Ferenc Kulin
Ferenc Kulin was born in Pomáz in 1943. His career from the late 1960s to the present day has been marked not only by his work as a teacher, but also as an editor, researcher and writer. His commitment to public life is almost a family tradition: while his maternal grandfather was the chief notary and then mayor of Nagyszalonta (Salonta, Romania), his two brothers – Sándor (in Budakalász) and Imre (in Pomáz) – were elected to the same office.
Despite all this, Ferenc Kulin had difficulties at the beginning of his career: he was admitted to the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University only for the third time in 1963. This is when the discriminatory rules based on social origin were repealed. He spent two years working: the first as an unskilled worker in the dry-finishing department of the Budakalász Textile Factory, and the second in the periodicals archive of the National Széchényi Library [OSZK]. The latter had a lasting influence on Ferenc Kulin's later career, as it was here that he developed his interest in reform-era [1825-1848] Hungarian literature, which would later determine his entire research and teaching career. This was because the Széchényi Library's periodical archives were mainly visited by researchers, so it functioned as a kind of academic workshop, where it was possible to read prepared material and meet the great scholars who visited the library. He met his later teacher, Pál Pándi, who was doing research for his doctoral dissertation, later published as a book Kísértetjárás (lit. Ghost Walk) in Hungary, which traced the impact of utopian socialist concepts in Hungary. Kulin was the librarian assigned to Pál Pándi at the OSZK, which was then still located in the Museum Garden, so he became familiar with the periodicals and culture of the era by reading the reform-era periodicals he had requested.
University years
When in 1963, at the beginning of the consolidation period of the Kádár era, Ferenc Kulin started his studies of Hungarian and Russian at the Faculty of Humanities, he already found his future field of research, and, as a student two years older than his classmates, he was respected by his fellow students. This led him to start a literary student circle at the Faculty of Arts. Just as the year spent in the Széchényi Library brought Ferenc Kulin closer to the Hungarian literature of the reform era, the leadership of the literary student circle brought him closer to the contemporary literature. As the president of the student circle, he received a standing invitation to the evenings of the Writers' Union, thanks to Zoltán Fábián, who was the secretary of the Writers' Union. At these events, Ferenc Kulin had the opportunity to meet the outstanding figures of Hungarian literature in person, including László Németh, Gyula Illyés, Lajos Kassák and Géza Féja.
In addition, the literature students' circle in the Faculty of Arts also provided an opportunity to get to know the young, emerging writers of the period, especially when they organised the students' journal Acta Juvenum. This was Ferenc Kulin's first editorial task, and it is a task to which he returned repeatedly, with brief interruptions from the mid-1960s onwards. Another defining experience of the university years for Ferenc Kulin was the organisation of the so-called Reform-Era Cabinet. In his second year, twelve students were selected from his class to be trained in the academic study of Hungarian Reform-era literature. Many of the participants in these seminars, coordinated by József Waldapfel and Pál Pándi, became well-known and respected figures in the academic and cultural worlds, such as Károly Alexa, Erzsébet Csonka, Anna Fábri, Ferenc Kerényi, Gabriella Lőcsi.
In his fifth year of university, Ferenc Kulin was awarded a scholarship by the Nógrád County Council, in exchange for which he agreed to teach in Nógrád County for two years after university. This is how he ended up in Pásztó in 1968, at the Mikszáth Kálmán Secondary School, where he met his wife. After long hesitation, Ferenc Kulin joined the MSZMP [Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party] in 1970, also in Pásztó. He often spoke about the background to his decision, but for a long time he did not talk about his real reason. In an interview with László Szörényi in 1990, he only 'confessed' that he experienced his party membership with a sense of guilt and was aware that he had to constantly atone for it, but fearing for the safety of his family, he did not reveal the specific motives for his 'entry' until he felt he had to fear the secret services, which had retreated into the background after the regime change. The real reason was that the secret services had twice (in 1968 and 1969) tried to recruit him to use his Russian language skills to play a role in the work of the ‘counterintelligence’ and to report regularly on his uncle, the astronomer George Kulin. In the first case, Pál Pándi was able to fend off the unsolicited approach, but in the second case he was unable to help and suggested the young Kulin to join the party as an escape route, convincing him that neither Kulin's religious faith nor the fact that his brothers had taken an active part in the 1956 revolution would be an obstacle. During his two-year adventure in Pásztó, Ferenc Kulin's relationship with ELTE was not broken: Pál Pándi helped him to finish his classes by noon on Thursday so that he could continue his research on the reform era. Finally, in 1970, at the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed a full-time assistant professor at Eötvös Loránd University and thus began Ferenc Kulin's decades-long career as a university lecturer.
