Creating a Proletarian Avant-Garde: Changing Strategies of Journal Editors Returning to Hungary after Emigrating to Western Europe

Dobó, Gábor (2024) Creating a Proletarian Avant-Garde: Changing Strategies of Journal Editors Returning to Hungary after Emigrating to Western Europe. JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PERIODICAL STUDIES, 9 (2). pp. 51-76. ISSN 2506-6587

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Abstract

Research on European avant-garde periodicals often highlights their role in a transnational network characterized by non-hierarchical knowledge production. However, this perspective faces a challenge when examined in the context of East Central Europe. For example, studies reveal that journal editors returning from Western European emigration to Hungary between the two world wars, by departing from the cultural milieu of the core countries, found themselves excluded from transnational circulation. In contrast to both global and local analyses, my focus is on reinterpreting the history of Hungarian avant-garde periodicals between 1925 and 1928 as an adaptation to local circumstances. Specifically, I aim to explore the modes of production and ideologies available to avant-garde editors, notably Lajos Kassák and Aladár Tamás, who returned from Western Europe to reintegrate their journals into the Hungarian-speaking communities of the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival sources, I trace the transformation of avant-garde journals, once integral to the transnational network, shifting their focus from a middle-class readership and/or an audience composed by fellow avant-garde editors to increasingly engage with local working-class readers. The central point of examination is the journal 365, edited in both Vienna and Budapest. Furthermore, I undertake an analysis of closely affiliated companion journals, including Ma [Today], Dokumentum, Uj Föld [New World/New Ground], 100%, and Munka [Work/Labour].

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