SHORT HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN GEOGRAPHY DURING THE SOVIET ERA

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November 2015
Geography of Hungary and the Hungarian Geography
SHORT HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN GEOGRAPHY DURING THE SOVIET ERA
Arthur Morais Faasen
INTRODUCTION
In general, the sciences have, on its historical development, several variations in their epistemic
bases. Even those classified as natural sciences had big changes. Geography as a science, and
specifically human science, underwent processes of profound transformation and redefinition of its
scientific structures.
Since its founding, and the creation of geography subject in universities, it has been adapting to the
real needs and changes occurring in the world. What I mean here is that science does not find
changes anchored in itself, but in the paradigm shifts and changes of social reality as well as any
other science, whether human or natural.
At the same time these changes occur not only in historical time, but also in the social space.
Different countries have different geographical schools, different traditions and many specificities.
Is no different in the case of Hungarian Geography. This differences are related to the political and
social events of its time. The major change that occurred in geography concerns the implementation
of Soviet Communism and the command economy in the country. The new needs that have emerged
with the postwar and new external influences determined the paths taken by geographers that
period.
The objective of this project is to make a brief analysis of geography "Marxist-Leninist" of the
communist period. With a view at not only the internal changes of geographical science, but at the
same time, seeing what are the new social realities that demand and dialogue with this science, and
requires from it a new theory and a new practice. For that we should make a brief description of the
period preceding the Marxist-Leninist geography, both with regard to the most important events in
Hungarian history as the history of Hungarian Geography.
Geography of Hungary and the Hungarian geography classes have left me some doubts about the
geography that was formed in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, as the Western European
geography is very well known to all. In this way, the project will serve me to understand what the
real differences and what similarities between the geography of these two blocks and what is its role
as a science in the production and legitimation of different economic systems existing at the time.
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GEOGRAPHY BEFORE COMMUNISM
The main political event that marked the geography of the interwar period is the Treaty of Trianon.
Hungary after the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire suffered
through the Treaty of Trianon severe losses of territory and population. About 70% of the territory
of the Hungarian Empire was distributed to countries such as Croatia, Serbia, Romania and
Slovakia.
After the end of World War geographers were under the task of prove that the territories of the
Carpathians Basin were important parts of what would be the Great Hungary. Assuming a
nationalist character also common to the geography of other European countries, geography
prominently in that period. Several geographers were important names of the Hungarian
intelligentsia. As can be seen in the article by Gyori & Gyuris (2012, p. 5):
Geographers had had a key role in Hungarian nation building before Trianon. The process of
preparing for peace had produced a geographical monograph and a manifesto in several languages in
order to inform foreign publics about Hungarian attitudes, produced under the aegis of the Hungarian
Geographical Society. The chief organiser of this work was Pál Teleki, a pioneer of Hungarian
economic geography, who became a main negotiator of the Hungarian peace delegation in Paris, and,
later on, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister (Hajdú 2000). Geography ensured for itself
the role of a ‘competent science’ at these peace negotiations, with numerous geographical experts
participating in the treaty negotiations (Emmanuel de Martonne from France, Isaiah Bowman from
the United States, Alan G. Ogilvie from the United Kingdom, Jovan Cvijić from Serbia and the Polish
Eugeniusz Romer) (Krasznai 2003). The majority of the Hungarian geographers contributing to the
negotiations were to be appointed professor and head of department in the ensuing decade.
To scientifically prove the Hungarian interests on the territories of the Carpathian, Pál Teleki was
based on the arguments on the French Geography of the Annales school. Many argue that this was a
persuasive tactic to the French geographers, who were leaders in the negotiations, accept more
easily the arguments.
However, it is noteworthy that not only the French geography and Vidal de la Blache tradition had
great contributions to Hungarian geography. But “Anthropogeography” of Ratzel also caused quite
a stir in the country.
The permanence of French and traditional German geography did not last long on the communist
regime, a number of critical and associations have been made to these forms of geography by the
new communist regime.
THE CRITICS TO “BOURGEOIS” SCIENCES AND THE SOVIETIZATION OF SCIENCES
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The period following the end of World War II is marked by Hungary's joining the bloc of
communist countries, aligned to the Soviet Union. The change actually occurred in 1948 with the
installation of a communist regime in the country. The alignment with the USSR should be
complete. Not only in the politics and economics but also science. The adoption of Marxist-Leninist
and Stalinist thinking should be general for all sciences.
