Political Justice in Budapest after World War II

Title: Political Justice in Budapest after World War II
Authors: Andrea Peto; Ildikó Barna
Price: € 108,00 excl. VAT
ISBN: 9789633860526
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 136
Language: English
Publication date: 10 - 04 - 2015
Dimensions: 15.9 x 23.4 cm
Category: Legal Studies
Discipline: Social and Political Sciences
Imprint: CEU Press
Also available as: eBook PDF - € 107,99
Paperback - € 43,95

Table of Contents

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LIST OF FIGURES

FOREWORD

POLITICAL JUSTICE IN EUROPE: THE STATE OF RESEARCH

LEGAL BACKGROUND TO THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUNALS AND THEIR OPERATION IN HUNGARY

The System of People’s Tribunals and the Actors in the Process

The Crimes and the Range of Punishments

Controversies Surrounding the Law on People’s Tribunals

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Method of Approach

Preparation Phase

Training of the Encoders

The Final Questionnaire

Research Phase

Several Notes on the Methodology and the Findings

ANALYSIS OF THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL CASES

Types of Cases

Characteristics of the Case Files

Analysis of the Various Actors in the People’s Tribunals

Summary of the Demographics of Defendants and Witnesses in the Various Types of Cases

Characteristics of the People’s Tribunal Cases

A GENDERED ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL JUSTICE IN HUNGARY IN THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II

Women in Political Justice: Stereotypes and Reality about Women Perpetrators

Witnesses

Court Judgments

Women People’s Judges

Summary: Gender in Political Justice

JEWISH IDENTITY AND THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUNALS

Characteristics of the People’s Tribunal Cases

Defendants and Their Characteristics

Witnesses and Their Characteristics

Court Judgments

Jewish Identity and the Practice of Political Justice

SUMMARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrea Peto, Ildikó Barna

Political Justice in Budapest after World War II

In Hungary, which fell under Soviet influence at the end of World War II, those who had participated in the wartime atrocities were tried by so called people’s courts. This book analyses this process in an objective, quantitative way, contributing to the present timely discussion on the Hungarian war guilt. The authors apply a special focus on the gender aspect of the trials.

Political justice had a specific nature in Hungary. War criminals began to be brought to trial while fighting was still underway in the western part of the country, well before the Nuremberg trials. Not only crimes committed during the war were tried in the same frame but also post-war ones. As far as the post-war period is concerned, legal proceedings regarding these crimes were most often launched on the basis of Act VII of 1946. This act of law concerned “the criminal law protection of the democratic constitutional order and the republic” and its basic aim was to facilitate the creation of a communist dictatorship and to deal with perceived or real enemies of the regime.

Authors

Andrea Peto

Andrea Peto is Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna Austria and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is teaching courses on European comparative social and gender history, gender and politics, women’s movements, qualitative methods, oral history, and the Holocaust.