The post-war period in Hungary has been defined as a quasi-democracy or limited democracy, with an emerging pressure of the communists and the Soviet Union – this retrospective view can be reframed if we take contemporary actors and associations into consideration. From 1945 to 1949 there were other possibilities (without a real development) than a linear transition into the Stalinist system, one was the heritage of the leftist progressivist movement, ideas about democratising schools: a universal phenomenon after 1945 in Europe. The Free Trade Union of Hungarian Teachers and its journal Embernevelés (Educate the People) offered a new concept of citizenship and citizenship education, in the broader context of making a new world, men and women (Fitzpatrick, 2000). Until 1948 (year of the real turn), the influences came both from West and East to inspire this work (the latter with greater emphasis), improved a new subject and a course book, a kind of knowledge without antecedents in Hungary. Necessary elements of future citizenship education always connected ideal, voluntarist description of the following years; the key notions were solidarity, community, work and self-reflexion in the discourses. The presentation will be based on the corpus of the journal, the first course book of social sciences (Nagy, 1946), the newly introduced daily conversations in the curricula (political discussions with the students), activities and sources of the Free Trade Union; all of these give unique examples, how different interest groups/stakeholders (educators, politicians, teachers, scholars) interacted to each other, translated and transformed the narratives of profession and ideology to the public (Golnhofer, 2004; Sáska, 2018). The strong impact of the Communist Party and the initiatives of a real trade union movement caused escalating frictions, the logical (but wasn’t necessarily expected in the late 1940’s) conclusions were the elimination of the independent organisation, remained the only model of Soviet citizenship, made by Makarenko. The notion of citizenship became restricted to the state of workers, farmers and the allied intellectuals – without bourgeoisie, kulaks and enemies of the people (Alexopoulos, 2003). In a totalizing environment every expression became politicized; new language and world perception was created (Kotkin, 1996), showing the metamorphosis of citizens to subjects, self-government of trade unions to party control. After 40 years the regime changed and an unfinished project has been established: a difficult task to rebuilt democratic citizenship by facing our past (Misco, 2011).

Alexopoulos, Golfo (2003): Stalin’s Outcasts. Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926-1936. Cornell University Press, Ithaca – London. Fitzpatrick, Sheila (2000): Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Golnhofer, Erzsébet (2004): Hazai pedagógiai nézetek 1945–1949 [Ideas about Pedagogy in Hungary 1945–1949]. Iskolakultúra, Pécs. Misco, Thoma (2011): ‘Most learn almost nothing’: building democratic citizenship by engaging controversial history through inquiry in post-communist Europe. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 6(1), 87–104. Nagy, László István (1946): Közgazdasági és társadalmi ismeretek [Economic and social knowledge]. Athenaeum, Budapest. Sáska, Géza (2018): Igény az igazság monopóliumára [Demand for the monopoly of truth]. Pedagógiatörténeti Szemle, 4(1–2), 1-52.