secretary was István Mészáros, later known in the West for his books on György Lukács and Marxism. The President of the committee was the ethnographer Gyula Ortutay. Heller, Hermann (who were at that time married to each other) and Mészáros were all students of Lukács, the world famous Marxist literary philosopher with a tortuous relationship to the Communist Party before and after 1956. Working with him gave them a dramatic apprenticeship in Lukács’ principal topics—history, ideology and realism.⁶ It is noteworthy that except for its president, no one on the committee was considered a "Party philosopher".⁷ This was a term informally in use at the time to distinguish those guaranteed to make all decisions in terms of Party policy, from those who might, within limits, question or ignore it. It could be used for academics who were not strictly philosophers.

The "opponents", however, László Mátrai and József Szigeti, and the committee president Gyula Ortutay were consummate "Party philosophers". The elegant Mátrai, known for his pursuit of "good food, good wine and good women"⁸ had been a promising philosopher and scholar of aesthetics. He had accepted the post of Director of the University Library, he said, because what-ever happened in politics, "a library would look much the same."⁹ He is remembered for his willingness to follow every twist of party doctrine in order to keep the job and the fine apartment that went with it.

Szigeti, a philosophy professor, was known for his early studies of Diderot and Kierkegaard, and intelligent Marxist-Leninist teaching in the late Forties. He had been one of Lukács’ first advanced students after the war when the latter returned to Hungary from many years exile in Moscow. When the Party turned against Lukács in 1949, Szigeti was subjected to threatening questioning about which Lukács had protested to József Révai, the Communist’s chief ideologist, later Minister of Culture. However, Szigeti soon added his voice to Party criticisms of Lukács and broke off relations. In the summer of 1956, apparently sensing the changing times, Szigeti publicly aproached Lukács with a statement of renewed admiration.¹⁰ This would have exacerbated, not muted, the hostility of the Lukács students on the committee. It is but one example of the many potential lines of discord and complicated history that underlay the panel who would consider Kerékgyártó’s application on September 10.

Ortutay had been well known from the Thirties as a major ethnographer of rural culture of southern Hungary, and as a politician. He had been President of the Hungarian Radio, Minister of Education, Director of the Board of Ancient Monuments, and Minister of Culture and Education. He had played a leading role in the post war years when the Communists were still competing for power. In addition to intellectual contributions from his ethno-historical expertise, he worked politically by joining the Smallholders Party, the Communists’ largest political rival. However, he was a "crypto Communist", working to subvert the Smallholders from within. Former colleagues might have understood his working strategically for his beliefs, but few forgave him his adamant refusal to help personally many whose trouble with the Communists was a direct result of information they had unwittingly trusted to him. Everyone associated with the Kerékgyártó defense could name friends who had been denounced to Party authorities by Mátrai, Szigeti, or Ortutay, with outcomes ranging from mild to severe harassment, job loss, torture and jail. Some of the denounced were present.

Doctoral dissertation defenses the world over are often pro forma affairs. Passing the tests formal and informal and preparing the written material that allow the candidate to arrive at a dissertation defense are the true gates to academy. A few dissertations are rejected at this stage, usually because of a conflict between professors, or a student’s refusal to accept faculty advice to postpone the defense. The majority are either passed, or the candidate is asked to rewrite or add some material. This does not necessarily mean that all candidates have done good work, merely that their colleagues are willing to admit them to their ranks.

Certainly Kerékgyártó had every reason to expect a pro forma acceptance of his ideological critique of Karácsony. He was a Communist Party insider. His credentials in Marxism-Leninism at the Ministry and at Eötvös University were made still more important by the recent closing of the separate Marxist-Leninist Institute. Karácsony was a safe target from the Party point of view. From the late forties, when the Hungarian Communists were establishing their control, they had identified as dangerous Karácsony’s open empathic style of teaching, his theories of pedagogy, emphasis on peasant education, and his large following from three decades of work with young people. In 1949, aged 58, he had been forced to resign his many teaching functions and youth leadership positions, and was subjected to various indignities. His death in 1952 was said by many to be the result of this treatment, particularly the loss of his teaching positions. Kerékgyártó’s criticisms of Karácsony had already been published and were thought to be safely within the Party line and language. A further reason for confidence in his success was that Ortutay, Mátrai and Szigeti would be fully aware that he was supposed to be awarded his Ph.D, and, for various reasons would be glad to see Karácsony’s name and followers discredited.

