Late this week I had to privilege to attend a conference celebrating the work of the historians C.A. Macartney and László Péter. The conference was jointly hosted by Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem (KRE) in Budapest and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College London (UCL) and held in the beautiful …
Continue reading Conference in Memoriam: C.A. Macartney & László Péter
One of the most common complaints I have heard about historians is that they do not simply “tell what happened” they bring their own interpretations to the past. In some ways that is correct, yet it is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding about the past. In prior posts I described the role of memory and …
Earlier this week my language tutor asked me this question: “Milyen politikus volt Nagy Imre?” (What kind of politician was Imre Nagy?). The answer is complicated and not just because my Hungarian is not at the level needed to answer that question. Aside from being a good question for me to practice with, it is …
One of my favorite moments when teaching history is when a student realizes the way a specific event in the past directly affects them. The American Historical Association is fond of the phrase “Everything has a History.” Yet this disconnect between past and present is rather foreign to Hungarian culture, a notable example of this …
Continue reading The Treaty of Trianon (1920) & the Memorial of National Unity (2020)
On September 1, the New York Times carried an article about the new Russian history textbook and its descriptions of Ukraine and the ongoing “special military operation.” The next week, The Hill, a US political news site ran a similar piece. Both panned the new textbooks as inaccurate and propaganda. Unless you closely follow US politics or Eastern Europe, it …
Continue reading Hungary, Russia, and the History Textbook Feud
This past week I attended orientation with the Hungarian-American Fulbright Commission which allowed me to meet the other students and scholars visiting Hungary from the US. In addition to crash courses in language, culture, music, politics, economics, higher education, and living abroad, we also had a couple of guided tours. So, it seems an appropriate …
Continue reading Travelogue: Visegrád & Mátyás Királyi Palota
Patrick C. Leech 