Linked to Western expansionism, nationalism and deterministic theories, traditional geography was
labeled as "fascists" and "bourgeois" by the ideologues of the new regime. It was important the
foundation of a geography that legitimize the new economic model the Hungarian geographical
tradition. This one, marked by nationalism of the interwar period, was severely criticized and
deconstructed. Geographers that once had a prominent place in the political positions were mostly
removed from their positions and replaced by geographers who are suited to the demands of the
"new geography". There was also a requirement to use the materialist-dialectical method, according
to Gyimesi (2015) as the only scientific method par excellence.
Geography was especially affected by this political change due to its embeddedness in conservative,
Christian-nationalist state policy and its scientific and ideological practices of revisionism against the
Trianon peace treaty (1920) signed in the wake of World War I (Krasznai 2012). [...] the previous
conservative status quo faced a difficult situation: the fate of conservative-nationalist scholars was
either to be banished from academia, or to compromise with the new system (Győri 2011a). The latter
meant joining the Party or at least developing a kind of self-critique (eventually of their previous
masters), as well as adapting to Soviet geography by embedding their work in Marxist-Leninist
jargon. This practice of “translating” previous research into this ideological language affected both
human and physical geography, but because the latter was more protected and less needed in state
planning (Soviet geography even divided the previous holistic geography institutionally), many
human geographers fled into the natural sciences (for example András Rónai). (Gyimesi 2014. p.245)
The old names that made up the chairs of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences were removed from
their posts. New characters with more political commitment to the regimehave been placed and
their places. Many of these new geographers even had a university degree required to exercise such
positions.
There was also this time a shift in production sites of geographical thought. During a period
preceding to 1948 geographers occupied university chairs and lectured in major Hungarian
universities. After the change of regime universities lost their scientific importance and scientific
institutes began to employ the most professional geographers. This change was aimed at
maximizing efficiency, as now geographers not "waste time" teaching and also for reasons of
control and censorship of research. The main geographers also had importance in planning councils,
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such as: Scattered Farm Council, Council for Cotton Production, Agrobiological Committee, the
Crop Production Committee and the Committee Lemon.
Marxist science in general, as exposes Gyori & Gyuris (2012), had as main objective the
development of modes of production, to overcome the first nature through work and knowledge. To
Marx is precious the idea that only companies with a high level of technological development could
make the leap to a more socially developed society. So science has an economic mission to be one
of the productive forces to realize this leap forward.
Science could not be only theoretical, was required of them practical solutions to the current
problems of the system under construction and to the economic modernization of the country. To
Marx there is a dialectical relationship between theory and practice, thus forming a complete social
praxis.
Given these characteristics we can speak of some changes in the relationship between society and
nature in the context of Marxist geography. For Marx the relationship between society and nature is
through the social metabolism, ie labour. In Marxist thought is through work that man can
overcome nature to produce a better life. This conception led to a hierarchical interpretation of
society and nature:
In the Stalinist era, the task of the Soviet science was the service of monumental plans, like
industrialisation, military preparations or the notorious environment-transformations (Shaw, D.J.B.
and Oldfield, J.D. 2007). Practically, it led to the most simplistic interpretation of human-environment
relations: society stands above nature and society is able to form and to transform nature in any way
according to its needs […] (Kőszegi, 2015. P. 94)
Due to new requirements for doing science many traditional geographers tried to translate his
theories to the new current paradigm. As was the case of Tibor Mendöl. Having too much of their
work criticized by the new geography Mendöl translated part of his works to a Marxist language.
Their old productions, quite marked by the influence of the French Human Geography and the
traditional positivist thought had to be rethought in terms of the dialectical-materialist (see Gyimesi
2014). These translations, however, were not total and Gyimesi argues that is easy to see the duality
of Mendöl's thought, oscillating between traditional French geography and Marxist paradigm.
THE NEW TOPICS OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
First it must emphasize that there was a separation between Human Geography and Physical
Geography in the early years of the new regime. These two could not be a science itself, since
society and nature are studied by different methods. As I said earlier the Human Geography was
named Economic Geography despite some traditional geographers differences as we can see in
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Gyuris & Gyori (2013)
Tibor Mendöl, a former disciple of Teleki, argued that neither population nor urban geography could
be wholly regarded a part of economic geography. He instead proposed the use of “social geography”
as a general term for issues not belonging to physical geography in the discipline (BULLA 1955a).
Mendöl’s endeavor was also supported by Béla Bulla, who became a physical geographer in the
interwar period and was a personal friend of Mendöl. The idea, however, was firmly opposed by
György Markos, the main ideologist of the “new” Hungarian Marxist-Leninist geography, who
thought Mendöl and Bulla were trying to bring back the old Hungarian human geography under the
cover of “social geography”. As he put it: “We should state clearly that no Marxist economic
geographer wishes to »locate« the old, reactionary, capitalism-serving human geography, neither some
nor any of its branches in Marxist economic geography.” (P. 11)
There were three main topics of economic geography as stated by the aforementioned authors:
urban The purpose of urban development was to produce industrial cities with average population.