What Kerékgyártó and his colleagues had not counted on, however, was the climate in Budapest in the summer of 1956, and the deep reserves of affection and respect for Karácsony nourished by hundreds of the silenced generation of the Stalinist years.
[...]

Karácsony

Even in 1956 Kerékgyártó might have had no trouble had his target been other than the late Sándor Karácsony. Karácsony was a complex figure in Hungarian intellectual life. Born in 1891, to a "cultured landowner" and the daughter of a minister, he had had a varied education in the universities of Budapest, Vienna, Geneva, and the army of the Habsburg empire. By the time he took up his first teaching position in Budapest in 1919 he had mastered Latin, Greek and six modern languages, and felt deeply influenced by the cultural linguistics of de Saussure. From then on his life was spent teaching pedagogy and philosophy, leading Bible study circles, writing more than 20 books, dozens of articles, editing a monthly youth magazine, and leading youth groups, including the Hungarian Boy Scouts, YMCA and the post war Hungarian Democratic Youth Organization. (MADISZ). He taught in a series of high schools, and lectured on language at the Calvinist College in Debrecen before being appoined to the chair of pedagogy at Debrecen University in 1942. His tireless energy in summer camps and youth events was the more remarkable considering his First World War wound that made walking difficult (he required two sticks to get about), and the weight he acquired in later life.

Karácsony’s central passion and genius was for education, the awakening of the young to independent thought and ethical concern. He rarely bothered to answer the criticisms of his contemporaries (which he understood as arising out of the changing politics of the day) but was meticulous in critical dialogue with his students. Philosopher of science László Vekerdi, attending his classes as a 19-year old, and expecting the haughty Germanic style of university teaching, was amazed to find open class discussion, no one point of view being demanded, and Karácsony entering class one day with an acknowledgement of a mistake he had made in the previous session.¹³

The public issues on which he wrote, spoke, and organized concerned better education and living standards for workers and peasants, and the strengthening of Hungarian awareness of the identity and deep philosophy that lay in its literature and language. Linking these themes, and often becoming subjects themselves, were Karácsony’s lifelong Calvinist¹⁴ beliefs and ethics, and his "philosophy (psychology) of the other man" in which seeing a situation from the perspective of the problems of the other was the key to good teaching, good thinking and ethical sensibility.¹⁵ His concern for Hungarian identity developed in the years following the First World War when Hungary had lost its world status with the fall of the Habsburgs, and, far more importantly, 60 per cent of its own territory and population to neighbouring countries in the post-war Trianon Treaty. The short-lived violent Communist regime of 1919, its violent overthrow by invading Romanians, and the eventual stabilization imposed by the right-wing regime of Regent Horthy, had further damaged Hungarian self respect. Karácsony (and many other intellectuals) feared for a permanent depression of the Hungarian spirit. Writing and teaching on Hungarian literature, language and pedagogy became his form of ministering, of therapy for a sick soul. Karácsony’s best known book was A magyar észjárás és közoktatásügyünk reformja (The Hungarian Mentality, and the Reform of Our Public Education) in which he related the language and psychology of Hungary’s different social strata to the forms and richness of their education.

However, unlike many who sought new Hungarian identity through Christianity and intellectual nationalism, Karácsony avoided the paths that led to anti-Semitism at home, and hatred directed abroad at the countries which had benefited from Hungary’s erstwhile land. His "other man" philosophy led him to illustrate the suffering of Hungarians by examples of earlier Romanian, Serb or Slovak suffering under Hungarian and Habsburg oppression. In religion, Vekerdi noted, "he was religious in a manner which was quite the opposite of the religion of the Church. When I told him of my atheism, he not only tolerated it but picked me out to join a little circle of people with whom he discussed the inner ethics of religion.¹⁶ Vekerdi’s brother, philologist and national librarian József Vekerdi, a believer, put it differently: "Karácsony was one of the great medieval Christian mystics, the only person I have ever seen living together with God in all his deeds."¹⁷ As anti-Semitism grew with the fascist tide of the Thirties and Forties, Karácsony made it a point to visit Jewish batallions, and later the army’s Jewish work brigades as they were sent off to the Second World War’s most dangerous tasks.¹⁸ A survivor of a labour batallions reports Karácsony shaking each man’s hand and asking forgiveness in the name of Hungary.¹⁹ After the 1944 German invasion of Hungary he would sometimes appear in class wearing the notorious yellow star required for Jews.²⁰ Later that year he heard the Gestapo were looking for him, and went into hiding.

