SPECTRUM HUNGAROLOGICUM Cultic Revelations: Studies in Modern Historical Cult Personalities and Phenomena Edited by Anssi Halmesvirta Spectrum Hungarologicum Vol. 4. 2010 JYVÄSKYLÄ – PÉCS Cultic Revelations: Studies in Modern Historical Cult Personalities and Phenomena Edited by Anssi Halmesvirta Spectrum Hungarologicum Vol. 4. 2010 SPECTRUM HUNGAROLOGICUM VOL. 4. Editors-in-chief: Tuomo Lahdelma Beáta Thomka Editorial board: Pál Deréky (Wien) Jolanta Jastrzębska (Groningen) Pál Pritz (Budapest) Ignác Romsics (Budapest) Tõnu Seilenthal (Tartu) György Tverdota (Budapest) Publisher: University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Humanities, Hungarian Studies (www.jyu.fi/hungarologia) Technical editing by Gergely Dusnoki and Kristóf Fenyvesi CONTENTS Contents .............................................................................................. 3 Preface ................................................................................................. 5 Authors ............................................................................................... 7 Editor's Introduction ...................................................................... 13 Gábor Gyáni: The Creation of Identity Through Cults ............. 19 Balázs Apor: Communist Leader Cults in Eastern Europe: Concepts and Recent Debates .............................................. 37 Árpád Welker: The Kossuth Commemoration Year and its Impact on Hungarian Historiography ................... 63 Orsolya Rákai: Chameleon Cult: The History of Cult of Queen Elizabeth .................................................... 83 Ignác Romsics: Changing Images of Miklós Horthy ................. 93 György Tverdota: Napoléon Seul ............................................... 115 Anssi Halmesvirta: The New Spartans: The Nazi Cult at the Nuremberg Party Congress in 1936 Seen Through Finnish Eyes ................................... 127 Veera Rautavuoma: Cultic Projections of the Socialist Hungary: Solemnity, Humor and Irony in the Liberation Exhibitions ......................................................... 137 Zsuzsanna Varga: Between East and West: A Cultic Place of the Hungarian Agriculture – Bábolna Farm ................ 161 Edit Rózsavölgyi: Changes in the Hungarian Political System from 1988 to 1990 .................................................... 181 PREFACE This collection of articles contains history papers of the third conference of the joint project of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Finland titled ‘Cult and Community’, held in Jyväskylä, 6–7 September, 2007. They are complemented by a couple of specialized, independent contributions by scholars working in the field of cults. It may be noted that the Finnish participants were newcomers in the cult research group since the Hungarian cult studies draw on traditions in the history of literature (e.g. Péter Dávidházi on Shakespeare-cult, the publications of the Petőfi Museum of Literature, Budapest and the Déri Múzeum, Debrecen) and critical studies. Also studies in personality cults of the Communist leaders in the Eastern Europe have been launched there. In Finland the situation has been different. There have been lively cults of J. L. Runeberg (national poet), J. V. Snellman (philosopher for the Finnish nation) and other luminaries but genuine political cults have been relatively rare and ambiguous. In such a legalist country as Finland has been, revolutionary popular movements imitating National Socialism and Fascism impregnated by obsessive cultic practices, could not gain long-standing, firm foothold. That Vihtori Kosola, the leader of the ‘fascismo of Finland’ – the label of a British contemporary correspondent – could call almost 13,000 peasants to demonstrate in 1930 at the main square in Helsinki, was the utmost he could manage and it was not enough to transform his popularity into a personality cult. And that he was donated a bust of Mussolini by the Italian Embassy rather was a symbolic diplomatic gesture not prone to elevate Kosola’s figure to wider public acceptance. Nevertheless, usually in times of crisis, some strong men have been promoted to represent the ‘ability to defend’ the country. One of them was, for example, President P.E. Svinhufvud for the White Finland in the early 1930s. In contrast, the feminine symbol of Finland, the white- dressed virgin, was a rather fragile figure but all the same politically utilized. Lenin and Mannerheim are exceptional types as they represent the heroism of the opposing political camps. It has been a great intellectual pleasure and refreshment to the Finnish participants to get acquainted with the Hungarian insights and methods to study cults during the project. Hopefully, the impact has been mutual. The