Between 1948 and 1963, sociology as an independent academic discipline disappeared in Hungary, and before 1956, it had been banned as a “bourgeois pseudo-science.” In March 1963, the Sociological Research Group (which in 1971 was rechristened the Sociological Institute) was set up within the framework of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This Group was led by András Hegedűs, who had been prime minister in 1955–1956, but who, after the Hungarian Revolution, underwent an intellectual metamorphosis and became a full-time academic. The projects in the Research Group (analyses of social stratification, the problems of bureaucracy, alienation under socialism, etc.) threatened to make visible some of the contradictions of the Hungarian regime. The sociological orientation was seen as a way to revisit the Marxist-Leninist ideological categories. Hegedűs and other members of the Sociology Research Group (Mária Márkus, Ágnes Heller) protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, so Hegedűs was dismissed from his post as head of the Group, and in 1973, he was expelled from the Hungarian Socialist Worker’s Party. The other founder of this “critical sociology” was István Kemény, who between 1969 and 1972 studied the poor, workers, members of the Roma communities, and the management practices on state farms. Kemény lost his job in 1971, but he organized seminars in private places. The “Kemény school” was formed. Even after Kemény’s emigration in 1977, this group continued to play an important role in the birth of the democratic opposition. Iván Szelényi, another member of the Sociological Institute, was throwing into question the notion of the leading role of the working class under socialistm, so he lost his jobs, and in May 1975, he left Hungary. These occurrences were part of an ideological campaign launched by conservative party leaders in 1973 against “revisionist” sociologists and philosophers.
After this conservative turn, the Sociological Institute of the Academy lost his leading role in Hungarian sociological life. Kálmán Kulcsár, the new director, announced the advent of “de-politized,” “professional’ sociology in contrast with “critical sociology.” This new profile of the discipline adopted a less confrontational approach in the research of several sociologists (Zsuzsa Ferge, Ágnes Losonczi, etc.). Other scholars found their place in empirical-statistical studies (László Cseh-Szombathy, etc.). Until the end of the dictatorship, theoretical inquiry stagnated because of this crisis of sociology.
The Archive of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences received the Sociological Research Institute’s documents in 1986. At the time, the takeover of the documents became possible: the archive got a warehouse at Törökbálint, where there was a more spacious place for the material, and at the time, the archive could only employ on staff member, who reviewed and obtained the documents in the academic institutions. The collection was settled in the VIII. fonds (“Academic Institutes”) and in unit 223. Work on organizing and arranging the collection is still underway, but the documents are available in the Archive during official hours.
