Nagy Zsuzsa: The liberal opposition in Hungary, 1919-1945 - Studia historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 185. (Budapest, 1983)
THE LIBERAL OPPOSITION IN HUNGARY 1919-1945 by Zsuzsa L. Nagy Studia Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 185 This is the first comprehensive survey presented to the foreign reader of the parties and politicians who criticized the Horthy regime from the platform of bourgeois liberalism and democracy. Their aim was to push the Hungarian government to approximate its policy as far as possible to that of the Western bourgeois democracies which they revered. They fought all extreme-right trends, opposed the German alliance and strove to promote Hungary’s withdrawal from World War II. In their struggle they received no political backing whatever from the British or French, or from the Little Entente. The liberal opposition was not homogeneous: the book gives a fair picture of its parties and factions. It analyses their social base, the life of their organization, their systems of ideas and their day-to-day political activity, striving to present as broad a social historical background as possible. Portraits of Vince Nagy, Károly Rassay, Rezső Rupert, Rusztem Vámbéry and Vilmos and János Vázsonyi among others enliven the presentation; their connections with the democratic emigres headed by Mihály Károlyi and Oszkár Jászi are also discussed. The facts presented rectify and complement in several respects the works on Hungary’s interwar history commonly used as reference books abroad. AKADÉMIAI KIADÓ BUDAPEST