Making the Hungarian Communist: Political Agitation, Mass Mobilization, and Everyday Life, 1948-1953 (Studies in Hungarian History)

How do political parties integrate propaganda into ordinary citizens' lives?After coming into power in 1948, the communist Hungarian Workers' Party (MDP) drew on tried-and-true Soviet methods of political outreach, mobilizing a network of agitators to circulate communist ideology and report their observations back to party leadership.These agitators produced maps, searched homes, and taught "petty bourgeois" self-criticism and "party-conform" love and hate. Making the Hungarian Communist studies communist propaganda through the everyday actions of these rank-and-file agitators, offering a nuanced portrait of mass mobilization.Through extensive archival research and personal interviews, Heléna Huhák traces the formation of the agitators' network, the training they received, and the often-gendered language they used to connect communist ideology to people's lived experiences.As the dialogue between the state and ordinary citizens developed through these interactions, the boundaries betwe