Karácsony started the first Hungarian rural Boy Scouts organization, arranging for scholastically interesting programmes, such as archaelogy under the guidance of experts from the National Museum. He ran summer camps where peasant children were prepared for the examinations that privileged urban children would take at the same age. He used this experience to publicize the need for educational facilities in rural areas. After hearing Karácsony speak, the mayor of one rural region had two new schools built. Karácsony’s concern for the appalling inequalities of education and basic standards of life in Hungary led him to a left-wing sensibility. In the Thirties he had angered both the Church and the right-wing government by speaking sympathetically of Marxism. He said it addressed problems of inequality that "Christianity had failed to solve."²¹ He had made friends with László Rajk, Communist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, later Interior and Foreign Minister, later still victim of a show trial. Karácsony was also a friend of the left-wing peasant writer and politician Péter Veres.

Karácsony’s sympathy for Marx, for peasants, for free education, and his anti-fascist record made him a potential ally of the Communists as they faced their struggle for power in 1945. Indeed, they took note of him and sent one of their brightest, most devoted new members, Imre Lakatos, to attend his classes, and report on the use they might make of him, and difficulties he might pose.²² György Lukács once said "The party needs the youth, the youth are for Karácsony, therefore the party needs Karácsony." This did not necessarily signal Lukács’ endorsement of Karácsony’s thought, which many intellectuals found muddled. Lakatos and others had recommended Karácsony for membership in the Communist Party. He did not apply himself, but told Lakatos that if he were admitted he would want his Party card to show that he had been a member since 1919, when he participated in the brief Communist commune.²³ The Party did not give him a card, but he worked vigorously with them between 1945 and 1947 as head of the National Committee for Free Education. However, he was as noncomformist in his support for Communism as he was for Christianity or national spirit, and was noted as such by the Party intellectuals. He had written in his 1945 book A magyar demokrácia (Hungarian Democracy) that "every person should respect everyone else’s autonomy... there is no dictatorship in a democracy, but there is order." This was immediately attacked by the Marxist historian Erzsébet Andics in the newly revived Debrecen left wing daily paper, Néplap: "Democracy does not allow everyone to behave independently, like autonomous beings."²⁴

At meetings of the Free Education Committee, powerful Party members, such as Erzsébet Andics, had the opportunity to observe that Karácsony’s passion for education and the "other man" would not be suitable for the intellectual climate required by the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was a problem the Communist Party faced everywhere. What must be done with the charismatic and idealistic people they needed in the drive for power but who might continue to think for themselves, or attract a personal following in the next phase, when full dictatorship needed a subservient population? The "solutions" for disposing of their more independent supporters could be life threatening, or merely heart breaking. Karácsony had too strong a following, it was said, to arrest him, but he was forced to give up his teaching.²⁵ In 1950 Géza Losonczi wrote "the roots of the Sándor Karácsony sort of trend reach down into the soil of the counter-revolution." He attacked Karácsony’s "love for the Hungarian peasant and peasant farming" as "hostility to collectivized agriculture."²⁶ Witholding Karácsony’s pension, it was hoped, would cause an early death because of the quantity of food they imagined he needed to sustain his great weight. He did not starve, because his students organized regular collections for him, and brought him spiritual sustenance by gathering at his home. But he did die quite soon. A letter arrived the day of his death stating that his pension had been cut off altogether.

