Invisible Shining

Balázs Apor is lecturer in European Studies at the Trinity College Dublin.

"Apor is most helpful and pertinent regarding the cult’s idiosyncratic elements. He is keen to redress the tendency to assume that 'the constructed personae of mini-Stalins in the Soviet bloc were merely clones of Stalin’s mythical image'. The spread of leader cults across communist Europe was not just the production of facsimiles. Rather, Apor’s analysis of the specifically Hungarian elements of Rákosi’s cult, in connection with the overall communist project of recasting national history, is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of what made this regime distinctive. What Apor has concretely given us in The Invisible Shining is an invaluable investigation and analysis, assiduously compiled, of how Rákosi’s leader cult was constructed and imposed in Hungary. This was a grandiose utopian project served by most mundane and fallible means. Apor’s study will be a sturdy platform for anyone subsequently taking up the study of this brief but fateful cult and regime."

• Abbreviations, Acknowledgments,Introduction, The Stalinist Leader Cult: Origins, Interpretations and Functions The Stalinist Leader Cult in Postwar Eastern Europe The Stalinist Leader Cult in Hungary A Note on TerminologyPART I. The Construction Of The Cult 1 The Chronology of Cult Construction (1925-1953 Rákosi and the Hungarian Communists: The Road to Power Cultic Traditions and Modern Personality Cults in Hungary The Hero of the Comintern: The Origins of the Rákosi Cult The Cult in the Party (1945-1947) The Legitimization Offensive (1948-1949 The Full-Blown Cult (1949-19532 The Institutions and Agents of Cult Construction Institutions of Cult-Building The Agents of the Cult Rákosi and the Rákosi Cult3 The Biography is a Very Serious Issue: The Role of Biographies in Constructing the Rákosi Cult Biographies and Stalinist Political Culture The Biographies of Rákosi The Official Biography The Biographical Narrative Behind the Constructed Façade4 He Was Created by a Thousand Years: Nationalism and the Leader Cult Nationalism and Communism Stalin, the Mini-Stalins, and National Traditions Rákosi, the Ultimate Freedom Fighter5 Comrade Rákosi Lives with Us: The Visual and the Spatial Aspects of the Rákosi Cult Rákosi, the Sacred Center Visualizing the Leader The Spatial Allocation of Rákosi's Images Signposts of Progress: RenamingsPART II. Responses To The Cult's Expansion 6 Love for Comrade Rákosi Has Become Deeper: The Communicative Influence of the Cult Popular Opinion and the Stalinist Source Lens The Popularity of the Leader The Elections of 1949 The Rákosi Constitution For Rákosi, thanks; for Rajk, the gallows Even the Air Changes: Narratives of Rákosi's Words Comrade Rákosi, Listen to My Problems as If You Were My Father: Letters to the Leader7 Death to Uncle Rákosi! Negative Perceptions of the Cult Critiques and Iconoclasts Jokes and Political Rumors 8 Ignorance is Bliss: Popular Indifference and the Shortcomings of Communist Propaganda The Cult's Audience The Cult's Agents The Rákosi Cult: Circulation and ResponsesPART III. The Dismantling of the Cult 9 The New Course and the Decay of the Rákosi Cult, 1953-1956 The Death of Stalin and the Rákosi Cult Cult Criticism in 1953-195610 The Collapse of the Rákosi Cult The Twentieth Congress and the Secret Speech We Were Surprised by the Twentieth Congress: The Effects of the Secret Speech on the Rákosi Cult It Hurts to See Comrade Rákosi Leave Like This: Rákosi's Abdication and the Uprising of 1956 We Should Not Let Even the Illusion of the Personality Cult Appear: Denouncing the Cult in the Kádár Era From Politics to History The Withering Away of the Rákosi Cult, Conclusion, Bibliograph, Index.