History/Political Science paper by Stark, Tamás
New Sources on the Fate of Hungarian Prisoners in Soviet Captivity (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
The COVID-affected year of 2021 brought a breakthrough in the research of the history of Hungarian prisoners and civilian internees in Soviet captivity. In 2015 Hungarian government declared that year and the following year as the Year of Remembrance of Hungarian Prisoners in Soviet Captivity during and after the Second World War. Since then, the story of the prisoners has attracted the attention not only of historians but also of the general public. The Hungarian National Archives purchased copies of 682,000 personal files of Hungarian prisoners from the Russian National Archives. Each file contains personal details of the prisoners, the places of captivity in the Soviet Union, and the date of repatriation or death. The Hungarian National Archives made this unique resource available online in February 2021, digitised and accessible to all. The proposed presentation will tell, how this new source has impacted research on the history of Hungarian prisoners in the Soviet Union in general and the longstanding debate on prisoners statistics in particular. It will also talk about the debates on memorial politics on the issue of POWs and civilian internees. The paper will also point the contradiction that, while the government commemorates the Hungarian victims of the Soviet forced labor camps years after year, it blames mainly the Western powers for their tragic fate.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tamas Stark received his PhD from the Eötvös Loránd University in 1993. From 1983 he was a researcher at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and in 2000 he was appointed a senior research fellow. In 2014 he was Fulbright visiting professor at the Nazareth College in Rochester NY. His specialization is forced population movement in East-Central Europe in the period 1938-1956, with special regard to the history of the Holocaust, the fate of prisoners of war and civilian internees and postwar migrations. His main publications include: Hungarian Jews During the Holocaust and After the Second World War, 1939–1949; A Statistical Review ( Boulder CO, 2000), Magyar foglyok a Szovjetunióban (Budapest 2006) and „...akkor aszt mondták kicsi robot” – A magyar polgári lakosság elhurcolása a Szovjetunióba korabeli dokumentumok tükrében. (Budapest 2017).