Posts by: All posts by Vajda Barnabás

Barnabás Vajda: Czechoslovakia’s Viewpoint on the Hungarian Issue in the UN’s Dispute in 1956–1957

Based on the doc­u­ments of the Unit­ed Nation­s, it is worth attempt­ing to pro­duce a rough sketch of the impact of the Hun­gar­i­an events of October-November 1956 on the inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tic­s, form a rather untyp­i­cal view of Czecho­slo­va­ki­a. The ma­in forum of the inter­na­tion­al rela­tion­s, where the sup­pres­sion of the Hun­gar­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion gained con­sid­er­able sig­nif­i­cance, was the UN. The Sec­ond emer­gency ses­sion of the Gen­er­al As­sembly (No­vem­ber 4, 1956), ini­ti­at­ed by the Unit­ed States, and the 11th ses­sion of the Gen­er­al As­sembly (November-December 1956), pro­duced alto­geth­er ten res­o­lu­tions ask­ing the Sovi­et Union to with­draw their troops and the Ká­dár gov­ern­ment to receive the UN sec­re­tary-­gen­er­al and UN observer­s. This study makes a sur­vey of these doc­u­ments, name­ly of res­o­lu­tions Nr. 1004, 1005, 1006, 1007 (all of the ES-II), also of res­o­lu­tions Nr. 1127, 1128, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1132 (all of the XIth Ses­sion). By quot­ing these UN doc­u­ments, pres­ent study shows that the Gen­er­al As­sembly pro­vid­ed an ideal play­ground for a par­tic­u­lar ‘po­lit­i­cal see-­saw game’, given that ‘its res­o­lu­tions were far from be­ing coer­cive mea­sures, espe­cial­ly not when they con­demned a super­pow­er or its allies. Since this was a well-­known fact in Moscow, the Amer­i­cans were hop­ing that the... continue reading →

Bar­na­bás Vaj­da: The Issue of Fore­ign Hun­ga­ri­an Cul­tu­re Insti­tu­ti­ons in the Cor­re­spon­dence of Kunó Kle­bel­sberg

In his pres­ent study, Bar­na­bás Vaj­da is focu­sing on some par­ti­cu­lar issu­es of Hun­ga­ri­an cul­tu­ral insti­tu­ti­ons set up abro­ad by Count Kunó Klebelsberg, Min­is­ter of Cul­tu­re and Edu­ca­ti­on of Hun­ga­ry bet­we­en 1922-1931. Vajda’s work is based on the revi­si­on of let­ters and drafts that are part of Kle­bel­sberg’s writ­ten inher­i­tance kept at Nati­o­nal Szé­ché­nyi Library, Bu­da­pest. Kle­bel­sberg (1875–1932), a con­ser­va­tive Hun­ga­ri­an poli­ti­ci­an and min­is­ter in Ist­ván Bet­hlen’s gover­nment from 1922 to 1931, is today con­si­de­red as a sig­ni­fi­cant poli­cy maker, main­ly due to his prog­re­ssi­ve reforms in pub­lic edu­ca­ti­on and uni­ver­si­ty research. In the sec­ond half of his nine-year-long ministership, Kle­bel­sberg foun­ded three Col­le­gi­um Hun­ga­ri­cums in Vienna, Rome and Ber­lin, and scho­lar­ship cen­tres in Pa­ris, Lon­don, Gene­va and Warsaw. Based on Act 1927:XIII, estab­lis­hed insti­tu­ti­ons were pro­po­sed to con­sist of rese­arch centres, art institutions, and under­gra­du­a­te coll­eges. A sup­por­ti­ve scho­lar­ship sys­tem was also created. The first Coll­ege was ope­ned in Vien­na (Sept. 1924), never­the­less the stra­te­gi­cal­ly most impor­tant one was in Ber­lin. From he­re Hun­ga­ry could reach not only Ger­ma­ny but also Scan­di­na­via and, rat­her surprisingly, some small Finno-Ugric nations, lin­gu­is­ti­cal­ly rela­ted to Hun­ga­ri­ans but living iso­la­ted in the Sovi­et Union. From the cor­re­spon­dence it is obvi­ous that Kle­bel­sber... continue reading →