Új folyam XXI. 1-2. szám
Authors
Magyar Szemle (Hungarian Review), Vol. XX., Nos. 9–10., October 2011, Budapest.
Editor-in Chief: Gyula Kodolányi
Publisher: György Granasztói.
Published by Magyar Szemle Foundation.
Reality Remembers. Editor’s Note by Gyula Kodolányi on how the real facts and moving forces of the October 1956 Hungarian Revolution, mostly neglected during the recent twenty-one years of a free press in Hungary, persist in the present memorial issue of Magyar Szemle.
Gyula Kodolányi, writer, Editor-in-Chief of Magyar Szemle, Budapest. The Culture of Forgetting: The Arts of the Double. Dodging the real issues – such as the the true nature of the 1956 Revolution and the change of regime in Hungary – has bred schools of writing and art in the last twenty years where an eerie irrelevance and narcissism flourish.
Gáspár Gróh, literary historian and critic, Editor of Magyar Szemle, Budapest. Learning Bibó? Reflections on the Centenary of His Birth. An essay on the personality and ethics of the great political thinker István Bibó (1911–1979), his political positions in the key moments of post-War democracy and the 1956 Revolution, and his underground life.
Gábor Jobbágyi, historian, Budapest. Provocation? On the Outbreak of the 1956 Revolution. The author cites massive evidence from secret Soviet and American and British documents, as well as eyewitness testimonies to demonstrate how the Soviet secret services had prepared a scenario for a limited disturbance in 1956, to channel and choke the revolutionary energies of Hungary.
Mihály Hoppál, anthropologist, Director, Ethnology Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. The Memory of 1956 in Hungarian Folklore. Oral histories, unpublished as well as collected and published, have built up a body of national folklore about 1956, which embodies a knowledge precise and mythical at the same time.
Endre Tóth, historian, Hungarian National Museum, Budapest. Saint Stephen and the Coronation Insignia. Part II. A thorough comparative genesis of the High Medieval coronation rites of Western and Central Europe, among them Hungary, and a refutation of the irrational interpretations of the symbolism of the Holy Crown of Hungary.
Zoltán József Tóth. Legal scholar, Budapest. Historical Traditions and a Break With the Heritage of Illegitimacy, Part II. Joining the debates around the recent new Constitution of Hungary, the first as a sovereign country, author outlines what the modern Doctrine of the Holy Crown includes with regard to the Hungarian constitutional tradition, and what it does not.
Miklós Kun, historian, Budapest. Nero of the Caucasus. The author reconstructs the nature of the legendary paranoia of Stalin from published anecdotes and personal records, as well as from private memories of his own family and the families of other prominent and persecuted communists of the Stalin era.
György Haas, journalist and public writer, Budapest. Efforts of Hungarian Foreign Policy on Behalf of the Hungarians of Transylvania, 1945–1946. Ceded back to Hungary in 1940, Northern Transylvania became a special territory controlled by Soviet authorities in 1944. As Hungarian hopes of a just compromise on the re-drawing of ethnic borders faded in 1946, a virulent anti-Hungarian campaign in Transylvania by the Romanian communist government could be hardly offset by the diplomatic efforts of the Hungarian government in Budapest.
Géza M. Szebeni, historian, former diplomat, Budapest. On a Letter by Lajos Zilahy. A Note and comment on the integrity and fairness of Hungarian diplomats to their citizens in difficult moments after World War II.
Dr. Zoltán Nagy, neurologist, Budapest. The Thinking Brain – Thoughts About the Brain and Human Consciousness. Beginning with Thomas Aquinas and Teilhard de Chardin, and continuing with Szentágothai, Sir John Eccles and Margenau, the prominent brain researcher sums up his vision of the brain and consciousness, not excluding the cosmic dimension of human existence.
Kálmán Kecskeméti, painter, photographer, Budapest. The Responsibility of the Portrait Photographer. The present isssue of Magyar Szemle is illustrated with the photographs of Kálmán Kecskeméti, shot over the last four to five decades, of well-known Hungarian writers and artists. In a short essay he writes about his attitude to his subjects, and the technical apparatus and technology he has been using.
