Based on extensive primary source material and oral history interviews, this book is the first comprehensive study of Hungarian women's political involvement in post-World War II Hungary. It addresses the impact of the spread of communism and describes how some key organizations gradually ceased to exist and were replaced by a single communist-dominated women's organization. The book includes a case study of women who entered the police force, a profession previously closed to them.

This book analyses the actions, background, connections and the eventual trials of Hungarian female perpetrators in the Second World War through the concept of invisibility. It examines why and how far-right women in general and among them several Second World War perpetrators were made invisible by their fellow Arrow Cross Party members in the 1930s and during the war (1939-1945), and later by the Hungarian people’s tribunals responsible for the purge of those guilty of war crimes (1945-1949). It argues that because of their ‘invisibilization’ the legacy of these women could remain alive throughout the years of state socialism and that, furthermore, this legacy has actively contributed to the recent insurgence of far-right politics in Hungary. This book therefore analyses how the invisibility of Second World War perpetrators is connected to twenty-first century memory politics and the present-day resurgence of far-right movements.

As the first and only book in any language on contemporary women’s movements in Hungary, this groundbreaking study focuses on the role of women’s activism in a society where women are not yet adequately represented by established parties and political institutions. Drawing on eyewitness accounts of meetings and protests, as well as first-person interviews with leading female activists, Katalin Fábián examines the interactions between women’s groups in Hungary and studies the unique brand of democracy they have forged in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Through her analysis, she demonstrates how democratization and globalization—with their attendant range of challenges and opportunities—have led women to redefine public-private divides.

Using a wide range of previously unpublished archival, written, and visual sources, Hungarian Women's Activism in the Wake of the First World War offers the first gendered history of the aftermath of the First World War in Hungary. The book examines women's activism during the post-war revolutions and counter-revolution. It describes the dynamic of the period's competing, liberal, Christian-conservative, socialist, radical socialist, and right-wing nationalistic women's movements and pays special attention to women activists of the Right. In this original study, Judith Szapor goes on to convincingly argue that illiberal ideas on family and gender roles, tied to the nation's regeneration and tightly woven into the fabric of the interwar period's right-wing, extreme nationalistic ideology, greatly contributed to the success of Miklós Horthy's regime. Furthermore the book looks at the long shadow that anti-liberal, nationalist notions of gender and family cast on Hungarian society and provides an explanation for their persistent appeal in the post-Communist era. This is an important text for anyone interested in women's history, gender history and Hungary in the 20th century.

In Hungary, which fell under Soviet influence at the end of WWII, 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.

Malgorzata Fidelis' study of female industrial workers in postwar Poland proves that women were central to the making of communist society.