12. 06. 2012.
Rudolf Paksa: The Hungarian National Socialist Elite
In his lecture Rudolf Paksa, junior research fellow of the Institute, spoke about his research, the topic, the research methods and results of his PhD thesis titled „The Hungarian Far Right Elite from the 1930s to 1945”, which he defended in May this year.
The aim of his research was to study and analyze the “new far right-wing”, that is, the Hungarian national socialist elite appearing in the 1930s and its performance in a broad sense. For this, he made important basic and additional research, like clearly defining basic notions, analyzing the topic in details considering historiographic, political, sociological and ideological factors as well, and making guides for further studies (appendices). While defining the far-right, he distinguished the different trends, movements and parties, locating their place in the Hungarian political life as well. He also specified the concept of the „elite” and summarized the research results regarding the Hungarian political elite in the Horthy era.
In his dissertation, Paksa compiled the chronology of the history of the Hungarian far right, and inspected the long-living “myths” about it, with the result of finding most of them untrue or half-true.