Karácsony had a large following of former students. The term karácsonyista had been in use since the Thirties signifying both the disciple-like devotion of his students and a certain disparaging irony from those outside the group. Members of the circle themselves disliked this and the alternative term "alexandrists". "We thought of ourselves as Christians, not cultists,"²⁷ said one recently, though many of the circle were not religious. The wife of one student stated her disquiet with the circle. "Everything was open to doubt and debate, except Karácsony himself!" Others suspected there was a homosexual flavour to the intensity of the group, even though many of the gatherings were at his home or in the presence of his family.²⁸ He had married the daughter of a Calvinist priest and was father to two daughters and a son.
[...]

Preparation

It is not clear when the Karácsony students decided to make trouble for Kerékgyártó’s doctoral defense. When his article had appeared in Társadalmi Szemle, the official theoretical journal of the Communist Party, a year and a half earlier, there was no question of any open opposition. But early in the summer of 1956 a young biologist, György Kontra, who was an active member of the last generation of Karácsony’s students, received from his friend György Tamás, who arranged formalities for advanced degrees at the Academy of Science, a copy of the Kerékgyártó thesis. It would seem that Tamás also was interested in an "unofficial" criticism. This may have been the reason for his appointing a committee who were not "party philosophers". Kontra noted: "This gave me all summer to work on it." He even received the official "opponent" speeches. He was determined not to echo Kerékgyártó’s ad hominem insults by attacking the author. He simply listed each quotation that could be shown to be inaccurate and the citation from Karácsony’s written work that proved this.³¹ Meanwhile word spread throughout the Karácsony net-work that the dissertation might be challenged.

Nor is it clear just when the challenge was taken up by Imre Lakatos. But his fiery political approach, in contrast to Kontra’s quiet scholarship, turned out to be a pivotal part of the proceedings. Lakatos, later a world famous philosopher of mathematics and science, had his own complicated Party history. In the early Forties, while a student at Debrecen University, he had run intense illegal seminars on Marx and Lenin. These continued even in 1944 when he went into hiding from the Nazis, along with his girlfriend and other Jewish companions.

Like Kerékgyártó, Lakatos had thrown himself into Communist Party work as soon as the war was over, recruiting new members, and doing what was asked as he finished his first degree at Debrecen university. As mentioned above, one of his earliest tasks (in early 1945) was acting as liaison between the Party and Karácsony whose classes he attended. Karácsony knew that he was representing the Party and was reporting back to them.³² Here an odd thing happened. In March 1945 Lakatos went through a conversion ceremony in which he "became" a Calvinist Christian, with Sándor Karácsony as his godfather. Since no one ever heard him waver from his Marxist atheism in those years, or deny his Jewishness (which was no longer a problem since the Nazi defeat) it seems like an odd act. His friends attribute it to the same "Hungarianizing" that had led him a (like many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust) immediately after the war to change his Germanic name. From Lipsitz he became Lakatos. He later joked that the conversion was a deal with the priest in exchange for a vote for the Communists in local elections. It is possible that respect for Karácsony may also have been involved. One of the frequent topics in Karácsony’s circle, which included "outstanding mathematicians such as László Kalmár… Péter Rózsa… Imre Lakatos," was the relationship between mathematical logic and linguistic logic.³³ Karácsony was included with Lakatos’ two other mentors, Árpád Szabó of Debrecen University and his secondary school literature teacher László Kardos, in a meeting he called to get advice from them on his future before he moved to Budapest in 1945. Karácsony was also a member of the dissertation committee for his 1947 "first doctorate".

Lakatos’s enthusiastic contributions toward dismantling the old educational system showed little influence from Karácsony’s approach to education. Working from the Ministry of Education (partly within Ortutay’s tenure as Minister) and on several formal and informal committees, he was active in firing independent (i.e. "non-progressive") teachers and substituting those who could be relied on to transmit the Party line. Much later in his life he became a passionate advocate of quality and freedom in education, but between 1945 and 1950 he was known for being a full Stalinist.³⁴

