Talk:Emese

— JIP | Talk 06:18, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Page improvements / translation from Hungarian

In terms of improving this page, I think it would be best to create a loose translation of the more detailed Hungarian page. So I set up a sandbox page here to work on the translation. Anyone who's interested, please feel free to help edit it - translate a paragraph, proofread something, add sources, or whatever! Emika22 (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

György Szabados, the “creator” of early Hungarian history

This article on Emese seems to heavily feature quotations from György Szabados, who appears to be more of a fringe scholar in the service of Orban's rewriting of history, than a serious academic historian. To quote the academic Hungarian historian Eva S. Balogh:

György Szabados, co-author of the four history textbooks just released, has been tooting his and Péter Borhegyi’s horns. He was already interviewed by Magyar Nemzet, where he proudly announced the great discoveries they made in the last three months while putting together the new textbooks. For example, “it came to light that we can speak of a Hungarian grand principality even before the arrival of the Hungarians” in the Carpathian Basin. They also learned that Saint Stephen wasn’t crowned in Esztergom but in Székesfehérvár.” Indeed, a much more appropriate choice, since Székesfehérvár happens to be Viktor Orbán’s birthplace.

What do we know about this György Szabados, who, by all indications, seems to be a favorite of the present regime? According to his detailed curriculum vitae, he was a student at the University of Szeged between 1990 and 1995, where he double majored in history and Hungarian. His diploma entitled him to teach these two subjects in high school. Subsequently, he enrolled in the university’s doctoral program in medieval studies and received his Ph.D. in 2003 with a dissertation on King Imre, king of Hungary and Serbia between 1196 and 1204. On the basis of this dissertation, he eventually published a short article in Századok in 2011.

In the card catalogue of the Széchenyi Library, Hungary’s national library, I found only one item under his name. It is an English-language book titled Shamanhood and Mythology: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy and Current Techniques of Research (Budapest 2017), of which he was one of the editors. Interestingly, this item is not on Szabados’s curriculum vitae. On the other hand, he claims to be the author of two other books. The first is A magyar történelem kezdeteiről. Az előidő-szemlélet hangsúlyváltásai a XVIII században (Budapest: Balassi, 2006). Since I don’t have the foggiest idea what his unique “előidő” theory could possibly mean, I leave that to the imagination of my readers. His second book, published in Szeged, was Magyar államalapítások a IX-XI. században, the title of which indicates that he was a follower of the late Gyula László, a promoter of the by-now discarded theory of dual or perhaps multiple conquests.

Otherwise, his curriculum vitae is very long, though a lot of the space is taken up by a list of all his lectures. He also wrote an impressive 133 articles. Closer observation, however, reveals that they include his entries for Magyar Művelődéstörténeti Lexikon and pieces written for popular magazines like Élet és Tudomány.

We may understand Szabados’s meteoric rise better if we look under the innocent-sounding rubric “peer reviews.” I’m not sure whether I wrote about the TV series “Nemzeti Nagyvizit,” the text of which was eventually published in two volumes, edited by none other than Miklós Kásler. In any case, Szabados was the ultimate judge of the historical accuracy of the series and the books. The TV series was controversial. For anyone who is interested in the “nagyvizit,” I highly recommend some of the 25-minute segments on YouTube. National Nagyvizit was published in 2015, and I don’t think it was a coincidence that Szabados received the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit in 2016.

As far as Szabados’s employment record is concerned, it is not easy to put together a coherent picture. On one of the internet sites dealing with his career, he listed himself as “historical adviser” to the Szent István Király Múzeum in Székesfehérvár in 2017 and, concurrently, as a lecturer (óraadó) at the University of Szeged. In 2018 he is listed as an employee of the Siklósi Gyula Várostörténeti Kutatóközpont. On his CV he lists his job as a long-time member (1999-2017) of a research group on medieval history, supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. According to the group’s web site, their task is to collect and publish surviving documents of Hungarian history between 1301 and 1387 and the era of King Sigismund (1387-1437). So, it seems that once his employment came to an end at the research group, he got temporary jobs as “adviser” to museums and local history groups in Székesfehérvár until the beginning of 2018, when he was hired as senior researcher at the Gyula László Research Institute. His work with Miklós Kásler and his award of a knight’s cross certainly helped. In October of that year, as I wrote about it at the time, Kásler dreamed up a new institute whose job was to discover more about the ancestors of Hungarians, the Magyarságkutató Központ, which seemed to be a duplication of the research institute bearing Gyula László’s name. The two were merged at the beginning of January 2019.

