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COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE FAMILY In terms of a child’s development the family—the space of primary socialisation —is of the utmost importance. At the time of their fathers’ arrests our interviewees were all children, thus their families played a decisive role in how much they learned about their fathers, about their fathers’ imprisonment or execution, and about the revolution itself. It was from their families that they received— or should have received—answers to their often unspoken questions about what their fathers had done, why they had been sentenced, in what respect their families differed from others, why they too were being penalised, and whether their fathers were guilty, innocent, or perhaps even heroes. It was (or should have been) the task of the family to prepare the child for life in a world in which, according to the official ideology, his or her father was an enemy and the family was stigmatised and persecuted because of his “crime”. The ease with which a child was able to come to terms with the trauma and cope with the problems arising from the double communication that characterised everyday life in the era also depended on his or her family. In the case of our interviewees it is significant that the primary and most important source of information was the mother, or the grandparent or other relative who raised him or her. The internalisation of reality took place predominantly as a result of their influence, as they represented the first significant other. All parents tried to keep family life going according to the existing traditions and routines. Their success depended mainly on the mother’s personality, the stability of the family’s values, and on its available resources. The mother’s instinctive or conscious choice of strategy played a major role in determining her children’s future lives. In the course of our research we identified three different communication strategies. These are not clearly distinct varieties, and they could be modified even within individual families with the passage of time. We even came across one case in which a mother discussed events with her elder child but not with the younger one, in an attempt to spare him from the painful knowledge. “AT HOME WE TALKED OPENLY” In those families which followed the strategy of sincere, open communication, children—depending on their age, degree of experience and maturity—were informed about everything that was going on. What the father had done in 1956 Communication within the family and its consequences was discussed openly. The mothers knew—or felt instinctively —that if they did not tell their children the truth, it would reach them in a distorted form and would cause personality problems in later life. This must have been in their minds, even if they did not express it in so many words. They therefore involved their children in the handling of everyday problems and stressed that from the moment of the arrest everything was to be treated as a family matter. They regarded it as permanently important that the children remain in contact with their fathers and that the fathers’ memory be kept alive. If the opportunity arose, they took the children along to the trial and on prison visits. They involved the children in getting things together for the parcels to be sent to the prison, and they wrote letters together. The children were informed about the sentence immediately. They had first-hand experience of the prison, the iron bars and the guards, and their fathers remained present within the family in a spiritual, even if not physical, way. “On Sundays we would go to my paternal grandmother’s for lunch, and granny would always lay a place at the table for my father as well. There was always one setting extra, so in this strange way he was always present with us.” (KINGA GÖNCZ) “Whenever dad was mentioned I always felt that he was important and that they loved each other, and that mum would do anything she could to help him. He was present in our lives in the form of letters, prison visits, parcels, news of his whereabouts. He was always important and was not excluded from the family.” (KATALIN LITVÁN) Older children had personal experience and immediate memories of their fathers, of the revolution, and of the father’s arrest. Their mothers would share their problems with them from the start and members of the family faced, and tried to come to terms...

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