The editor
Almost simultaneously with his university appointment, in 1971, Kulin became assistant editor of the journal Irodalomtörténet, edited by Péter Nagy. Two years later, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the university’s literary student journal Jelenlét, which also meant an escape from the stifling editorial atmosphere of Irodalomtörténet. At Jelenlét, he was already able to engage in contemporary literary editorial work of the kind that would later characterize his Mozgó Világ period as well: it was during this time that members of the younger generation of writers began their literary careers at the journal.
At the end of 1974, Miklós Veress – who, together with him, had been present at the founding of the József Attila Circle in 1973, which brought together young writers – approached Ferenc Kulin to invite him to the position of deputy editor-in-chief of Mozgó Világ, which at that time was being reorganized and becoming a regularly published bimonthly journal. However, the shared history of Ferenc Kulin and Mozgó Világ came to an end – though not permanently – after six years, in 1980. At that point, exhausted by the ongoing disputes with the KISZ [Hungarian Young Communist League] Central Committee, Kulin resigned from the journal. A year later, however, in 1981, when Miklós Veress also stepped down and the journal was left without an editor-in-chief, the editorial staff – with the approval of György Aczél [leading cultural politician of the Kádár regime 1956-1988] – called Ferenc Kulin back. Thus, Kulin’s second period at Mozgó Világ lasted from 1981 to 1983, this time as editor-in-chief. He remembers this period as a power game in which he refused to yield the principles he had laid down when accepting the editor-in-chief position, while György Aczél constantly tried to win him over to his rapidly changing ideas. This, as could be expected, led to continual conflicts.
These ongoing tensions culminated in two major clashes. The first conflict erupted around Tamás Bauer’s publication: A második gazdasági reform és a tulajdonviszonyok. Szempontok az új gazdasági mechanizmus továbbfejlesztéséhez (The Second Economic Reform and Ownership Relations. Considerations for the Further Development of the New Economic Mechanism), which was published in November 1982 in Mozgó Világ. The impact of the study on the harmful effects of the KGST [CMEA, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance] and central planning reached the point that Kulin was summoned before the Cultural-Theoretical Working Group of the MSZMP Central Committee to practice self-criticism over the publication of the study. Although Kulin did not self-criticise, this did not lead to his resignation or removal, as George Aczél urged him "not to rush to judgment", especially as criticism of planned economy in the 1980s was increasingly tolerated by the Soviet leadership in Moscow in the increasingly marketized Eastern bloc. According to Ferenc Kulin’s interpretation, Mozgó Világ had a certain degree of freedom because, from the early 1970s, the country’s debt to the West accelerated, replacing the previous one-sided dependence on Moscow with a new situation of “serving two masters.” In this dual dependence, Kulin believed, György Aczél aimed to shape Mozgó Világ into a journal that would satisfy both Moscow and Washington – yet this situation only helped to a certain extent; beyond that point, it hindered the editorial staff from shaping the journal according to their own principles.
During Ferenc Kulin’s tenure as editor-in-chief, the second scandal surrounding the journal – which eventually led to his removal – erupted a year later, at the end of 1983. The journal intended to publish István Bibó’s essay Az európai társadalomfejlődés értelme (The Meaning of European Social Development), written four years earlier but never before published. György Aczél wanted to block its publication, but the editorial staff refused to comply. As a compromise, Aczél proposed that the essay be accompanied by the transcript of a roundtable discussion (participants: Attila Ágh, Béla Németh G., György Szabad, Jenő Szűcs, András Gergely, and Ferenc Kulin), yet even this was not deemed sufficient to mitigate the impact of Bibó’s radical critique of Marxism. While the journal could still be printed, its distribution was prevented, and Ferenc Kulin was removed from the editorial helm.