In January 2019, Válasz ran an article with the title “Scythian tale or a new Hungarian prehistory?” Válasz at the time had an inkling that Szabados had been chosen to be one of the chief honchos at the new, integrated research institute. The article described him as “a good historian who—as one of our informants put it—is a recalcitrant kind from the realist school of Gyula Kristó who time and again moves toward theories hard to prove.” Moreover, he was a member of the research group that was involved with the DNA studies of King Béla III and came to the “conclusion” that he was not “Finno-Ugric.”

From his interview with the reporter of Magyar Nemzet, it is obvious that Szabados is either incapable of distinguishing between language and ethnicity or he willfully distorts the facts by accusing historians of “equating the history of a language with the history of a people.” It is almost criminal that this man, thanks to Miklós Kásler, got the job of writing history textbooks, with disastrous results for future generations of Hungarians.

I think it would be prudent to stick to György Györffy, who is considered one of the most learned expert on early Hungarian history, and avoid using Szabados's fantasies. Azure94 (talk) 17:36, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The quote above shows quite a lot of ignorance and bias. You can check Szabados' publication list, his articles and monographs were published in historiographic journals (e.g. Századok, SZTE Medieval Library Publishers). Hungarian prehistory is not an exact existing unassailable knowledge base, but a complex of various historiographical theories, which often oppose each other. Thus Györffy who is one of the most prestigious, is by no means unassailable in all areas. For instance, his contemporary Gyula Kristó, an equally legendary historian, disagreed with him on almost everything. Szabados' works are cited by various academic works. An opinion of a political blogger Eva S. Balogh is irrelevant here. Szabados is a mainstream historian, some of whose views may be in the minority, but this is almost true for all medievalists within Hungarian historiography, especially regarding the Hungarian prehistory. --Norden1990 (talk) 20:38, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Norden1990,

Azure94 suddenly appeared and made an aggressive edit war on many Hungarian realted articles to push his personal POV against 30+ academic sources from several authors from several countries: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hungary#Agressive edit war on Hungarian topics, while in other cases he is happy to use a newspaper for an old historical person as "reliable academic source" if this support his POV Talk:Maurice Benyovszky#Please the Hungarian patriots to calm down. Meantime he made many personal insults like "liar, blind troll, bizarre schizophrenic" [1][2][3]. Meantime intentionally he followed me in many articles, he exclusively edited almost only those articles what I edited recently or my edits, one example Talk:Gesta Hungarorum#Dennis Deletant, he said I need to be carefully to follow exactly what the academic source says, but as a double standard in other cases he wants to be not so carefully if the academic sources do not support his personal POV. I am sure he found that article because I edited recently, so I think this feedback by him is part of his childish harassment campaign against me. I bet Azure do not intend to edit this article or to extend it, just he found a political blogger :D

He also keen to blacklist Hungarian historians, institutes, newspapers, by his political POV. Azure wants to decide which Hungarian historians allowed to publish regarding Hungarian history in many Hungarian related Wiki articles because according to his own word "watchdog NGO" (Hungarian Spectrum) made a critic about them :D Here he blacklisted Sándor Szakály Talk:First Vienna Award#"Non-violent" who was already a respected historian before he came the director of Veritas, Azure says it is not allowed to use him, Magyar Nemzet journal, Veritas (many historians), because it is a Hungarian government institute and because of Orban :D I think in all countries the majority of historians are working at government institutes and paid by the actual government, and Orban is already 17 years prime minister, so it is hard to find any who is not worked such a long period at any government institute... and all academic Hungarian institutes are paid by the actual government, also the Hungarian Academy of Sciense. For example, in USA Repulicans critize everything what Democrats do and inverse Democrats critize everything Repulicans do. There are no Wiki rules about that only historian works under Repulican government or only historian works under Democrat government are allowed to use. In UK it is same also. In Hungary it is same, it is well known that Orban critize Soros all the time and Soros critize Orban all the time. Eva S. Balogh a political blogger in Hungarian Spectrum, the Wiki article itself says it financed from abroad by Soros (Azure was not happy that I found that info there). However I used a source myself from Eva S. Balogh together with sources from other historians (also historian Sándor Szakály who were critized by the blog of Eva S. Balogh), and both of them used the same "peaceful revision" term (Azure wants to vanish it), which clearly strengthen the content if more historians even from different poltical view use the same term. Of course in this case Azure refused the term by Eva S. Balogh because it does not match with his personal POV. Which means the blog by Eva S. Balogh is good for Azure if he can use when Eva S. Balogh scolds historians but Eva S. Balogh is not good for Azure if her term does not match the personal POV.

