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The authors of this edited volume address the hidden attraction that existed between the extremes of left and right, and of internationalism and nationalism under the decades of communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe. One might suppose that under the suppressive regimes based on leftist ideology and internationalism their right-wing opponents would have been defeated and ultimately removed. These essays, on the other hand, recount the itinerary of survival and revival of "right-wing" thought and activities under communist dictatorship. Resistance and accommodation are explored in the various phases from the Stalinist era to the demise of the Soviet Bloc, with the continuity provided by tacit or concealed right-wing discourses receiving particular consideration. The Eastern European right, both in its conservative and fascist version, centered on nationalism, a legitimizing factor that increased with the downfall of the regimes, and the authors thus accord nationalism special attention.

Two documentary sources for these essays that stand out are files of the security services and the exceptionally rich Oral History Archive compiled by the 1956 Institute in Budapest, Hungary.

"The 'Underground Streams' research project was carried out by researchers of the former 1956 Institute (Budapest) between 2012 and 2015, aiming to map the Hungarian right-wing tradition after World War II. In 2023, thus eight years after the closure of the project, the main results of the research can be read in English thanks to Central European University Press. According to the key metaphor of the project, even if the political Right had been suppressed after 1945, and especially after the Communist takeover in Hungary, many elements of right-wing political thinking survived as underground streams, only to reemerge after 1989."
https://doi.org/10.5325/hungarianstud.51.2.0207?Ákos Bartha, Hungarian Studies Review

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Table of Contents:

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Underground Streams: National-Conservatives after World War II in Communist Hungary and Eastern Europe

János M. Rainer

PART I. RIGHT-WING TRADITION AFTER 1945 IN EASTERN EUROPE

Chapter 1. The Romanian Ideology: Merging Political Extremes in a National Stalinist Discourse

Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob 

Chapter 2. Absent Traditions: Right-Wing Strands in Slovakian Politics

Attila Simon

Chapter 3. A Round-Trip through the Czech Lands: The Origins of a Liberal Right Revolution

András Schweitzer

Chapter 4. Conservative Right-Wing Political Thinking in Hungary after 1945

János M. Rainer

PART II. RIGHT-WING ENEMIES THROUGH THE LENS OF STATE SECURITY

Chapter 5. Social Resistance under the Kádár Regime and the "Right-Wing" Enemies of State Security

Krisztián Ungváry

Chapter 6. Christian Democrats Under Fire from the Political Police, 1945?1989

Gábor Tabajdi

Chapter 7. "Petty" Arrow Cross Supporters in the Interior Ministry files

András Lénárt and Rudolf Paksa

PART III. PERSONAL LIFE PATHS AND STRATEGIES

Chapter 8. "I Was Brought up the Old Way, I?m a Conservative": A Middle-Class Christian Looks Back on His Life

Zsuzsanna Kőrösi

Chapter 9. A Nationalist of Successive Periods: Miklós Mester (1906?1989)

Katalin Somlai

Chapter 10. From Right to Left?Or Not? Béla Csikós-Nagy, a Paradigmatical Opportunist of Transition

Iván Miklós Szegő

Index

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