At virtually the same time as Karácsony was being sidelined for his independence, the fervently committed Lakatos also fell out of Party favor. He was expelled from the Party in April 1950³⁵ and in June was sent to Recsk, the notorious hard labour camp where Hungary for a few years emulated the horrors of Stalin’s Gulag.³⁶ After his release from Recsk in September 1953, Lakatos had played no overt political role. He worked in the Mathematical Institute of the Academy and spent as much time as he could on the study of mathematics, "making up for lost time", as he often said. However, by midsummer 1956 he had started work on a major speech for the September meeting of the Petoýfi circle on the topic of reforming education. According to people who talked with him immediately after jail, it was not primarily his experiences there that moved Lakatos in a reformist direction. More likely it was the influence of friends who had been gradually modifying their 1950’s hard line view while he was in the deep freeze of prison camp, and in particular those who were now leading "reformists", such as psychologist Ferenc Mérei, and reporter Miklós Gimes. The former was later imprisoned and the latter executed for their roles in the Hungarian Revolution. Lakatos also said later that the blacklisted books he was free to read in the Academy Library had made an impression on him, both in enabling him to criticize the regime, and concerning the bad effects of censorship.³⁷

To persuade others to attend the Kerékgyártó defense, Lakatos spread the word around town that the academic quality of the dissertation was so poor that the self-respect of the Academy, the Party and Hungarian intellectual life demanded it not be allowed to earn its writer a doctorate. He devised questions for certain people to ask of specific members of the dissertation committee. On September 9th Lakatos appeared in Kontra’s university office to discuss plans. He was also looking for a telephone. Kontra was not senior enough for an office phone, but Professor Imre Török, down the hall, head of the anatomy department, had one. Lakatos, explaining that he had known Török in Debrecen University, marched straight to his office, and took possession of the telephone. He called every member of Kerékgyártó‘s committee with his intense excited expostulations that the doctorate should be rejected. In these calls he made use of the status he had as an ex-political prisoner.³⁸ In that summer of 1956 the injustices of Hungary’s Stalinist period had given its survivors an aura of respect. Ágnes Heller felt he was asking for a special compact between him and her to preserve academic standards and redress the recent past.³⁹

As a veteran Stalinist, and ex-prisoner, however, Lakatos knew there was other ground to be covered. Another phone call was to Ervin Hollós, head of the youth association (DISZ), and a key liason between the Party leadership and the unruly Petoýfi Circle meetings. Hollós, like Lakatos in Debrecen, had also reported to the Party on Karácsony’s doings. Lakatos asked him point blank, "What does the Party have against Karácsony?" "Nothing," was the reply, "except that he was a friend of Rajk’s."⁴⁰

László Rajk had been arrested in 1949 while serving as Foreign Minister, subjected to torture and trickery and executed after a major show trial on false charges that included espionage and treason. He had been part of Karácsony’s circle in the late Thirties, and had remained friends. Public repentance for Rajk’s case and the three people executed with him, had been pushed on to the public agenda (largely by Rajk’s widow) in the post-Stalinist thaw, and plans were already underway for a massive ceremony of rehabilitation and reburial. Lakatos knew that if by 1956 this was Karácsony’s only sin in the eyes of the Party, and that about to become a virtue, opposing his attacker was probably not a very dangerous act. He continued to scheme. With his old friend and mentor Árpád Szabó, he planned strategy to sway public opinion at the doctoral defense.

Szabó, a respected scholar of Greek philology and mathematics, had since his early youth known Karácsony. From his own position as an exceptionally young faculty member at Debrecen University, he had recommended Karácsony for the pedagogy chair in the early 1940’s. He had worked with him on the National Committee for Free Education after the war. Though Szabó had some reservations about Karácsony’s scholarship, his admiration for his devotion to improved education and non-nationalist Hungarian spirit was profound. Like Karácsony, Szabó was drawn to the Communists as the best hope for the new beginning Hungary desperately needed after the war. At Lakatos’ urging, he joined the Party in 1945, but he was expelled after a few years. In the mid -Fifties, the Party invited him back but by then, he said later, he felt he had "woken up" to their dark side, and declined to return despite clear costs to his career.⁴¹

Lakatos and Szabó decided they would make full use of Szabó’s exceptional powers of oratory, and Lakatos’ stature as an ex-political prisoner. With the exception of a few good friends (some of whom he later turned out to be informing on) Lakatos was generally disliked and distrusted. In politically turbulent situations, however, his excited enthusiasm for his position, the cleverness and wit of his arguments and his taste for tactical agitation made him a dynamic figure. The Kerékgyártó debate marked his first public expression of a position that was not straight Party line.

