The Romance of Revolution? The Discourse of Revolutionism among Hungarian Youth 1957–1970

Abstract

After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the Kádár-regime revised the political and ideological tasks and aims in the field of youth politics. In this study, I am going to examine the discourse of revolutionism and its manifestation in youth political movements. By defining the political-historical and ideological background, I focus on “socialist patriotism” and ‘internationalism’ in the early period of the era. With the case study of the “Forradalmi Ifjúsági Napok” (Revolutionary Youth Days) the revival of revolutionism will be examined allowing for the ideological construction of revolutionism to be observed in practice. The domestic and global events of 1968 challenged the ideological construction of revolutionism when the “revolutionary romanticism” faced “revolution of the everydays” and it slowly eroded the construction of the “Forradalmi Ifjúsági Napok”.