Az állampártnak írt panaszlevelek a rendszerváltás előestéjén

Absztrakt

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.