COURAGE

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László Szentirmay (b. 1953) is an economist and journalist. As a former student at the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences (Marx Károly Közgazdaságtudományi Egyetem, or MKKE), he actively participated in the organization of programs at the Közgáz-klub, including the political debates known collectively as Polvax, which represented an alternative forum for students vis-à-vis the Hungarian Communist Youth League (Magyar Kommunista Ifjúsági Szövetség, or KISZ). Furthermore, Szentirmay was one of the editors of the club’s bulletin Klub Közlöny (Club Gazette) and a member of the rock band Neoprimitív, which was well-known for its provocative lyrics. The secret police found the activity of club members to be dangerous due to their role in the shaping of opinion and the opportunity they had to initiate conspiratorial activity with students at other universities.

Szentirmay was raised in a middle-class family. His father was a lawyer and worked as a statistician within the Budapest municipal administration. After Szentirmay’s father was fired from his job in 1945, he bought a stationery shop that was eventually nationalized in 1951. Before Szentirmay’s birth, his parents and sisters were expelled from Budapest to a small town in eastern Hungary. They later they moved to the village of Ősagárd in northern Hungary, where László was born in 1953.

At the time of Imre Nagy’s government, the expulsions from Budapest were annulled, although the families that had been forced to leave the city were not permitted to return to their original homes. Szentirmay’s family was finally permitted to move back to Budapest in 1959.

Because of these experiences, the Szentirmay family maintained a deep opposition to the communist system. László Szentirmay attended the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences between 1972 and 1976. Before beginning his university studies, he did not deal with political issues. At MKKE, he joined the left-wing circle of reform-minded students. Moreover, Szentirmay’s rebellion against the conservative family atmosphere in which he had been raised also motivated the formation and expression of his political opinions.

Szentirmay was a very active organizer of club life at the university, primarily beginning in 1976, when Gyula Jobbágy became the leader of the Közgáz-klub. As Szentirmay recalled, there were programs almost every night: concerts, films, political debates, and discos. This eventful period ended in 1981, when the political leadership of the university and the political police suppressed the activism of the students because they had come to regard it as an opposition movement.

According to Szentirmay, the Közgáz-klub was the best club at the university. A large number of students from other universities attended club programs at MKKE. Club members coalesced around Gyula Jobbágy, who was a good organizer and had an enthusiastic and impressive personality. Initially 40 to 50 members, later 100 to 150 members participated in the preparation of club programs.

Szentirmay and other members organized the so-called Polvax club in order to provide them with a venue for discussing issues in which they were interested and which the official information policy suppressed because they were regarded as taboo. It was clear for students in the club that the Kádár régime had taken an insincere stance with regard to many issues. Szentirmay in particular knew a lot about this. He worked during this time as an intern at Hungarian State Radio and thus had access to more information about Hungary, including foreign news, than his peers had.

Furthermore, Szentirmay was the member of the rock band Neoprimitív that had been established at MKKE. The band wrote comical lyrics to well-known songs. These parodies were full of provocative sexual and political connotations. Neoprimitív performed a new repertoire every year. The band was invited to clubs at other universities in Budapest and in the countryside as well. The cultural-political leadership of Hungary had information about the band. In 1980, Dezső Tóth, the deputy minister of cultural policy, used lyrics from a Neoprimitív song to illustrate the adversarial role of rock music. Tóth pointed out the relation between the cited lyrics and the Polish Solidarity movement. However, the parody had no connection to the latter movement at all, as it already had been written and performed two years earlier.

Szentirmay recalled in his interview that at Hungarian Radio his associates once made a remark about the “oppositional songs” that the Neoprimitív band sang, but that he felt that this represented no danger to him. This changed in 1981, when Gyula Jobbágy tried to organize an alternative, independent students’ organization. This was the so-called Meeting of Students from Budapest Universities and Colleges (Budapesti Egyetemisták és Főiskolások Találkozója, or BEFŐT). The political police judged this organization to be a dangerous institutionalization and unifier of the dissident student groups at the universities. The events in Poland also prompted the party to take quick and firm action against the organization. The resulting threats had an impact on the organizers. The activities surrounding Polvax were suspended for a time.

After Gyula Jobbágy was forced to emigrate and BEFŐT was suppressed, the Közgáz-klub began to decline. Szentirmay attempted to restart the political debate club in 1983 under the name Poltár. By this time, he had become more experienced and more exciting issues had emerged, but meanwhile the former group of activists and the contentious audience disappeared. According to Szentirmay, the party extinguished such activism among the young students through its chastening of the BEFŐT organization.

