Nincs absztrakt.

The party state’s economic and social aims, based on the Marxist–Leninist ideology, significantly affected the definition of the types of behaviours considered insubordinate, the means of sanctions, as well as the operation of the authorities dedicated to enforce them. In the re- and over-politicised atmosphere of universities and colleges (much like that of the rest of society), actions such as asking inappropriate questions, cheating at exams, even simple truancy, were liable to gain unfavourable political charge, which were organised along the easily recognisable labels of current politics and ideology – “reactionary,” “clerical,” “kulak,” “right-wing tendencies” – affixed upon the accused students. The documentation of the disciplinary procedures, however, are informative not only about the zeal to create and expose the enemy, but also about the accused students’ motivation behind their actions.While Hungarian historiography studies the “anti-regime” behaviours (or those labelled as such) of higher education students and responses of the authorities mostly in the context of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, German higher education research assumes a more nuanced and in-depth approach to the same topic. The toolkit developed to instigate regime-friendly behaviour, as well as the forms of repression exerted upon both students and educators are both of central importance in studies of East German higher education history and monographs published on institutional histories. Their approach is largely determined by the methodology and terminology developed through decades of research in the field of East German social resistance (Opposition und Widerstand). While this approach rightly stresses the opportunities for individual action and the limitations of attempts of total social control, it mainly focuses on finding confrontational contacts which means that it is not entirely sufficient for the exploration of the multi-layered relational web between authorities and students in itself. As the present examination of the pre-1956 behaviour of university students does not seek evidence for student resistance, the chosen approach – while utilising the methodological considerations and terminology of opposition research – attempts to synchronise it with the concept of Eigen-Sinn (c. self-will), which has a stronger hermeneutic power in exploring the relationship between individual and authority. The present analysis of the 1955 disciplinary action against the students of the Russian department at the University of Szeged, thus, merges the theoretical and methodological approaches of both opposition research and Alltagsgeschichte.

The social and education policy of the party state treated the higher education aspirations of various social groups differently. While students of worker or peasant origin were supported at university admissions, ‘class aliens’ were excluded from higher education altogether, leaving them only the loophole of ‘individual assessment’ to appeal to. In order to segregate those who benefitted and those who were barred, in 1949 the education administration developed a system of data collection and management to maximise the information known about each student. Students were allocated into categories by origin, following a painstaking collection of minute details about their parents’ income and financial situation. However, due to the professional/political differences of the assessors and the lack of clear methodology, the interpretation of the collected data was arbitrary on every level. From 1949/50 onwards, the higher education institutions exposed a large number of ‘interloping class aliens’ who were charged with withholding pieces of information which would cause their exclusion from higher education. Besides sanctioning any attempt to hide from the omnipresent control of the establishment, disciplinary actions taken for ‘withholding information’ focused on the students’ life stories and the (still very much arbitrary) interpretation thereof. The author examines disciplinary cases between 1950–1956 to find out whether ‘withholding information’ was indeed a conscious strategy of ‘class aliens’ to gain admission to higher education. The students’ arguments suggest that many of them were aware that providing ‘real’ information about themselves would result in their exclusion and they did indeed keep certain details from the admissions officers. Others, however, tried to legitimise the self-description of their social standing in order to deny the charges of deliberate misrepresentation and ‘withholding’. Upon more detailed examination, Polyák concludes that most of the disciplinary cases concerned the continuation of studies rather than admissions. For some students ‘withholding information’ was not a strategy to gain admission since their right to continue their studies in higher education was questioned only after their enrolment.