Description of Rákosi Research

Introduction, Research Plan

The research aims at the reproduction of the commitment and loyalty-network of the political elite of the Rákosi-era (1948–1956), via various hirtorical resources. In practice it means the historical network analysis of the relations within the Central Directorate (Központi Vezetőség), which was the leading and most important body of the Hungarian Worker’s Party (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja), as well as the hierarchy and relation dynamism of the actual and latent members of the Party. Influence and role of negative linkages and networks, alteration among the levels of decision-making, forming of cliques (reformist/permissive vs. sectarian/hard-liner), including clans (kin relationships) receive distinctive attention, which cannot be interpreted without reference to prior workers’ movements and Soviet relations.

The research is pioneer and interdisciplinary in its nature, because it compunds methods of both history and social sciences, adopted on resources (mainly with archives origin) which have not been processed yet empirically. During the research, the texts are examined via programs for optical text recognition and analysis (e.g. atlas.ti) and also scripts.

Records of the Party’s decisions are investigated in the first place, and then, based on the findings, spreadsheets are prepared of frequency and mutuality, on which biographic attributes and explanatory variants are projected.

Professional patners in the project: István Szakadát (head of Department of Sociology and Communication of Budapest University of Technology and Economics), MNL, BFL

Head of research: Gergő Havadi, sociologist. Email: havadi.gergo@tk.mta.hu

The member of our team (2017): Attila Gulyás, Sándor György Kollár, István Boros, Orsolya Ring, László Kiss (researchers) and Attila Helmeczi, Artúr Hőnich, Péter Katona, Balázs Gosztonyi (interns)

For this project we are waiting for applications trainees and Ph.D. candidates in recens@tk.mta.hu.

For this project, the applicant should be fluent in Hungarian. The candidate will need to collect data and perform the analysis. The ideal candidate has experience in gathering archival information and has also a background in quantitative research methods and is recently graduated in history or in one of the social sciences.

Preview:

Sentiment and text networks: the text network visualization of six Rákosi era Secretarial Records:

http://recens.tk.mta.hu/en/the-text-network-visualization-of-six-rakosi-era-secretarial-records