Perhaps the most important transformation of the socialist school-systems started in 1958 followed the soviet rule model. We do know the processes of legislation, discourses of different stakeholders and interest groups, documents from the fields of pedagogy, labour and the party, but one question always emerged: Who were the decision-makers? My paper aims to outline the characteristics of the actors, involved in the preparation of the educational policy. From 1958 to 1960, a so-called School Reform-Committee existed in Hungary (other socialist countries had similar initiatives, see: Rudman, 1959) to made the main principles of the reform, translated the political will to the whole society, first of all, realizing the tasks of the teachers. We have three lists about the members of the Committee, in the Hungarian National Archives, from December 1958 and July 1959.

After the revolution of 1956, role of the youngsters and teachers was an important task to the ideology and party leaders: some of them revolted against the communist system, some of them emigrated (together with writers, academics, journalist etc.) thus resulted broaden anti-intellectual feeling in those time around the country. The possible question was the reform of the school-system, the working education or polytechnics, which might connected the students to the life of physical, agricultural workers, orientated them in the socialist labour-market. Leaders of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, shortly MSZMP) chose some intellectuals to made the proposals and prepare the legislation process and the transition. We have not known yet the aspects of the members' selection, mechanism of making the committee, we only know the representatives of the upcoming reform, which shows the probable intentions of the communist party.

Altogether 64 names appeared in the three lists, there were changes in the first list (cuts) and between the lists – only the latter one became public. That was the final version, those who announced the reform in the daily journals in September 1960 – until those time only the profession had known about the existence of the committee. Most of the names figured with titles and functions, which suggests the interest groups behind the actors: the party-leaders (dominantly represented the dimension of ideology), the labour market (Ministries), the education sciences (Academy and universities), practicing teachers (schools) and local authorities. We can’t separate these groups transparently, because in the communist system every position linked to the need of political loyalty (by the system of nomenklatura), furthermore the roles and positions always changed and mixed, there were people with multiple titles etc.                

My main assumptions are the following:

1., With collecting biographical data we can feature different types of formal and non-formal connections between the members – in the levels of profession, sciences and politics.

2., There were two main aspects in these networks: the member’s past in the worker’s movement, communist party and the political, professional, academics position in the late 1950’s – these related each other to a certain extent.

3., Different forms of careers can be described, with same or similar patterns in the ways of professional lives. We can test the hypothesis of new-intellectual after 1945 (with the origin of workers and/or farmers) in this limited group.

4., From the biographies some kind of duality of continuity and discontinuity emerged: in the two forms of Hungarian communism (the Rákosi -, and the Kádár-Era) sometimes the same people were in position, although Kádár tried to take a distance from the Stalinist model, signed by Rákosi. Some forms of the traditional qualifications and knowledge appreciated in the committee, too (e. g. the doctorates of liberal arts, acquired before 1945, see: Karády, 2008).    

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