Maria Markus and the (Re)Invention of Hungarian Sociology
Abstract
Maria Markus and the (Re)Invention of Hungarian Sociology SAGE Publications, Inc. 201010.1177/0725513609360602 © The Author(s), 2010. The Author(s) IvanSzelenyi Political Science at Yale University, ivan.szelenyi@yale.edu Disciplines rarely have a ‘birthday’ – modern Hungarian sociology has one. On 15 March 1963 the Sociological Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences started its operation in Budapest, Uri Street No. 49, in the so-called ‘castle district’ of the Buda side of the city. The newly appointed director of the research group was András Hegedüs, the secretary of the local cell of the Communist Party; the ‘second person in command’ was his close collaborator Maria Markus – we called her Marisa, pronounced as Marisha. Hegedüs was prime minister when, on 23 October 1956, a revolution (or counter-revolution – what you call it depends on your philosophy of history) broke out in Hungary. As the regime fell he was sent to Moscow and was allowed to return to Hungary only several years later. In Moscow Hegedüs soon abandoned politics, gradually became a critic of Stalinism and a reform- communist. He began to read sociology (mainly in Russian, his main foreign language). Jacob Moreno was just translated into Russian; Hegedüs found his work