"Scientists versus scholars": the prelude to Communist takeover in Hungarian science, 1945-1947.

Abstract

FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, just about the time when, for the coming h a l f century, the form of organisation of Hungarian science and the fate of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was being determined, Michael Polfinyi published his "Foundations of Academic Freedom" in T h e Lancet. 1 Polfinyi was a typical and prominent representative of the Hungarian academic diaspora of the inter-war years. The "Foundations of Academic F reedom" was one of his numerous contributions 2 to the ideological debate with the movement of "science planners"--such as J.D. Bernal, Joseph Needham, P.M.S. Blackett and others-in Great Britain. Huszad ik S z d z a d in Budapest, the periodical of the Magyar Radikfilis Pfirt, Hungary 's small social-liberal party, found the essay topical enough to include a translation of it. 3 An explanation for the translation and publication lies in the apprehensions felt by Polfinyi's friends in Hungary, such as H u s z a d i k Szdzad 's editor, Imre Cs6csy, about the dangers to which Hungary's academic life was exposed under the conditions of rapid and profound political change following the establishment of the Cominform in Szklarska Poreba late in 1947. After the experience of Albert Szent-Gy6rgyi 's separatist Academy of Natural Sciences, and just a couple of months after the formal establishment of the communistcontrolled government body, the Hungarian Council Of Science, Hungarian liberals found Polfinyi's analysis, especially his attempt to formulate some of the internal preconditions for the preservation of the f reedom and autonomy of science, very instructive. It was in this essay that Polfinyi maintained the following: But however great the respect of the State for an independent judiciary, it could not give effect to this attitude if the legal profession were divided into rival