REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

RESEARCH OF THE COMMUNIST PERIOD IN
HÓDMEZİVÁSÁRHELY – SOME LOCAL
VICTIMS OF THE COMMUNIST REGIME
Zoltán PRESZTÓCZKI 1
Abstract: The research of the period between 1944/45 and 1989/90 is in question from several
points of view. There are many data that cannot be obtained due to the privacy limitations related
to the personal rights, however, more and more information can be reached about the communist
period. There are more and more publications about that system, and not only memoirs, as shortly
after the transition, but professional issues, too, giving a good source for further researches.
Another resource to reveal the past can be the documentary films, giving back the mood of the
period, and also expanding the knowledge of the average people about their past.
Related to the constant openings of archives there are more and more possibilities to
research. The researches are regulated by legal background (the data protection act, the
archives act, and the recommendations of the data-protection commissioner) which
separate the personal and public data and determines the circle of public faces.
After the transition several historian-workshops were formed. Among them the two
most important ones are the Institute of the 21st Century and the 1956 Institute (The
Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution). The experts of the latter have
been issuing their highly professional publications, representing the events, the
background, the antecedents and results of the revolution, for two decades. The Institute
of the twenty-first Century, operating since 2000 and cooperating with the scientific
workshops from the ex-socialist countries of the similar profile, focuses on the
suppressing character of the communist system. The colleagues of the Institute also do a
very valuable and useful job.
For all the researches the net of archives can provide an essential assistance, mainly by
their guides. In these guides the archive material of an institute or a college, the activity
data of the leader officers, or the several decrees of a given college can be found. Related
to Hódmezıvásárhely the archontology of the officers of Csongrád County, the catalogue
of the criminal suits of Szeged (with some concerned people from Vásárhely) has been
published. Furthermore, the themes-catalogue of the sessions of the local committee
(www.csml.hu) is available on the internet – including all the decrees, made up at a
certain session.
It is the merit of Biernacki Karol – director of the Archives of Csongrád County, Csaba
Farkas and Attila Varsányi the chief archivist that the local events, formerly handled as
taboos, could be revealed.
1 Emlekpont Museum, Hódmezıvásárhely, Hungary.