I read the critic about Szabados by Eva S. Balogh, “disastrous results”, “almost criminal” perhaps Szabados is engaging in mass-murdering of Hungarian student children? Balogh listed the activity of Szabados in condescending tone for the purpose to make a character kill, where actually I cannot read anything that which deeds by Szabados would be a such a big crime... Balogh pointed out "The first is A magyar történelem kezdeteiről. Az előidő-szemlélet hangsúlyváltásai a XVIII században (Budapest: Balassi, 2006). Since I don’t have the foggiest idea what his unique “előidő” theory could possibly mean, I leave that to the imagination of my readers" It suggest she did not read at all, she should know well what does mean "előidő" (standard word, means "prehistory" in Hungarian), that document is about how the Hungarian prehistory view changed in the 18th century, i.e the establishment of the Finno-Ugric theory. Would be big crime? :) Balogh wrote " His second book, published in Szeged, was Magyar államalapítások a IX-XI. században, the title of which indicates that he was a follower of the late Gyula László, a promoter of the by-now discarded theory of dual or perhaps multiple conquests." Balogh deliberately does not translate the Hungarian text, just I looked the description of the book of Szabados is clearly that Szabados wrote about the double Hungarian state foundation: 1st by Álmos/Árpád 2nd: Saint Stephen, not about the double conquest theory by Gyula László. It is clear the antipathy by Balogh is based not by Szabados, but the real problem of Balogh that Szabados became a co-author of new Hungarian schoolbooks. The former Hungarian schoolbooks were based on the internationalist communist period teaching (for example where only the looser Hungarian battles were teached in school and it was big silence about the winning battles) and it is well know that certain leftist people were not happy for the creation of new schoolbooks. The extreme situation was when a certain old history teacher said that the new history school book in Hungary is not good because the Hungarians fighting in Hungary against the Turks are presented as good boys, (focusing national heroes like in every country history teaching), and the invading Ottomans in Hungary are the bad guys in that book, and according to him it is not good conception, because the students need a freedom to decide this, and also we need to shed tears for the Ottoman soldiers who died in Hungary...

I also do not understand why it is so important where King Saint Stephen was crowned, for me it is quite irrevelant if he was crowned in Esztergom or 70km away. (Btw fast checking not only Szabados said this) But in these questions is very common that all historians have many different opinions. Szabados said: "in early Hungarian history, there was never and can never be expected to be a complete professional consensus. Anyone who says this either doesn't understand research that much, or is knowingly making untruths... What can be held accountable is the following: create a realistic historical reconstruction based on sources...all my claims have professional coverage; even if I engage in professional debates with my scientific colleagues on some pivotal issues." I think it is quite unprofessional to make a negative campaign (pure political purpose) against a person to ignore complete everything from a historian because where King Stephen was crowned. What does it change? For me it is a really irrevelant thing.

As Norden said a personal opinion of a political blogger is irrelevant. (We could find mass amount of political bloggers in every country who are critize each other and every single people) And it is very common thing that all historians has many different views in many topics every country, but in many Wiki articles we presented many opinions.

Azure said: "avoid using Szabados's fantasies" it would be good exactly which content by Szabados is debated by Azure. I think we need to talk primarly about the content not about the person. I bet Azure did not read at all his works. It would be also nonsense saying that every single words written by Szabados is wrong based on a political witch hunt. It seems Azure do not respect the democratic values, tolerance, freespeech, liberalism as he wants a hard political cenzorship where he wants to be the main censor. OrionNimrod (talk) 12:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)