History/Political Science paper by Deak, George
Harvard University (Davis Center Associate)

Ervin Sinkó's Path to Communism, 1914-1919

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ervin Sinkó was a Hungarian writer born in Szabadka in 1898 and died in Zagreb in 1967 after a peripatetic and in some ways emblematic twentieth century life. He was an active participant in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, an experience about which he wrote his best known work, Optimists. Sinkó was only 20 years old when the events described in that book took place. His experiences in World War I, before he was drafted and after, when he served on the Russian Front, were critical in setting him on the path to Revolution.

My presentation, in preparation for what might eventually become a biography of Sinkó, will explore in some detail aspects of Sinkó’s life during the war. Most of this material will be taken from Sinkó’s diaries, his newspaper articles, and from his fictional account in Optimists (to the extent that we can verify from other sources that the events described are based on real experiences). My intention is to see how the precocious, adolescent Sinkó’s political opinions developed. I will explore the following questions and issues: Sinkó’s positive and negative attitudes towards military service; his years of service behind the lines as well as his time at the Russian Front in 1917-1918; was Sinkó redeployed to the Italian Front after the war with Russia had ended following Brest-Litovsk; how did the war turn Sinkó towards Lenin’s project of world revolution; and finally, what role, if any, did Sinkó’s Jewish background play in this trajectory.

I would like to propose a paper for the section on World War I, in which Peter Pastor will also be presenting a paper.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
76 Florissant Ave.
Framingham, MA 01701 (USA)
deakgy62@gmail.com
508 877-6937

Education:

B.A. in History from University of Chicago, 1971
Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, 1980

Dissertation topic:
Industry and Politics: The Hungarian National Association of Industrialists, 1902-1914.

After earning my doctorate, I switched fields to Computer Science and worked as a programmer and later as a manager in industry between 1980 and 2011, at which point I retired from the field of information technology and commenced my work as a historian.

Teaching:

Adjunct instructor at University of Massachusetts, Lowell from 2011-2015:
Courses in Modern World History, Russian History, Modern Revolutions.

Currently working on a translation of Sinko’s Novel of a Novel (Egy Regény regenye).

Papers:

Short comment on Sinko’s “Novel of a Novel” at the VIII. Nemzetközi Hungarológiai Kongresszus at Pécs, Hungary, in August, 2016. An expanded version of this paper will appear in print in 2017 in a book edited by Pál Pritz.

Paper entitled “Ervin Sinkó's Search for a Universal Identity: A Hungarian Jewish path to Communism and Beyond.”, ASEEES Conference, November, 2016.

Publications:

The Economy and Polity in Early Twentieth Century Hungary, The Role of the National Association of Industrialists, Boulder: East European Monographs, (Distributed by Columbia University Press) 1990