Academia and State Socialism--Essays on the Political History of Academic Life in Post-1945 Hungary and Eastern Europe (review)

Academia certainly was one of the fields of human activity most affected by the bitter political and ideological confrontation of the Cold War. In the years immediately after 1945, many scientists and researchers from all over Europe briefly nourished hopes that, after having fallen into the abyss of such a murderous conflict as World War II, the Old Continent would finally see the triumph of humanist principles. Their dream was that scientific and scholarly research would benefit from unlimited international cooperation, generously supported and promoted by every government for the cause of peace and human progress.

Although this vision was indeed realized, at least in part, in the restricted core of what became Western Europe—with its U.S.-sponsored "Euro Atlantic" institutions (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Council of Europe, the Common Market/European Union, and the like)—the most ardent proponents of the vision were probably living on what was quickly becoming the "wrong" side of the Iron Curtain. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe had not yet switched from the Scylla of Hitlerism to the Charybdis of Stalinism, and some of the leading democratic intellectuals in those countries were hoping against all odds that the moment had finally come, after hundreds of years of forcible division, for them to attain equal status with the advanced countries of the West.

People like Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes, Hungary's political thinker István Bibó, and many others dreamed of a special role to be played by their countries, that of a political and cultural "bridge" between the capitalist West and the Soviet East. Such a role also entailed a domestic experiment: an attempt at blending the advantages of both systems in a "third way" that, if successful, could overcome the constant tension between freedom and social justice and might even provide an example and a path to follow for both the Eastern and the Western prevailing models.

Alas, the year 1948 put an end to all remaining hopes in both Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The time was up for the "third-wayists," who could now choose between being silenced or going into exile. Among the latter, one finds the distinguished Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi, discoverer of vitamin C in 1931 and winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1937. The first part of Györgyi Péteri's book, which consists of a collection of essays related to the role of science and scholarship in Hungary under Communism, is basically devoted to the substantial contribution that Szent-Györgyi provided to the "third way" utopian dream.

Szent-Györgyi, born in 1893 to a family of the upper-middle nobility, had maintained strong links to Anglo-American academic institutions since the mid-1920s and had spent four years in Great Britain at Cambridge University working with people like Joseph Needham, who held rather radical views. Also, Szent-Györgyi's research at home was generously supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Aware of the great damage that World War II was causing to Hungary's connections to the West, he took the initiative in February 1943 of traveling to Istanbul to meet the British and make himself available to lead a new Hungarian government that would take the side of the Allies. Information on the meeting was also sent to Moscow, where Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov took careful note of Szent-Györgyi's political ambitions.

When the Soviet army occupied Budapest two years later, the scientist and his family were offered protection by an English-speaking officer and were kept in hiding until the late spring of 1945, long after the new political authorities were installed in office. In the summer, Szent-Györgyi endeavored to pay a two-month visit to the Soviet Union, where he was, so to say, solemnly "christened" a fellow...