Finnish contingent wishes to thank the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Finland for their support. Anssi Halmesvirta 6 AUTHORS Apor, Balázs received his Ph. D. at the European University Institute, Florence with the title: ‘Methods of Cult-building and Cult-dismantling in Communist Hungary: The Case of Mátyás Rákosi, 1945-1956’. Currently he is full-time lecturer at the Kodolányi János College and part-time lecturer at the University of Debrecen. His most important publications include: Jan C. Behrends, Polly Jones and E. A. Rees (eds.), The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2004; Balász, Apor, Péter Apor and E. A. Rees (eds.), The Sovietization of Eastern Europe. New Perspectives on the post-Second World War Period, New Academia Publishing, Washington, 2008; “The Secret Speech and its Effect on the ‘Cult of Personality’ in Hungary”, Critique, Vol. 35, No. 2, August 2007. E-mail: [email protected] Gyáni, Gábor graduated from the University of Debrecen in 1974 and initially worked as an archivist. Since 1982, he is a member of the Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and now a Senior Research Fellow. He is University Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and Visiting Professor at Central European University, Budapest. His work has focused on Hungarian social and urban history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on the theory of recent historical scholarship. His English language monographs include: Parlor and Kitchen: Housing and Domestic Culture in Budapest, 1870–1940 (Budapest & New York, 2002); Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century (New York, 2004, as co-author); Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin-de-Siècle Budapest (New York, 2004). E-mail: [email protected] Halmesvirta, Anssi, D.Phil. (Sussex, 1990), Docent, presently working at the Department of History and Ethnology of the University of Jyväskylä. As an historian of ideas his main research areas include Victorian and Edwardian racial and political thought, and history of public health and sports. Recently he has studied scientific relations between West and East (Finland and Hungary) during the Cold War and representations of personality cults. His monographs include The British Conception of the Finnish ’Race’, Nation and Culture, 1760–1918, SHS: Helsinki, 1990; Turanilaisia ja herrasneekereitä. SHS: Tampere, 1993; Vaivojensa vangit, Atena: Jyväskylä, 1998; Politiikkaa lastenkirjoissa. Coauthors: Sulevi Riukulehto and Kari Pöntinen. SKS: Pieksämäki, 2001; Co-operation across the Iron Curtain: Hungarian-Finnish Scientific Relations of the Academies from the 1960s to the 1990s, Jyväskylä University Printing House: Jyväskylä, 2005; Ideology and Argument: Studies in British, Finnish and Hungarian Though, SKS: Helsinki, 2006 and Unkarin kansannousu 1956. Coauthor: Heino Nyyssönen WSOY: Juva, 2006. E-mail: [email protected] Rákai, Orsolya, an Academic Fellow at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her main fields of research are the history of criticism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, history and theory of literary and political cults, and social history of mass media. Her main publications include: A háló, a halászok és a halak. Tanulmányok a diskurzusanalízis, a mezőelmélet, a rendszerelmélet és az irodalomtörténet-írás néhány kapcsolódási pontjáról. Ed. and partly transl. Orsolya Rákai. Osiris: Szeged & Budapest, 2001; Utazások a Fekete Királynővel: írások írásról és irodalomról. Kijárat: Budapest, 2006; Az irodalomtudós tekintete: Az önállósuló irodalom társadalmi integrációja és az esztétikai tapasztalat néhány problémája a magyar irodalomban 1780 és 1830 között. Universitas: Budapest, 2008. E-mail: [email protected] Rautavuoma, Veera, M.A., is a PhD student in the Hungarian Studies Project at the University of Jyväskylä. Her forthcoming doctoral dissertation explores the historical representations of Socialist Hungary manifested in the ‘liberation exhibitions’. She is also a researcher of the multidisciplinary research project “Cult, Community, Identity” (2005-2008), funded by the Academy of Finland. Her major areas of interest are different manifestations of cultural heritage and re-workings of memory, mostly in institutionalized settings and interconnected with questions of 8 power and (cultic) representation. Her article “Private, Public and Historical Sphere in Kate Atkinson´s ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’”. Nordisk Museologi (2002) deals with these issues. E-mail: [email protected] Romsics, Ignác is Professor of Modern Hungarian History at the University of Budapest (ELTE). Since 2001 he has been Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and from 1999 to 2007 he