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Copyright by Karl William Brown 2007 The Dissertation Committee for Karl William Brown certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: REGULATING BODIES: EVERYDAY CRIME AND POPULAR RESISTANCE IN COMMUNIST HUNGARY, 1948-1956 Committee: ____________________________________ Mary Neuburger ____________________________________ Joan Neuberger ____________________________________ Charters Wynn ____________________________________ David Crew ____________________________________ John D. Downing REGULATING BODIES: EVERYDAY CRIME AND POPULAR RESISTANCE IN COMMUNIST HUNGARY, 1948-1956 by Karl William Brown, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2007 For Dr. William M. Brown, Jr. (1935-2003) I personally had no knowledge of actual open resistance. The resistance I knew was a passive sort of resistance, and this was carried out by most people to perfection. The Party was completely powerless in this field. —a Hungarian refugee interviewed in 1957 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It would be a crime not to acknowledge the many people and institutions that have made this dissertation possible. In Hungary, my research was funded by a Fulbright grant administered by the Institute of International Education and the Hungarian-American Fulbright Commission. Special thanks go to the Commission’s avuncular director, Huba Brückner. At Central European University, I incurred debts to László Kontler, István Rév, and Pavol Salomon for their guidance and assistance. László Borhi, Sándor Horváth, Andrea Pető, and especially Mark Pittaway have been quite generous with their time, advice, and assistance. I am much obliged to the friendly and efficient archivists at the Hungarian National Archive, the Hungarian National Film Archive, the 1956 Institute, the Library of the Hungarian Parliament, the State Security Historical Archive, and especially Géza Gábor Simon at the Hungarian Jazz Education and Research Foundation, András Lugosi and Mária Fehérné Bozsics at the Budapest Municipal Archive, and Botond Barta and Robert Parnica at the Open Society Archives. Outside the archives, the Hungarian Fulbright Family drew together as a close group of scholars and families: thanks to Eric Browne, David Chapman, Terrence Curry, Matt Douglas, and especially Bill Eichmann for our diverse and thought-provoking discussions, and to the Canons, Grimms, Nilsens, and Pitkins for making our Fulbright excursions truly family affairs. Thanks also to Timi Berger, Ferenc Nemeth, and the Berger and Nemeth families for hosting me on my all- too-brief visits to Paks and Gyönk. Allison Farber, Jared Goodman, Zachary Levine, Heather McMahon, and Gyűri Polák round out the list of usual suspects in Budapest. Köszönöm mindenkinek! vi At the University of Texas at Austin, my largest debt is to Mary Neuburger, my advisor, mentor, and friend. Mary has consistently challenged, encouraged, and supported me since I began in the graduate program at UT, not least by patiently wading through numerous drafts of this text. I also owe much to Joan Neuberger, who has persistently urged me to both broaden and become more precise in my thinking about cinema, communism, crime, and resistance. Charters Wynn’s critiques were invariably on the mark, and he is the best proofreader I know. David Crew consistently urged me to bring in the broader European perspective, and John D. Downing introduced me to media studies. Peter Jelavich and Carolyn Eastman contributed significantly to my thinking on culture and gender. Curt Woolhiser and Andrea Nemeth kindly tolerated my initial efforts at learning Hungarian. I also owe much to a number of fellow graduate students at UT: Amber Abbas, Kenneth Aslakson, Eric Busch, Ernesto Capello, Ryan Carey, Zach Doleshal, Bill Epps, Matt Gildner, Aldo Guevara, Emily Hillhouse, Brooke Iglehart, Christelle Le Faucheur, Brandon Marsh, Bart Murphy, Margaret Peacock, Jeff Rutherford, and Jeff Sprague have all contributed to this text in one way or another. I am indebted to the UT History Department for an Alice Jane Drysdale Sheffield research grant, various other travel and research funds, and above all for providing a diverse, provocative, and challenging learning environment. My language training was funded by numerous grants from the UT Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Department. I also received a David Bruton, Jr. Fellowship from the UT Graduate School. A last round of professional and personal acknowledgements lie somewhere between Budapest and Austin. I received a Dissertation Writing Fellowship in Eastern European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies. The archivists at