One further dramatic tension in the background to the debate is worth noting. In 1947, after three years of stormy relationship, Lakatos had married his girlfriend Éva Révész. She had, with Lakatos’ teaching, become an equally fervent and ambitious Marxist. Together they had evaded the Nazis in 1944, and been seen as the advanced "Marxist couple" by the other young Communists in hiding in Oradea. But within a year of their marriage she had left Lakatos for the same József Szigeti who was the "opponent" for Kerékgyártó’s dissertation defense. Lakatos had been devastated by the desertion and was always agitated by both of them. Szigeti’s feelings against Lakatos were hardly less strong. He felt he had rescued Éva from a "monster" and rarely lost an opportunity for an insult. Further, Lakatos always harboured a suspicion that Szigeti had been involved in his jail sentence.⁴² Szigeti’s official role in Kerékgyártó’s degree hearing probably added fire to Lakatos’ crusade.
[...]

Ortutay indicated the floor was now open. Szabó made a move to stand, having worked out with Lakatos that he should be the third speaker. Kontra began to despair that his moment would pass, since clearly the crowd could erupt at any moment. But György Tamás nodded to him, Szabó sat back down, and Kontra took the floor. Despite the excited undercurrents, at this point the meeting still had the sense of a formal academic occasion, and Kontra continued this perfectly. Reading from a stack of small index cards, which he still has in his possession, he went through every instance in which Kerékgyártó’s dissertation had misrepresented Karácsony’s work, and gave the full Karácsony quotation that demonstrated this. True to his plan and beliefs, he made no attacks on Kerékgyártó himself, or conveyed any political agenda. For many this was the high point of the evening, a reminder, after dark times, of academic integrity, of Karácsony’s true humanistic Christian legacy, and, given the times and Kontra’s youth, an act of courage. It was also, for many, the moment which convinced them that their attendance was not merely an expression of loyalty to their late teacher, or for the excitement of the occasion, but to oppose something that demonstrated the level to which academic standards and the search for truth had sunk. There was huge applause as he sat down.

After one or two short statements, Árpád Szabó gained the floor. He set a very different tone, building a case against the author, his motivations, the work, and finally the system in which this could occur. "When a dwarf wishes to fight a giant," he began "what is his best strategy? He picks up a handful of mud and throws it in the giant’s face…" He went on to describe the giant, Karácsony, as "a great master of the Hungarian language." And noted many other of his contributions. As for the dwarf, Szabó went well beyond Kontra’s list of Kerékgyártó’s misrepresentations of Karácsony, and attacked him for poor scholarship. The audience was beginning to get worked up. Applause followed rhetorical flourishes. Szabó kept directing his speech to the Committee and his fellow academics but could be seen to be pulled toward responding to the audience. By the last part of the speech, when Kerékgyártó’s paper became an example of the harm done to science by the politicization of scholarship, Szabó clearly had the larger audience in mind. He ended by proclaiming that both scholarship and the system were losers in this kind of bad work and the atmosphere of propaganda and suppression that could give rise to it. "It is scholarship that should be guiding the Party, not the Party the scholars." He sat down to another outburst of applause. József Vekerdi called the speech "a splendid, quite Ciceronian, oration."

From then on most speakers addressed the audience more than the committee, and the audience was unashamedly partisan, applauding all anti Kerékgyártó sentiments, and greeting the increasingly rare statements of support with stony silence. Only the committee members, usually speaking from previously prepared notes, tried to address each other and the task at hand of evaluating a dissertation. Mostly they made comments based on their own particular areas of expertise. Telegdi, the linguist, commented on poor interpretations of Karácsony’s metaphors.

