By 1945, the Central and Eastern European region had become a Soviet sphere of influence and the Sovietization of the region began in accordance with the Stalinist pattern. This process extended to all parts of the social field, including the field of pedagogy as well. Following the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, there appeared the need for an objective examination of the education of the socialist era among the educational historians who were socialized mainly in this region (Gulczynska 2017; Kestere & Kalke 2018; Rõuk- Walt-Wolhuter 2018). This has been the case in Hungary since the 1980s (Halász 1988, Sáska 1981). In our study, we will seek to continue this research tradition and to explore the period of the long fifties within the history of Hungarian socialist pedagogy.

Some of the researchers of the history of Hungarian politics and education tend to call the period that started in the 1950s when the communist party took power in 1948 and lasted until the defeat of the Revolution of 1956 as the fifties. (Sáska 2015). Other researchers interpret the period up to the end of the decade as the fifties (Nagy 2006). In our study, we will follow the latter periodization.

In analyzing the history of Hungarian socialist pedagogy, we will not use the traditional pedagogical approach that seeks to exclude non-pedagogical moments from the analysis of educational issues but place the subject of our study in a political historical context.

Accordingly, the first phase of the Hungarian socialist pedagogy lasted until Stalin's death. This was followed by the “New Course” until 1955, when Imre Nagy was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic. The next stage in political history can be dated to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1956. Then, the era marked by the name of János Kádár began, the first period of which lasted until the early sixties.

We will examine the history of Hungarian socialist pedagogy in this political-historical context, and within that, primarily what professional-pedagogical groups represented socialist pedagogy. Namely, according to our hypothesis, the history of education can be well described with the conflicts of the professional-pedagogical groups present in the field.

In our research we are looking for answers to the following questions:

1. Which educational policy and professional-pedagogical events determined the long history of Hungarian socialist pedagogy in the fifties;

2. How these events divided or united the adherents of socialist pedagogy;

3. What political, ideological and professional-pedagogical views each professional group of socialist pedagogy had, and how this changed in the long fifties.

Overall, we are examining the connection points between education, politics and ideology, but these three variables and their relationship are among the defining characteristics of not only the Hungarian, but all education systems.

The main sources of our research are the documents of the Hungarian education policy, such as the educational policy decrees of the Socialist-Communist Party (Kardos-Kornidesz 1990). Our analysis also covers the journals of the Hungarian socialist pedagogy, such as the Pedagogical Review, Public Education and the Primary School Teacher. To better understand the groups of socialist pedagogy, we have used pedagogical lexicons (Nagy 1976-1979, Báthory-Falus1997). As the interpretative framework of our research, we will use the political science approach applied to the history of education, in short, the political science approach (Nagy, 1997).This concept states that in the field of education, the professional-pedagogical ideas of different groups are determined not only by pedagogical logic, but also by sociological and political science factors, to some extent. In our research, we also have used the ideological theory of Karl Mannheim, and with the help of this we have examined whether the conflicts that appeared in socialist education can be described by the concept of particular or total ideology (Mannheim 1996). At the same time, this trend also means the use of the approach of sociology of knowledge, as all social groups and their interests are socially determined (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Finally, we have also applied the theory of “educationalization”, “pedagogization” in our research (Depaepe-Herman-Surmont-Van Gorp 2008; Tröhler 2016). After all, politicians, education politicians and educators of the socialist era believed that it would be possible to create the “The New Man” with the help of the school.

According to our research results, the unity of the community of the Hungarian socialist pedagogy, which started in 1948, gradually disappeared in the long fifties. In Hungary, those who represented anti-capitalist views were considered leftist prior to 1948. The first break in the history of Hungarian socialist pedagogy was Stalin’s death in 1953, since the previously unified group became split in two. The Stalinists were considered as leftist, or conservatives, as they insisted on the Stalinist pedagogical tradition. The Stalinist called those rightist who either gave up the Stalinist tradition or returned to the tradition prior to the Stalinist era. After the Revolution of 1956, the Stalinists were called dogmatists, and the rightists were called revisionists. In the first period of the Kadar-regime developing after the Revolution of 1956, which had Stalinist characteristics mostly, the followers of the Stalinist pedagogy managed to defeat the revisionists. However, the struggles of the educational arena were not decided by the balance of power between the two groups, but by the current politics. Using the ideological typology of Karl Mannheim, we can say that the struggle of the followers of Stalinist and anti-Stalinist pedagogy can be described more by the concept of particular and less by total ideology. After all, despite the significant political and professional-pedagogical differences, the ideological basis of the two groups was the same, which was the ideology of anti-capitalism. According to our interpretation, the concepts of “pedagogization” and “educationalization” can also be used well in our research, since education was interpreted as a relevant issue not only for the followers of socialist pedagogy, but also for the actors of socialist politics. However, it should not be forgotten that the development of the socialist economy was always a priority over the socialist school system.

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