the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library and the Columbia University Rare Books and vii Manuscripts Library were unstintingly helpful. Other people who advised, encouraged or fed me along the way include Reed Arnos, Sonia and Steve Berry, Mike Bren, Trai Cartwright, Paul Cohen, Nels Dachel, Jean and Mark Diebolt, Talli Fankel, Jean and Bill Griswold, Mike Hittle, Eric Loy, the Levine family, the entire Muller clan, Brent Swift, Celia and Ron Walker, Jamison Warren, Rowland Wasgatt, Richard Yatzeck, and Andre Young. Thanks especially to Mom and Malcolm for their decades of help and support. Finally, I owe everything to my wife Brienne for putting up with years of long days, late hours, and erratic behavior. This simply would not have been possible without her. viii REGULATING BODIES: EVERYDAY CRIME AND POPULAR RESISTANCE IN COMMUNIST HUNGARY, 1948-1956 Publication No._____________ Karl William Brown, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2007 Supervisor: Mary Neuburger On coming to power in 1948, the communist regime sought to transform Hungary into “a country of iron and steel.” Industrialization and collectivization were made the order of the day; repressive police measures were necessary to force the project through. The effectiveness of this authoritarian regime has often been exaggerated by previous scholars. Drawing on archival documents, the “popular” press, and numerous contemporaneous interviews, I find instead that the communist administration was disorganized and ineffective, lending itself to manipulation by its subjects at all levels of the labor hierarchy from technocrats to factory workers to peasants. Its difficulties were further compounded by its clash with preexisting forms of social, economic, and cultural organization. In the countryside, peasants continued both traditional practices of resistance, such as wood theft, and cultural practices that were banned by the regime, ix such as pig-killing. Both of these forms of resistance persisted throughout the period; ironically, the products of these deviant practices were commodified as they found their way onto the black market. The party-state likewise proved unable to eradicate theft from work, black-marketeering, and ‘cosmopolitan’ forms of cultural consumption such as listening and dancing to American jazz. However, not all elements of society opposed the state at every turn; the limited successes the regime enjoyed were also due to these underlying forms of social organization. The patriarchal order that antedated communism carried through into the communist period, as is apparent in the regime’s prostitution policy. Patriarchy’s persistent influence was also a key factor in the nominal success of the regime’s pronatalist policy in the early 1950s. Similarly, the regime’s propaganda campaign against hooliganism resonated with a generational rift between the young generation coming of age under communism and its elders. Overall, though, most elements of society nursed numerous grievances against the authoritarian system. Although there is no direct linkage between outright rebellion and pig-killing, black-marketeering, or most of the other forms of criminal behavior I describe herein, their cumulative effect was the erosion of whatever fragile legitimacy the regime enjoyed and the society-wide normalization of anti-regime activity. In October 1956, the vox populi finally got its opportunity to talk back. x TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF CHARTS ............................................................................................. xii INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: STALINIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS......................31 Communism and Crime ..............................................................34 Interstices, Margins, and Borders ...............................................60 CHAPTER 2: THE EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF FEKETEVÁGÓ UR ............................................................88 The Hungarian Peasantry and Land Reform...............................91 Collectivization and Rural Crime ...............................................99 Wood Theft and Pig-Killing .....................................................110 The Advantages of Being Marginalized ...................................123 CHAPTER 3: GENDER, CRIME AND COMMUNISM ............................132 Socialism with a Female Face...................................................138 Policing Sexuality: Prostitution ................................................152 Policing Reproduction: Illegal Abortion..................................168 CHAPTER 4: COSMOPOLITANISM AND DEVIANT LESIURE..........190 Communist Culture