Victims, Beneficiaries, or Somewhere in Between?: Hungarian Athletes’ Memories On Socialism

• In Event: Oral History and Post-Socialist Memories in Hungary, East Germany, and Eastern Ukraine

Abstract

The experience of elite athletes from the socialist states in Eastern Europe, particularly from East Germany, has received attention only insofar as to condemn the horrors they endured as victims of a state-controlled doping system. This image coincides with how most East Europeans collectively remember the socialist period, as they focus on the suffering, intense surveillance, and everyday material shortages. Yet this well-documented, double-victim narrative veils the other side of athletes’ experiences: the extraordinary privileges and benefits that they received as a result of being cultural elites. This paper analyzes the ways that athletes from socialist Hungary chose to remember their experiences as elites under state socialism. Over the last four years, I have conducted thirty interviews with former athletes, coaches, and sport leaders who played an active role in elite sport in Hungary from 1948-1989. Examining the interviews illustrates a kind of two-sided interpretation of the socialist period. On the one hand, many Hungarian athletes enjoyed providing lengthy descriptions of the incredible opportunities they had, the prized rewards they obtained, and the luxury of being able to travel abroad. On the other hand, they almost always made a point to emphasize in broad terms that they “survived that terrible period,” as Olympic pentathlete and current director of Adidas Hungary Attila Császári phrased it. Why did the athletes interpret their experiences in this way? What does this say about the athletes’ attempt to mold their identities, twenty-eight years after the collapse of socialism? What is the extent of the impact of Hungary’s current anti-communist political climate on athletes’ memories and identity? By exploring these and other questions, my paper addresses the issues of individual versus collective memory and identity within a society that continues to struggle with coming to terms with numerous aspects of its past.

Author

• Johanna Mellis, University of Florida