Szentirmay recalled that they were not afraid of the consequences. However, he was subjected to retaliation. Because of the prior Polvax debates, Szentirmay was forced to leave his job at the domestic news department of Hungarian Radio in 1978 and was transferred to the foreign news department, where he worked for 15 years.

According to Szentirmay, neither he nor Jobbágy were opposition figures and they never regarded themselves as such. They wanted to make reforms within the system, notably to KISZ, which they regarded as an autocratic and dogmatic organization. Szentirmay and Jobbágy belonged to the so-called “secondary movements” that stood between the official KISZ and the very small opposition groups. Szentirmay said during his interview with the Courage project that these groups attempted to operate “within the established frameworks, though at the same time to push the envelope.”

Szentirmay said with regard to his role that he was inspired by the “left-wing, reformist” atmosphere at the university, but he made the rational decision not to become an opposition figure. He did not participate in the actions of the democratic opposition. As a journalist, he could not sign Charter 77. At the same time, he sympathized with the opposition groups and read samizdat literature

Szentirmay restarted the Polvax group in 2011 and organized political discussions in 2016. On these occasions, his Neoprimitív rock band performed concerts as well.

László Lékai (né Lung) was born in Zalalövő as the first child of a religious family. His father was a potter. He changed his surname to Lékai in 1940. His person and his church leadership activities, his connection with the socialist political era, and his “small steps” policy towards the state are remembered as controversial. He pursued studies in Nagykanizsa and Veszprém. He was a novice at the Veszprém bishopric. In 1928, he began studying in Rome at the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum. He started his priestly service in Ukk (a village in Veszprém County, Hungary) and later became a prefect at Davidicum in Veszprém. In 1944–1945, he was imprisoned in Sopronkőhida (a village in northwestern Hungary) with József Mindszenty. He was a priest in the villages of Balatonlelle, Zalaszentiván, and Badacsonytomaj. In 1972, he was ordained. His legacy is very controversial. In 1976, he was nominated bishop of Esztergom by Pope Paul VI, but with the endorsement of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. During this period, when religious life was persecuted by the communist authorities, Lékai was not in an easy situation. He had to cooperate with the political leaders, but this was difficult because any sign of cooperation damaged relationships with believers. The Állami Egyházügyi Hivatal [State Church Office] pressed the Church elite to cooperate, which was, in fact, in accordance with the policy of the Vatican.

Lékai followed a “small steps” policy, and he supported Christian publishing, theological education, and the construction of churches. He also recognized the close relationship between elite religion and folk religion, and he supported research endeavors on religious folklore. He also supported Zsuzsanna Erdélyi in her efforts to create a collection of religious objects.

Ödön Lénárd (1911–2003) was a Piarist monk and church historian. He was born in 1911 in Budapest. He joined the Piarist Order in 1926, and he made a simple solemn (1929) and a ceremonial solemn (1933). He studied theology at the university in Budapest (1931–1936), and he obtained a degree as a teacher of history and Latin. After hacing completed his studies, he was ordained as a priest by József Grősz, Archbishop of Kalocsa, on 14 June 1936. He taught at the Piarist Grammar School in Kecskemét, and in 1938, he became a teacher at the Piarist Grammar School in Szeged, where he became vice-director in 1939.

He was nominated to serve as secretary of the national culture department of Actio Catholica. As part of his new role, he was a leader in the movement which fought the nationalization of church-run schools, so he was arrested on 17 June 1948, and in the so-called Actio Catholica Trial, on 23 July 1948 he was sentenced to serve 6 years in prison for incitement. He was released on 1 August 1953 due to the amnesty issued by Prime Minister Imre Nagy. In the following years, he worked as a runner in a shoemaker cooperative and as a water metre-reader, and he continued his work as a spiritual leader in communities of students, families, and the religious sisters of Ágnes Tímár. On 6 February 1961, as part of the next general attack against the Catholic Church, he was arrested along with other priests, and he was found guilty of “leading a conspiracy to demolish the system of the people’s democracy,” and on 19 June 1961, he was sentenced to serve 7 and a half years prison. He was freed sooner due to the general amnesty in 1963. Because of his work as a pastor, he was arrested again on 19 April 1966 and was sentenced to serve 8 years prison for “planning a conspiracy and espionage.” The court united former sentences, and in the end, he was sentenced to 19 years imprisonment. Lénárd spent almost 19 years in jail: he was the last priest in Hungary to be released on 30 June 1977 thanks to the personal intervention of Pope Paul VI after János Kádár’s visit to the Vatican. The State Office of Ecclesiastical Affairs tried to push the Piarist order to make Lénárd leave the country, but he refused. He continued his clerical work precisely where he had stopped at the time of his arrest: he was a pastor and a spiritual leader of adult groups and the community of Cistercian nuns (secretly founded in 1955) until his death (2003).