Scandal in a Small Town: Understanding Modern Hungary Though the Stories of Three Families

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The story opens in 1989 - on the eve of communism's collapse - with the suicide of the dynamic and popular mayor of a small Hungarian town." The immediate circumstances are fairly mundane. The mayor had asked a high school teacher to raise the final grade of the local Communist party secretary's son; the teacher complied, but protested. In the heady atmosphere of 1989, the mayor's petty interference and favoritism seemed to typify the corruption of national life under the communist system. The story of this small-town scandal became a sensation in the Hungarian national press during the months leading up to the fall of the regime.

SYNOPSIS

Hollos (anthropology, Brown University) approaches recent Hungarian history through the history of one small town—and presents the history of the town through a telling of three inter-linked family histories. Each family represents one of the social groups in the community, and their fates reflect the uneven course of Eastern European history as Hungary experienced changes in political and economic regimes.