English
Magyar
Nóra Szekér
From the Moon to the Cold War
The Post-war Struggles and State Surveillance of Zoltán Bay, creator of the Moon radar, in Hungary
This article reconstructs the implementation of the Hungarian moon radar experiment led by Zoltán Bay, while analyzing how Hungary’s postwar state-security apparatus framed and constrained Bay and his scientific milieu. Drawing on internal designations and ÁVH dossiers, it traces the shift from wartime microwave research to the systematic post-1945 surveillance of laboratories, party cells, and factory committees. The tightening political climate, forced nationalizations, and statesecurity pressures curtailed further space research plans; by 1948 Bay had left Hungary, joining a broader wave of Cold War scientific emigration. The findingsdemonstrate that surveillance practices did not merely monitor Hungarian science, but actively reshaped research agendas, personnel mobility, and institutional futures.
Szandra Kiss
Friendly Assistance?
The role of the Soviets in the realization of Hungarian space flight
In the mid-1960s, negotiations began between the Soviet Union and several socialist countries, including Hungary, on the establishment of cooperation in space exploration. For the Soviet Union, the Interkosmos program was an opportunity to try to maintain or rather uphold the appearance of its leading role in space exploration. Therefore, it was important for them to know how each country communicated about the space program, what messages it conveyed, and how much work it put into the successful implementation of the joint space program.
In my study, in ad-dition to presenting the Interkosmos program, I would like to describe the role played by the Soviets in the realization of the first Hungarian space flight, the extent to which they supported Hungarian space activities, and the influence they had on the information published in the press about Hungarian space flight.
András Edl
The Space Program of the People’s Republic of China from its Beginnings to 1989
In 1956, influenced by the geopolitical events of the preceding years and largely due to the threat posed by nuclear weapons, China began developing its own missiles and, in connection with this, its own space program. Mao Zedong was determined to make China a nuclear power, while the space program served more as propaganda, intended to demonstrate the country’s strength and capabilities. Many of the programs that were launched were often cancelled or suffered serious delays due to domestic political struggles, such as the wave of violence during the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, China achieved significant results while striving to get the most out of its relations with the Soviet Union and then the United States. In the period leading up to 1989, particularly during the era marked by Deng Xiaoping, several reforms and programs were launched which, through consistent implementation, ultimately ensured not only the country’s current economic performance but also the world-class level of Chinese space activities. In this paper, we also examine some of the relevant intelligence sources and the deeper developments in the geopolitical sphere which had an impact on the Chinese space program.
Péter Nagy
The Interkosmos Program as a Propaganda Instrument
Vietnam, Cuba, and Afghanistan in Space
Beyond the military, scientific and political aspects, the battle for space had a symbolic meaning: who would be the main actor of the cosmic exodus of the human kind? For obvious reasons, the Soviets and the Americans created their own “national space myths”. With the end of the space race, the focus shifted in the subsequent period. Soviet space propaganda emphasized peaceful space exploration, in which socialist countries cooperated, with Interkosmos as the key organization.
In my study, I analyze the propaganda representation of the three manned missions of the Interkosmos in the 1980s – the Vietnamese, Cuban, and Afghan space flights – mapping the different narratives and ideological context of the missions. I examine how the selected astronauts embodied the national and socialist character of their countries, how national space myths were formed, and how these flights fit into the ideological struggles of the Cold.
Péter Poór
The Spectre of “Communist Repression”
A Reconstruction of a Book
In 2024, Hungary and Spain against communist repression. History and memory, a collection of studies by Spanish and Hungarian authors, was published with the support of the Universidad ceu San Pablo, the Committee of National Remembrance, and the Embassy of Hungary in Spain. Although this professional publication, produced with the collaboration of many historians, enriches the research of 20th century Hungarian and Spanish history with new data, useful additions and recognitions in certain areas, it contains numerous unacceptable errors, inaccuracies, and questionable statements. The aim of this review is to expose these errors and, if possible, correct them, while also pointing out the book’s problematic overtone with regard to the politics of memory.
Gábor Tabajdi
Spy Stories with a Difference?
A BOOKREVIEW ON
József Mezei: Kémelhárítás Magyarországon, 1975–1985.
[Counterintelligence in Hungary, 1975–1985].
ábtl-Kronosz, Budapest, 2024. 232 p.
József Mezei’s Counterintelligence in Hungary, 1975–1985 offers a data-rich analysis of the operations of the Ministry of Interior’s Department iii/ii. In contrast to thematically focused historical studies, this work provides a comprehensive overview of a decade of Hungarian counterintelligence activity, covering the period between the Helsinki Conference and Gorbachev’s perestroika.
Its conclusions – grounded in meticulous statistical analysis – and the accompanying chapters, which present a detailed account of the organizational structure, also serve to outline new directions for research. However, the synthesis of these data series (and additional statistical materials) with the existing knowledge of the history of the state security could yield a more precise and realistic picture of the everyday operations of counterintelligence under the Kádár regime.
Péter István Pap
The Other Hungary: A Textual Microcosm
A BOOKREVIEW ON
Gábor Danyi: Az írógép és az utazótáska.
Szamizdat irodalom Magyarországon 1956–1989.
[Gábor Danyi: The Typewriter and the Travel Bag.
Samizdat Literature in Hungary, 1956–1989]
Kronosz Kiadó, Pécs, 2023, p. 618
Published in 2023, Gábor Danyi’s book, Az írógép és az utazótáska (The Typewriter and the Travel Bag), covers the history of samizdat literature in Hungary, primarily from a perspective of literary and cultural history. The book is divided into five major chapters, the first of which deals with conceptual questions, the second with methodology, and the third with the direct prehistory of Hungarian samizdat. The longest, fourth chapter is a real encyclopedia of samizdat in the 1970s and 1980s (authors, production phases, bibliographic data, distribution, authorities’ repressions), while the fifth contains three case studies. Based on memoirs, literature, state security sources, and the samizdat publications themselves (which were not easy for the author to obtain and reference), the work takes an extremely complex approach to the illegal publication of texts in Hungary under the Soviet-type system. The author does not give a primarily descriptive account of the content of the publications, but rather examines aspects of the materiality of their production and the network of distribution, with particular attention to the agency of those who produced samizdat. The author’s main question is perhaps how horizontally organized civil communities – even a kind of microcosm – could be created through practices of sharing printed information that bypassed the official public sphere.