Articles by: Steven Kovacs

The Radical Vision of FreeSZFE at Yale University

The Radical Vision of FreeSZFE at Yale University

On January 27, Yale University Library held a Zoom conference on “Art, Education, and Protest in Hungary: The Radical Vision of FreeSZFE.”  In September 2020 the entire faculty and students of the Theater and Film University went on strike and occupied their building to protest the privatization of the University by the government, the transfer of national assets to a […]

by · February 6, 2022 · Culture
Héjjas after the White Terror and in Hollywood

Héjjas after the White Terror and in Hollywood

(This is the last of a three-part series on Iván Héjjas the leader of the Ragged Guard) Héjjas’s brutality had become an embarrassment to Horthy by the summer of 1920, so the government ordered the dissolution of his detachment.  Héjjas took his men to the western part of Hungary, Burgenland, where he engaged Austrian troops and, with the forces of […]

by · December 7, 2020 · Antisemitism
Iván Héjjas – Anti-Semite, torturer, mass murderer

Iván Héjjas – Anti-Semite, torturer, mass murderer

(This is the second of a three-part series on Iván Héjjas the leader of the Ragged Guard) The resurrection of Iván Héjjas at the Kecskemét conference started with a biography written by László Domonkos in 2018 in which he denied the atrocities attributed to his subject.  Domonkos is not a historian.  But his views have received official support by his appointment as […]

by · November 26, 2020 · Focus
From murderers to heroes

From murderers to heroes

(This is the first of a three-part series on Iván Héjjas the leader of the Ragged Guard) A conference has just ended in Kecskemét called “Of the brave and heroic,” a tribute to the Ragged Guard (Rongyos Gárda), a vigilante group whose military disturbances resulted in a plebiscite that returned the city of Sopron to Hungary after the Treaty of […]

by · November 18, 2020 · Antisemitism
The new reconstructed monument commemorating the victims of the Red Terror.

Monument to the Terror: Red or White?

A statue of Imre Nagy was erected on the southeast corner of Kossuth Square in 1996, to commemorate the 1956 Revolution he led as the Communist leader of his country and for which he gave his life.  He is standing on a bridge looking towards the Parliament building.  That bronze sculpture stood there until the fall of 2018 when Viktor […]

by · September 24, 2020 · Politics