This action was accompanied by one of the most significant intellectual protests of the 1980s: following Kulin, the entire editorial staff of Mozgó Világ resigned, and hundreds protested the censorship and the dismissal of the editor-in-chief through a public petition. Post-1989 historical research has also established that, contrary to popular belief, Kulin’s removal was not the decision of György Aczél, but directly of János Kádár. Although Kulin received numerous offers for leadership positions in institutions after his removal, he declined them, stating that accepting any would have meant compromising with the regime and betraying his friends who had also left Mozgó Világ and thus risked their livelihoods. In the following years, he devoted his time to university teaching and research, especially considering that, after his dismissal, he regarded it as a particular stroke of luck that he was not fired from his university position.
At the same time, holding the positions of deputy editor-in-chief and later editor-in-chief of Mozgó Világ was a significant psychological burden for Ferenc Kulin. The trauma of monthly consultations with the KISZ and government ministries, as well as navigating cultural-political pressures, was expressed in two dramas. In A békíthetetlen (The Irreconcilable) (1982), realized as a television play and dealing with the story of Janus Pannonius [influential intellectual in the Kingdom of Hungary, 1434-1472], and in Kölcsey [writer of the Hungarian national anthem, 1790-1838], also presented as a television play in 1989, he portrayed the two poet-politicians with historical accuracy while simultaneously analysing and interpreting their relevance to the present.
Ferenc Kulin’s editorial work continued as the first editor-in-chief of Magyar Napló, the literary weekly affiliated with the Writers’ Union, which he helped launch in 1989–1990. Thirty-seven years after his removal from Mozgó Világ, he later served as editor-in-chief of Magyar Művészet, the quarterly art-theoretical journal of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. Kulin was invited to lead the journal after the Academy’s leadership accepted the editorial principles, methods, and preferred art-theoretical directions that he outlined.
Compared to the bimonthly and later monthly schedule of Mozgó Világ, this position allowed for a calmer work pace due to its quarterly publication, though Kulin’s task here was to build a newly launched journal from the ground up. The guiding idea of the periodical was a critical approach to the artistic movements of the second half of the twentieth century, which Kulin traced using the English-language art-historical tradition and its reception in Hungary. Kulin exemplifies his aesthetic approach, which he considers especially important as a literary historian, through the lines of Ferenc Kölcsey:
"Let's face it, we didn't start learning from the Romans in the right way. Instead of rising up in our own circle by their help, we have tended to a servile following; instead of absorbing their spirits and making them our own in our own world, we have moved by them into their worlds; but there, not quite being able to find ourselves, we have looked back to our own country, and remain strangers here and there with our imaginations forever divided. Is it not obvious that true national poetry can and must take wing only in the bosom of the nation? The light of the nation, kindled by a foreign fire, shines only through the gloom."
Kulin stepped down as editor-in-chief of Magyar Művészet in mid-2020, after seven years, with around 250 authors publishing in the magazine, after the second issue of the year. However, this year he also took on another journal-editing role, as a member of the editorial board of Országút, launched in early 2020.
The (cultural) politician
Although in many respects the editing of the journal can be considered as cultural-political work, Ferenc Kulin's real political activity began in 1987, when he took part in the first Lakitelek meeting. It is important to add that Kulin had already camped in Lakitelek in 1979, but then at a meeting of the József Attila Circle (JAK), which was opened by the elderly Gyula Illyés. After the 1987 meeting, Kulin had not yet decided to enter politics, but only a few months later he felt the "inevitability" of doing so. Thus, when the MDF [Hungarian Democratic Forum] was founded in 1988, Kulin was elected as a member of the executive committee and later as one of the vice-presidents of the organisation. And when, in the autumn of 1989, the MDF's cooperation with the reformist populist wing of the MSZMP's became impossible and József Antall [Prime Minister of Hungary 1990-1993] (whom Kulin still knew as a József Eötvös-scholar) was elected chairman, he became a direct colleague of the future prime minister as vice-chairman-general. Ferenc Kulin was involved in the founding of more than fifty local branches of MDF throughout the country, and in the 1990 elections he was elected to Parliament from the Pest County regional list, where he was chairperson of the Parliament’s Cultural Committee for almost four years, and was elected leader of the MDF parliamentary group from December 1993 (after the death of József Antall).
