Lajos Magyar et alia

Abstract

Vladimir M. Turok (1904–1981)—a Soviet historian and expert in contemporary history of Austria—worked at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1961 to 1981. In his student years, he lived in Vienna and was acquainted with many activists of the Comintern. After returning to the USSR in 1926, he worked at the International Agrarian Institute, where he met with Hungarian political emigrants, including the future Hungarian prime-minister Imre Nagy. In 1973, in Budapest, Turok gave an extensive interview to the fellows of the Institute of Party History (in 1991 renamed the Institute of Political History), Katalin Petrák and Irén Ács-Andrásné, in which he spoke about the Hungarians whom he had had a chance to meet. The Institute’s archive funds contain typewritten transcripts of this interview, among which the text entitled Lajos Magyar et alia stands out separately and represents a draft of an unpublished article. In it, Vladimir Turok shared personal memories of the Hungarian political émigré and prominent Soviet Sinologist Lajos Magyar, and also talked about his work at the International Agrarian Institute, Krestintern (Peasant International), its employees, and the party purges of 1929. The text of the interview-article is adduced without abbreviations, while the spelling and punctuation are brought up to modern standards.