The evening was already fully political when Lakatos rose to speak. Though he had sought to influence the committee in advance with arguments of academic standards, his argument for the crowd was political. Though unlike Kontra in every other respect, like him he avoided a personal attack on Kerékgyártó, and, daringly, appeared to take on the national power structure. The dissertation in question was not only bad, it was irrelevant. Karácsony re-presented an earlier era and was no threat to the present. Lakatos rejected Kerékgyártó’s charge that Karácsony had distanced himself from the Communists after the war, saying "I myself acted as the contact person between him and Rákosi."⁴⁶

At this moment, with Lakatos in mid- speech, Szigeti abruptly boomed out, "We don’t want to hear anything from this man who is the denouncer of György Lukács." Lakatos raised his voice to continue his speech. Szigeti raised his. This man who uses Marxism as a dagger." There were snickers from the audience, many of whom knew Szigeti’s relationship to Lakatos. There were murmured explanations to others that this animosity was "because of the woman." Years later, Heller noted that the fight, and indeed the evening, was more deeply about the current struggle in Hungary between old line Stalinist habits of loyalty to the Party line and the attempts of the 1956 summer to criticize and reform Communism in action. Lakatos and Szigeti continued to try to outshout each other when suddenly Ortutay seemed to remember his role as chairman and ordered Szigeti to let the speaker continue. Lakatos finished with a daring flourish. "Tactically, the people we need to concentrate our attacks on are those in power. I leave it up to you to decide who they are!" The audience once more burst into applause. His wife noted later in her diary "Imre sounded like a soapbox orator. I hated it."

It was near midnight when Ortutay decided to bring this strange examination to a close. At this stage it was customary to ask the candidate and the opponents for final comments before the committee withdrew to make their decision. Mátrai had long ago left, pleading another engagement. Szigeti had to represent the opponents. He was clearly less enthusiastic than at the beginning. "This dissertation is disappointing both as scholarship and Marxism. Nothing prevented Kerékgyártó from writing a better dissertation." At that point Szigeti did not repeat, but did not rescind, his earlier recommendation for acceptance. Secretary of the Committee, István Mészáros, was getting impatient. "You give the impression that this dissertation meets the requirements. But the opposite is true. [It] is nothing but a tirade bloated by a mass of Party congress phrases… very sectarian, riddled with falsifications!" Ortutay turned to Szigeti, chiding him again for his earlier outburst against Lakatos, and asked him to clarify his position on the dissertation. Szigeti started again with generalizations. Ortutay broke in, "So? Do you recommend acceptance with revisions? Or an entire rewriting?" Long pause. "Rewrite. I withdraw my recommendation for acceptance."
[...]

