Archive for the ‘Hungary’ Category

Wikipedia Entry of Imre Pozsgay

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

I wrote my wikipedia entry about Imre Pozsgay due to the sheer fact that he was Hungarian and I myself have Hungarian roots. Also because he seemed like an interesting character and I couldn’t really find anything else to write about that someone else in the class or wikipedia had written about. Pozsgay was an important man in Hungarian history and a key player in maintaining Hungarian Democracy. He was born in Hungarian and was part of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, a group that played a major part in Hungary’s path to democracy. He was one of the first major figures to recognize that the revolution was a popular uprising and not a counterrevolution. Pozsgay joined the HSWP after he got a degree in English from the Lenin Institute in Budapest. His calls for reform lead to a falling out with the party’s leader Janos Kadar and in turn Moved Pozsgay to head the chairman position of the party’s mass organization, the Patriotic Front. Kadar was soon removed from his Minister of State position and Pozsgay took his place right after in 1988. The Hungarian Socialists Party (formally known as the HSWP) announced Pozsgay as their Deputy President. However in 1991 Pozsgay split off from the HSP to form his own party called the National Democratic Alliance.

My initial wikipedia entry was kind of weak and didn’t fit the protocol of wikipedia entries. However I must have picked a person that sparked some interests in certain people’s lives because corrections, new citations and information, and correct grammar were edited in my paper. Individuals wrote about information about Imre Pozsgay that I didn’t even know about. However the initial phase of my entry on Imre Pozsgay must have faded quickly, because after the first day no one attempted to edit my entry.

What I learned from writing my article on Imre Pozsgay for Wikipedia while basically anyone can write a wikipedia article is that it is a lot harder than it looks and there are guidelines that need to be met. Citations are also crucial in writing an article, all your information should be cited to let the reader know the information is real and the articles, books, and journals cited could maybe even excite the reader into reading more about the subject at hand. I would have never thought I could write an entry for wikipedia, but thanks to this class I proved to myself I can and did something I wouldn’t ordinarily do.

Problems with my sources

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

I’m running into more issues with finding good sources, but only now am I beginning to realize just how hard doing really good research is, especially concerning personal accounts. Listed below is my train of thought:

1. Should I trust first hand accounts of what happened in Budapest in 1989? Are they worth using in my paper due to their probable bias?

2. If I decide to use them, can I offer a probable argument that would address the natural opposition?

3. Are both pro-government sources useful?

4. Am I bound by the same problems that concern the pro-revolution accounts?

5. Are official government sources useful at all?

Hopefully I can resolve these questions in class with some shared experiences!

Paper Topic

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

To reiterate, my desired topic is: “What major effect, if any, did the 1956 uprising have in the 1989 revolution in Hungary?”. The direct link to my New York Times article is below:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=569&curl=http%3A%2F%2Fmutex.gmu.edu%3A2048%2Flogin%3Furl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fproquest.umi.com%2Fpqdweb%3Fdid%3D115614729%26sid%3D3%26Fmt%3D10%26clientId%3D31810%26RQT%3D309%26VName%3DHNP&TS=1191525565

I think this article is a good one for small tidbits of info about the major happenings surrounding the burial of Imre Nagy. His reburial will be crucial in my paper as it brings the events of 1956 out of the darkness and hushed discussions, into a publicly endorsed media circus where everyone is suddenly allowed to talk about it. In a way, I may be able to say that the reburial enabled the Hungarian people to begin their uprising formally, in public, and the end of somewhat complete control of the country by the Hungarian politburo.

Critically, I can’t find too much bias in this article, nor can I find much hint of “America good, Commies bad” anywhere. The only group I can find that would take offense to this article would be Communists who would prefer Nagy remain branded as a counterrevolutionary.