As chairperson of the Parliament’s Cultural Committee, Kulin was also part of the history of the founding of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. In 1992, the possibility arose that, following the concept of István Széchenyi, artists could also become members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Ferenc Kulin discussed this with Domokos Kosáry, the President of the Academy, and Imre Makovecz, the founder of the civil association of artists. However, since Imre Makovecz stated that his organisation would only join the MTA if it carried out a revision of their membership, and Domokos Kosáry could not accept this condition–citing the constitutional framework of the regime change–, no agreement could be reached.
For about five years after his time in parliament, Kulin headed the Kölcsey Institute, a socio-political research institute that primarily carried out socio-political, sociological and cultural-historical analyses for members of parliament and the new political intelligentsia and published volumes of studies under the title Kölcsey füzetek (lit. Kölcsey Booklets). In this context, Kulin organised several conferences on topics ranging from the interpretation of the 19th century Hungarian bourgeois transformation to the analysis of the public health effects of genetically modified food. For three years, Kulin also worked as a senior advisor to President Ferenc Mádl [President of Hungary, 2000-2005] and as head of the socio-political department of the Office of the President, where one of his initiatives was to modernise the education of the Hungarian Roma population.
The writer
Although Ferenc Kulin's writing career began with a science fiction novel, Aster, co-written with György Kulin and Zoltán Fábián in 1971, he found his true genre in historical drama. His three historical plays were published in 1987 in a volume entitled A bukásunk lesz a vesztetek (lit. Our Fall Will Be Your Demise). In his Mi lettünk volna?! (lit. What Would We Have Been?!) he portrays the history of Béla III. In The Unreconcilable he deals with Janus Pannonius, while Kölcsey focuses on the author of [the national anthem] Himnusz (lit. Hymn). Being documentary dramas is a common feature of these historical dramas, except for the one on Béla III, i.e. they deal with themes that Kulin has also addressed in an academic way. Although Kulin is known primarily as a scholar of 18th-19th century Hungarian literature, he also undertook seminars on Early Hungarian Literature at the university. His dramas trace both the moral conflicts of his heroes wrestling with power and the political experience of his own involvement.
In 2020, Kulin published another historical documentary drama: Bessenyei Anna képzelt naplója című darab két részben (lit. The Imaginary Diary of Anna Bessenyei in Two Parts), was published in the March and April 2020 issues of Hitel. In addition, his Kölcsey drama was made into a TV drama in 1989, and András Ferenc is planning to make a film adaptation of it. Kulin is also working on a new historical play that would take readers back to the political struggles that preceded the Reunification.
The researcher
Kulin's career as a literary historian is also characterised by the same interest in literature and history that is reflected in his dramas. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the reform-era image of Dózsa (Hódíthatatlan szellem. [lit. Unconquerable Spirit.] Akadémiai, 1982) and his most important literary history studies are collected in his volumes Közelítések a reformkorhoz (lit. Approaches to the Reform Era) (Magvető, 1986) and Küldetéstudat és szerepkeresés (lit. Mission Awareness and Role-Seeking) (Argumentum, 2012). In addition, his career is marked by several conferences and book-editing projects, while in recent years his articles in Magyar Művészet have focused on topics of theory of literature and art. After decades at the Faculty of Humanities of ELTE, Ferenc Kulin continued his career as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary.
In recent years, Ferenc Kulin has published several historical works on state socialism and regime change. He never intended to write a memoir, but in these studies, he has combined his personal experience, historical sources and the lessons of debates on geopolitical change. (A tét [lit. The Stake] Bagolyvár Kiadó, 1994; Középkezdés [lit. Mid-paragraph]. Mundus, 1998; Készenlét [lit. Standby] Argumentum, 2008; Forradalom helyett [lit. Instead of Revolution] Magyar Szemle Books, 2018.)
[2020]