Beyond the Academia – István Kemény’s Editorials on the Program of Radio Free Europe
Beyond the Academia – István Kemény’s Editorials on the Program of Radio Free Europe
Between 1980 and 1990, the Hungarian sociologist István Kemény read his editorials week by week on the Hungarian program of Radio Free Europe. These short texts provide us a good opportunity to reconstruct what he thought beyond the horizon of sociological scholarship about Hungary, the history of the 20. century history, and the historical chances and challenges of the epoch. From this vast amount of articles this essay concentrates on three topics that seem to be the most important to comprehend the history of the Hungarian regime change and the subsequent failure of the original program of transition: the problem of the revolution; the opposition of the partystate in Hungary; and the problem of free market capitalism.