Венгерский историк в интерьере советской историографии: случай профессора Йожефа Перени = A Hungarian Historian within Soviet Historiography: The Case of Professor József Perényi

Gruzdinskaia, Viktoriia S. and Kovalev, Mikhail V. (2025) Венгерский историк в интерьере советской историографии: случай профессора Йожефа Перени = A Hungarian Historian within Soviet Historiography: The Case of Professor József Perényi. RUSSIANSTUDIES.HU, 7 (2). pp. 115-138. ISSN 2677-1640

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Abstract

The article examines the interactions of Professor József Perényi (1915–1981), a Hungarian historian and expert on the history of Russia and Eastern Europe, with his Soviet colleagues, as well as his perception of the Soviet academic study of history. Specifically, it explores Perényi’s contacts with B.D. Grekov, A.L. Sidorov, M.N. Tikhomirov, and T.M. Islamov. The article highlights the evolution of Perényi’s view of official Soviet historiography, tracing his shift from fascination with it immediately after World War II to his attempts to transcend the boundaries of the official Soviet narrative during the 1960s and 1970s. From 1956 to 1975, Perényi headed up the Department of Eastern European History at the University of Budapest. Under his leadership, the Department gained international recognition, although it never fully integrated into the official hierarchical structure of Hungarian historiography. Perényi endeavored to develop a Marxist-based approach to Eastern European history while simultaneously incorporating modern Western historical scholarship. His views, however, diverged sharply from official Soviet narratives and did not align with Soviet-style Marxism. Perényi published his research in Moscow, wrote reviews of Soviet works, and his publications were cited by Soviet scholars. However, he was somewhat excluded from the system of official Soviet-Hungarian academic exchanges, primarily because his views did not conform to it. His limited involvement in the Soviet-Hungarian Historians’ Commission and his more active participation in the International Association for the Study of South-Eastern Europe are indicative of this exclusion. The article concludes that despite the challenges he faced during the socialist period, Perényi’s scholarly and pedagogical work played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Budapest School of Russian Studies

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