People of the Revolution and the USSR

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Any Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) 1

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Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) 1
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Any Counter-revolutionary forces 20 Left critics of Bolshevism 1 Socialist-bloc reform leader 8 Dissident 1 Non-Bolshevik socialists 6 Fascists and Nazis 6 Western Marxist theorists 1 Marxism and communism 27 Liberalism and republicanism 3 Conservatism and Christian democracy 9 Monarchy and royalism 4 Agrarianism and peasant parties 3 Nationalism 4
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The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 1
Western Marxist theorists Background: Hungary Clear all

György Lukács

Lukács György
Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Western Marxist theorists Hungary Hungary 1885–1971 ○ Lung cancer

Founder of Western Marxism: the Hungarian thinker who reoriented 20th-century Marxist philosophy with History and Class Consciousness

“Now, after the collapse of actually existing socialism, his questions look like the only surviving form of Marxism.” — from a late-life interview

Hungarian Marxist philosopher who founded Western Marxism with History and Class Consciousness (1923), establishing the concepts of reification and class consciousness. Served as commissar/minister of culture in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic and the 1956 Imre Nagy government.

Career timeline
  • 1902–1906Graduates Budapest law faculty; doctorate in law from Kolozsvár University
  • 1909PhD in philosophy from Budapest University with The Form of Drama
  • 1912–1918Lives in Heidelberg, studying with Simmel, Weber and Bloch
  • 1918Joins the Hungarian Communist Party (KMP)
  • 1919.03–08Deputy People's Commissar for Culture; political commissar, Hungarian Red Army
  • 1919–1929Exile in Vienna; elected KMP CC General Secretary 1928, removed for right deviation
  • 1923Publishes History and Class Consciousness; denounced as revisionist by Comintern
  • 1929–1945Resides in Moscow; Marx-Engels Institute and Literary Critic journal
  • 1941Arrested by NKVD; released after 2 months on Dimitrov's intervention
  • 1942Defends The Young Hegel dissertation, USSR Academy of Sciences
  • 1945–1958Professor of aesthetics, University of Budapest; member of parliament
  • 1956.10–11Minister of Culture in Imre Nagy government; interned in Romania
  • 1957–1967Expelled from party; reinstated 1967. The Specificity of the Aesthetic