The new cities, or the socialist cities were built in various parts of Hungary and often named after
great communist leaders as Leninvaros and Stalinvaros. Another important factor of this policy is
the fact that it adopt a radical stance against the traditional scaterred farms. Which were seen as an
impediment to economic modernization of the country.development, rural development and the
transformation of nature by society (p.13).
Another important issue was the Soviet geography regionalization based on productive activities.
This concept, called Rayons, were widely used in the Soviet Union. But encountered some
resistance in Hungary, due to the different territorial extension of these two countries. This
regionalization would also be the basis for 5-years plans of the economic planning.
What concerns the transformation of nature by society, the main project was a huge irrigation plan.
That would allow the development of agriculture in the drier regions of Hungary as the Hortobágy
region. Another claim was the protection of the great plain soils by planting vegetables barriers.
A importação de novas plantas que não eram produzidas no território húngaro também era objeto de
estudo da geografia. Physical Geographers estavam envolvidos em encontrar as melhores
possibilidades climáticas e ambientais para o desenvolvimento dessas espécies. Alguns desses
projetos foram bastantes emblemáticos.
Related to these large projects geography had a prominent place as legitimizing the propaganda of
the old regime. As the authors say:
Although several Marxist-Leninist geographers actively participated in the politically-motivated
planning projects, geography also played a significant role in the propaganda of “constructing
socialism”, especially in primary and secondary school education. Pupils were expected to use
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theoretical knowledge in the solution of practical issues. Geographically relevant questions of
economic planning (the naturalization of new plants and the optimal spatial allocation of the forces of
production in Hungary) also had a dominant role in the curriculum (KORZSOV 1955; SIMON 1955).
At the same time, richly-illustrated books such as A szovjet nép átalakítja a természetet (“The Soviet
people transform nature”) (ANONYMUS 1951a) or A sztálini korszak nagy építkezései (“Large
constructions of the Stalinist era”) (ANONYMUS 1951b), each containing Soviet researchers’ articles
of popular science in translation, were released to libraries throughout the country. (Gyori & Gyuris
(2013, p. 19)
CONCLUSIONS
It can be said that the Hungarian geography underwent serious changes in its structure during the
postwar period. The installation of a command economy in the country can be seen as the major
factor of these changes. The various projects that geography was involved were directly linked to
economicmodernization desired by Eastern European countries (see Kurz, 1991). Also, regarding
the method employed by this science there were great changes. Since positivism was taxed as a
bourgeois negativity, and only the dialectical method could be used. In geography, using this
method on the case of physical geography can be quite controversial. Broad were discussions in the
twentieth century on the dialectics of nature. Started by Frederich Engels in his book "Dialectics of
Nature", this debate took apex in the criticism of the Hungarian philosopher György Luckács and
the French philosopher Sartre. Despite the importance of the Hungarian philosophy in that
discussion it was not mentioned in the articles if there was a direct influence of the Luckács ideias
on the Hungarian geography.
From the analysis of Soviet geography and my previous knowledge about 'Western' geography of
post-war I could see some similarities between the motion for a geography that planned and acted
on the territory. If in the Soviet bloc we have seen the active importance of geography across the
Iron Curtain it was not so different. Both the French School and American School, which dominated
the geography scenario during this period also presented motions for an active geography. As an
example we can think of the famous book written by the French geographer Pierre George, 1954,
"La Geographie Active" which laid the statutes of the "aménagement" of the territory. Already in
the United States we had a similar stance, but with more use of mathematical techniques and
technologies linked to GIS. Anyway, in both blocks geography took a turn for the direct application
and control of the territories.
REFERENCES
Gyimesi, Zoltán (2014): The Contested Post-Socialist Rehabilitation of the Past: Dual Narratives in
the Republishing of Tibor Mendöl's Introduction to Geography. Hungarian Cultural Studies. e-
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Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association, 7. pp. 242-273. 
Győri, Róbert - Gyuris, Ferenc (2012): The Sovietization of Hungarian geography, 1945-1960.
Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft 154. pp. 107-128.
Gyuris, Ferenc - Győri, Róbert (2013): Sovietized science at the service of 'socialist national
economy'. The example of Hungarian geography, 1945-1960 Berichte. Geographie und
Landeskunde. 87. pp. 7-25. 
Kőszegi, M. et al. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 64 (2015) (2) 87–99 
KURZ, Robert. O colapso da modernização [Der Kollaps der Modernisierung. Vom
Zusammenbruch des Kasernensozialismus zur Krise der Weltökonomie. Eichborn Verlag ]. Rio de
Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1992. 
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