Notes

1. The "kandidátus" degree was a second post graduate doctoral degree introduced after 1945 in emulation of the Soviet degree of the same name. Kerékgyártó would have already earned the title of doctor of philosophy with the first doctoral degree granted by his university for successful defense of a thesis a few years after graduation. The kandidátus degree was granted by the Scientific Qualifications Board that operated out of the Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the relevant university department. It was roughly equivalent to the European "Privat Dozent” degree or today’s US or British Ph.D. Those whose career proceeded to the higher reaches of academia would attempt a Doctor of Science for a major piece of research or writing in mid-career or later. We thank Gábor Palló for this clarification.
2. Lajos Fehér, 1979, p. 562.
3. Árpád Szabó, interview February, 1999.
4. Lendvai, (1993).
5. Vargha Domokos, interview March 1999.
6. See Kadarkay 1991 and Heller 1998.[back]
7. Interview with György Kontra November 1998.[back]
8. Ágnes Heller interview, December 1998.[back]
9. Interview with György Litván, January 2000.[back]
10. Kadarkay, 1991 pp 412–3.[back]
11. See for example Litván, 1996.
12. See for example Pálóczi Horváth (1995) and Aczél and Méray, 1966.
13. Interview with László Vekerdi, November 1998.[back]
14. Calvinist Christianity is sometimes called "the Hungarian religion", although the majority of the country was Catholic[back]
15. For a summary of Karácsony’s career and major publications see Lendvai 1993. We were greatly helped toward an understanding of Karácsony’s ideas by interviews with György Kontra, Domokos and Maria Vargha, and László Vekerdi.[back]
16. Interview with László Vekerdi, November 1998. [back]
17. Jews were not allowed in the regular military services.[back]
18. Interview with László Vekerdi, November 1998. [back]
19. Interview with Domokos Vargha, January 1999.[back]
20. See Lendvai (1991).[back]
21. Letter from M. Khoor to A. Bandy, July 1999. Interview with József Újfalussy, February 1999.[back]
22. Interview with Gábor and Anna Vajda, January 2000.[back]
23. Karácsony Sándor (1945) pp 6-7. Andics’ comment was in Néplap, April 12, 1945.[back]
24. Interview with Domokos Vargha, January 1999.[back]
25. Géza Losonczi in Muývelt Nép, first issue, March 1950 [back]
26. Interview with György Kontra, December 1998.[back]
27. Interview with György Kontra, March 1999[back]
28. This section is taken from the 17 page thesis provided by Kerékgyártó for the hearing. This was provided by György Kontra. The full dissertation and the thesis have disappeared from the Academy and the Eötvös Loránd Department of Philosophy where copies should have been preserved.[back]
29. Populist and the Hungarian népies are not exact equivalents, but very close. Népies contains more connotation of the Hungarian close relationship to the land of the rural worker than the western European populist movement. They are equi-valent in being regarded by Communists as a dangerous attempt to suggest that elements of the working class (in this case the rural workers) might not have identical interests to the industrial proletariat. Interview with Gábor Palló, January 2000.
30. Interviews with György Kontra November 1998 and March 1999.
31. Communication from M. Khoor to A. Bandy, 1999.[back]
32. György Kontra (1995), p. 88.[back]
33. Lakatos also wrote his Cambridge University Ph.D., on the philosophy of mathematics, in the form of a Socratic dialogue similar to the open critical pathways of discovery in Karácsony’s classes. [back]
34. The reason given for his expulsion was the leading role he had played in demanding the suicide of a 19-year-old girl in 1944. Éva Izsák was a fellow Jew and Marxist also in hiding from the Nazis in Nagyvárad. Lakatos felt she was in danger of being discovered and giving away other members of the group. This dark story is told in detail in Congdon and Long.[back]
35. The story of Lakatos’ trajectory from the Ministry of Education to jail is quite complicated. It is another story that encapsulates many dimensions of Stalinist society. For an analysis of what is known and conjectured about this see: Congdon, 1997 and Long, 1998.[back]
36. As a colleague of Karl Popper in the UK, Lakatos claimed that his political philosophy started to change when he read Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies in the Academy’s collection of "forbidden" literature.[back]
37. Interviews with Árpád Szabó and György Kontra, March 1999.[back]
38. Interview with Ágnes Heller, December 1998.[back]
39. Information from Kontra who was present when Lakatos called Hollós.[back]
40. Interview with Árpád Szabó, April 1997, corroborated in interview with Tamás Lipták, May 1997.[back]
41. For Szigeti’s attitude, interview with József Szigeti 1999. For Lakatos’ suspicions, interviews with Joseph Agassi and Gillian Page, July 1995.[back]
42. Personal communication from Kerékgyártó to György Kontra reported in interview with Kontra, March 1999. The term "Central Leadership" was still in use in 1956. After 1957, "Central Committee." was the term used. In 1956, Andics was also head of the History Department at Eötvös Loránd University.[back]
43. Kontra’s written unpublished account of the hearing, read by him in an interview, March 1999. Most of our references to what was said at the hearing come from this account.
44. Mátrai and Szigeti’s criticisms come from printed copies of their speeches made available by György Kontra. To our knowledge they are not filed anywhere publicly. See note above that all records of the hearing are missing from the Academy and the University.
45. Interview with György Kontra, March 1999.
46. Interview with Gábor and Anna Vajda, January 2000.[back]
47. Interview with György Kontra March 1999.
48. Decision of the Committee 10 September 1956, signed by István Mészáros
49. Szabad Nép 12.9.56, p.4.
50. Szász, 1971, p. 238.
51. Mátrai, 1982, p. 50.
52. Interview with András Nagy January 1999.
53. Interview with József Szigeti April 1999.
54. [Source for Mátrai’s Lakatos attack].
55. Mátrai, 1982.
56. Diary of Éva Pap , September 11 1956.
57. See, for example, György Litván in the 1999 documentary film "Man or Devil: who was Imre Lakatos?", directed by Anna Mérei.

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Jancis Long and Alex Bandy
Jancis Long
is a guest lecturer in psychology at the Behavioural Science Institute of the Semmelweiss University of Medicine, Budapest.
Alex Bandy
is a foreign correspondent based in Budapest. They have both researched various aspects of post-war Hungarian history, especially the Hungarian life of Imre Lakatos.