National Archives of Hungary

ABSTRACT Based on the example of university party organizations, the article discusses the function of information scarcity in the daily work of lower-level functionaries in the Stalinist period of Hungarian state socialism (1948–56). In order to implement party policies efficiently, the functionaries of the Hungarian Workers’ Party needed to acquire information about the goals, possible methods and evaluative frameworks of their tasks and their social environment. The article argues that the uncertainty caused by the scarcity of reliable information from and about society could have been reduced by consistent orientation from the higher party levels. In the first years of open sovietization, the party leadership successfully presented itself as the only true and all-knowing guide towards communism, which provided stability when the Stalinist style of discipline, work and practice was introduced into the organizational culture. However, the contradictory and watered-down central interpretations about the modifications of the Soviet model during the New Course and after the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union proved to be insufficient to make sense of the party policies’ twists and turns and made functionaries unable to deal with the new challenges. The perception of not being adequately informed resulted in a gradual loss of loyalty towards the actual party leadership by the eve of the revolution of 1956. Elaborating functionaries’ confusion in the context of universities also shows how the control of students slipped through the party’s fingers and provides further explanation of why universities became hotbeds of opposition and resistance against the communist regime.

A megnövekedett levéltári és iratkezelési feladatok miatt a felsőfokú levéltárosoktatásra égető szükség mutatkozott a 20. század második felében. Az első kezdeményezést követően, az 1950 és 1955 között működő egyetemi levéltárosképzés megszűnése után, a levéltári területet irányító minisztérium által szervezett kétéves tanfolyam a hiányt csak részben pótolta be, a kidolgozatlanság és a számonkérés hiányai miatt csak részsikernek értékelhetjük. Értékének tekinthető, hogy célirányos tudásanyagot igyekezett átadni, olyan résztvevőknek, akik eleve levéltárban dolgoztak, így nem „elit” történészképzésnek tekintették a képzést. A tanfolyam hibáinak kijavítása az időközben újra megindult egyetemi levéltárszak miatt elmaradt.

The National Archives of Hungary, as the guardian of the written national heritage, set the goal to become a modern well-equipped public archive in the XXI.st century. It was clear that we had to adapt to the new types of research needs and the digital switchover in the Hungarian public administration. Therefore, a construction of a very potential IT systems was required which can be capable of mass digitalization, online publication of traditional records, as well as long-term preservation and use of electronically generated documents in the public administration. Our high-quality IT systems also had to be connected to the services of the central administration in order to be able to fulfil citizens' requests in electronic form. The aim of this presentation is twofold: on one hand, we would like to present through some examples what kind of possibilities are hidden in digitalization in our field of work. On the other hand, we would like to highlight a precedent-setting electronic file retrieval which took place in 2019 with the involvement of archivists and IT specialists. Thanks to this successful event the cooperation will continue this year with the involvement of 80 GB e-records retrieval.

In the 1920s, paramilitary violence was an almost natural phenomenon in Hungary, like in many other countries of Central Europe. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the new right-wing government, establishing its power with the help of the Entente powers, could difficulty rule the quasi anarchistic conditions. In 1920–1921, Hungary was terrorized by irregular military formations that were formally part of the National Army, and radical right-wing soldiers committed serious crimes frequently by anti-Semitic motivations. Although paramilitary violence ceased in 1921, the militia movement lived on in the form of secret paramilitary organisations. The government used up these units, since the right-wing elite was afraid of another communist takeover, using them as auxiliary police forces, and they also wanted to circumvent the limitations of armament of the Treaty of Trianon, also aiming to cooperate with Austrian and German radical-right paramilitary groups including Hitler’s National Socialist movement as well. Irregular soldiers became concerned in political terrorism, several bomb outrages. Although the police did its best to investigate the cases, most perpetrators interestingly were not sent into prison. The age of the bomb raids, as the press of the opposition called this period, finally ended with the fact that murderous, anti-Semitic terrorists remained at large, and found their places in the authoritarian conservative regime of Hungary of the 1920s. The article reconstructs certain terroristic crimes committed by the members of irregular military formations, mainly the fortunately prevented grenade assassination plan of Jaszkarajenő via a micro-historical case study, based on archival records of criminal suits. Furthermore, beyond the analysis of the individual cases of three different, but interrelating bomb outrages, it intends to draw general conclusions about the controversial and complex relationship between the early Hungarian paramilitary radical right-wing movements and the government, considering that several paramilitary commanders operated as influential radical right-wing politicians as well. Keywords: political terrorism, anti-Semitism, paramilitary violence, radical right-wing movements, Hungarian political history.

Walter Benjamin wrote perhaps the most complex, most interesting essay on the process of translation under the title The Task of the Translator in 1923. This very complex work of literary and translation theory has been analysed and referred to by several literary scholars in the past almost 100 years, the Belgian–American literary scholar Paul de Man among them. The present research article makes an attempt to present a comparative analysis based on close reading of the texts between Benjamin’s original essay and Paul de Man’s commentary, figuring out the possible (and necessary) contradictions and ambiguities of the text, trying to find the answer to the question whether or not translation, at least in the successful sense of the word, exist at all. Deconstructionist way of reading literary and theoretical texts may give multiple answers to the questions about translation, and demonstrate the possibility and impossibility of translation at the same time. Keywords: literary translation, translation theory, literary theory, Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, deconstruction, close reading.

This report contains information gathered during the execution of E-ARK Pilot 5: Preservation and access to records with geodata .

<p>This technical note sets out the definition of E-ARK Pilot 4: Business Archives</p>

The primary aim of this report is to present the final version of the E-ARK Dissemination Information Package (DIP) formats. The secondary aim is to describe the access scenarios in which these DIP formats will be rendered for use.

This technical note sets out the definition of E-ARK Pilot 3: Ingest from government agencies.

<p>This report describes the concepts and elements of the General Model of E-ARK pilot site activities.</p>