The Hungarian Academy of Sciences established a relationship with the newly founded Cuban Academy of Sciences in 1963. From then on, it became a regular practice to send Hungarian scientists – almost exclusively specializing in the natural sciences – to Cuba. Like scientists from other countries in the socialist camp, their aim was to act as a “catalyst,” advancing the scientific development of the Caribbean nation after it joined the ranks of socialist countries. The paper examines reports and correspondence by the researchers delegated to Cuba, as well as official documents of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, to determine how the scientific delegates approached their tasks and engaged with the host country. On one hand, the documents show that the scientists regarded their mission – sometimes lasting years – as a sacrifice, during which they were cut off from an advanced academic environment. On the other hand, the reports also reveal what made the task acceptable for them: first, the significantly higher salary compared to what they earned at home; and second, the opportunity to make genuine discoveries in an underexplored region. The findings also indicate that, unlike the documents of the higher academic administration, those produced by the researchers lack both ideological comments and signs of perceived civilizational superiority. At the same time, the researchers can be found to have occasionally complained about disorganization and the waste of resources, and often viewing scientists delegated from other so-called “friendly countries” as competitors.

Before the First World War, Hungarian football was becoming ever more active in the international sport scene. National teams and clubs were no longer limited to Hungary but were increasingly able to try themselves in away games outside the country. Their tours included progressively more non-European destinations, and the captains and players updated the national newspapers about their journeys by sending regular travel letters describing their journey abroad. Besides providing glimpses into the everyday life of a nascent spectator sport industry, their reports also help understand and define the concept of global identity, which is often referred to but seldom empirically examined by scholars of globalization.The analysis of the travel letters examines the global or national character of the identities expressed therein. The findings suggest that the existence of a pure and fixed global identity remains doubtful and that the study of the globalization of identities requires a flexible conceptual framework. This flexibility must go beyond the dichotomy of global and national, and allow for synchronous local and global identities. Furthermore, the study proposes that the primary characteristic of global postmodern identity is its non-fixity. The sportsman turned entertainer is an early (but to this day well known) ideal type of this unfixed, floating identity, since their life is governed by uncertainty, high mobility, and short-term stays. Using this novel conceptual framework, one can detect and recognize the traces of globalization in the identity of itinerant Hungarian footballers, fraught with the constant pressure to adapt and expand their roles in the global arena of football.

Despite the prevalent ethos of amateurism, the spread of modern “human sports” in Hungary took on legal financial aspects from the very beginning: clubs charged high membership fees, and the use of equipment and of the grounds was extra. This situation, specifically the scale of participation, was transformed by the unprecedented popularity of football, a sport which was able to draw masses as both players and spectators, and with which the spectators could easily identify. Millenáris, the football grounds which had the largest capacity at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the successful team of the Athletic Club of Ferencváros (Ferencvárosi Torna Club – FTC) benefitted a great deal out of the growing number of games and spectators. FTC capitalised on its popularity by building their own arena designed for 25000 spectators. The plot was financed by the people of Budapest, the building costs were secured by a corporation of Ferencváros residents and bank loans. The corporate archives reveal that the newly built stadium on Üllői street generated enough revenues to pay dividends after the first year of operation in 1911, which greatly surpassed the profits of the stadium of the Hungarian Society of Physical Training (Magyar Testgyakorlók Köre – MTK) on Hungária street, inaugurated in 1912. The MTK stadium was also financed by corporate funds and bank loans but was a more ambitious project with a much higher budget. This stadium was able to close its first successful business year only after the First World War when its team dominated the Hungarian football scene. The increasingly venomous business rivalry between the Millenáris, and the stadiums of FTC and MTK greatly affected the game itself, which attests to a mutual dependency between the world of football and business even before the First World War.

The history of women in the hinterland has attracted little attention in the historiography of the Great War. The study aims to fill this gap by examining the populous but hitherto seldom investigated social stratum of poor rural women through conflicts they encountered as a direct consequence of the war. The source material derives from lawsuits in which these women, primarily from former Bács-Bodrog and Torontál counties (now largely in Serbia), were acting as defendants. While the WWI historiography of women, narrated from the angle of the increasingly bourgeois upper classes at the time, emphasises the advances in women’s emancipation, the present study reveals a different picture. The breakout of the war did not bring about the same manoeuvrability for poor peasant woman, instead the opposite took place. Although these women of uncertain social status could try (even illegally) to use new income opportunities to make up for missing income after the loss of the breadwinner, these rarely improved their difficult situation. The law, at the same time, was draconian even if the women’s sole breadwinner status in their family was acknowledged. In their assessment by the law the war counted as aggravating circumstance, if at all considered. In their case, the court hardly ever deliberated the exceptional situation

The study examines the corpus of forty-two résumés written by historians in the same month and for the same purpose: they all applied for scholarship in December 1951. This body of sources is the product of the recruitment campaign following the 1949 communist takeover and the subsequent decimation of existing work collectives. The interplay of these losses and the disproportionately overplanned and notoriously underachieved production quotas brought about by sovietisation created an increased demand for workforce. Although the source may be approached from various angles, the study is limited to a textbased analysis whereby the corpus is interpreted as a response to a communication situation in the past. This perspective is especially useful considering the fact that all the résumés involved were ‘successful’: nearly all the authors were awarded scholarships and some went on to graduate with a doctoral degree. The résumés can be categorised into four identity types. Based on the characteristics of these identity types and the evaluation of the résumés by the official decision-makers, the study concludes that the community of historians was more heterogeneous at the time than would be expected in view of the period in general. Regarding expectations and performance, it seems that adopting the official ideology was not a mandatory criterion for employment, although it certainly did not mean that academics were free to choose their research subject in any position.

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Nincs absztrakt.