Vasutasok és a szovjet megszállók

Abstract

At the end of World War 2, it took more than a half year for the Red Army to occupy Hungary. Following the negotiations in Tehran and Yalta, Hungary joined the socialist camp led by Moscow. Therefore, thousands of cases of pillage, rape and murder committed by Soviet soldiers could not be articulated in the official historiography, Russian troops could only be mentioned in a positive context within any publication. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the above-mentioned policy on historiography changed, and several books, articles and reminiscences were published on the Soviet crimes against the population. The aim of this study is present the types of connection between the Russian soldiers and the railwaymen from the beginning of the occupation to the end of the monetary stabilization in 1946. In the first half of the 20th century, the railway was the backbone of Hungary’s economy. Without the railway – due to the lack of roads and automobiles – the economic system would have totally collapsed. The Russians were aware of the importance of the railway, hence as the front moved on, they ordered the citizens and railwaymen to reconstruct the railway tracks as fast as they could. To achieve a complex picture on the connection between soldiers and railwaymen, we need to focus on not only the negative, but the positive cases as well.