How leaders of the socialist regime gathered information about the true sentiments of the population has been a relatively underexplored question in Hungarian contemporary history. By focusing on letters of complaint addressed to representatives of state power, the present study contributes to a research trend that is by now well established in the international scholarship, mainly by scholars such as Sheila Fitzpatrick and more recently Martin K. Dimitrov. My recent research primarily relies on letters written to the Budapest branch of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) during the 1980s. According to Dimitrov, one of the key reasons that enabled one-party communist dictatorships to stay in power for decades was their ability to accurately gauge public sentiment and needs. They actively encouraged citizen feedback, primarily in the form of letters of complaint. Dimitrov has shown that the loosening grip of dictatorship was indicated by a decline in complaints rather than their increase. The preliminary results of my research corroborate this thesis in the Hungarian context: from 1985 onwards, the steady decrease in complaint cases reflected the citizens’ waning trust in the system. Furthermore, even at this early stage of the research, it has become evident that non-party members also actively participated in this institutionalized culture of complaint. This not only contributed to the regime’s stability well into the 1980s but also suggests that many still hoped that the ruling party could improve their situation. The findings reveal a practice in which those in power and their supporters co-managed the system with non-party members. In this context, the bureaucracy of complaint handling was used as a safety valve to release the pressure of social tensions without violence. Both the party apparatus and non-members participated in this cooperation and used it to their own ends, and the system endured as long as the harmonization of these goals remained viable.

The study presents the government’s efforts to develop and maintain party propaganda on trains used by commuters working in Budapest, and the responses to these efforts by the commuters and agitators themselves. Launching the socalled railway agitation is a true reflection of the regime’s plans to exercise the widest possible control over society. The principal sources for this study are the agitation reports, which provide a unique insight into the period between 1949 and 1953. Although it is not possible to verify whether dialogues recorded in these party documents reflected reality, they are still helpful in reconstructing the real discourses that took place, and in understanding the responses that were of interest for the representatives of the Establishment. The reports mostly provide details about the agitators’ dayto-day activity, problems arising from the unusual place of operation, as well as an insight into contemporary public transport conditions and the daily lives of commuters. Railway agitation was only sustainable for a limited period of time: the intent to maintain and stabilise this programme eventually failed. This story suggests that even in its strongest period, the party state, often characterised as monolithic or totalitarian, was unable to enforce its will on society at all times – what is more, it sometimes failed to run its own apparatus according to plan.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.