Not becoming a communist doctor

doi:10.1136/bmj.a2953

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A P Barabas, retired surgeon

¹Bury St Edmunds IP30 0DA

andrasbarabas{at}hotmail.com

Being a medical student in Hungary in the 1950s was not straightforward for A P Barabas

Recently, I was miraculously reunited with my “Leckekönyv” (fig1⇓). English has no satisfactory single word for a leckekönyv, but the Magyar-Angol dictionary defines it as a university registration document. Mine was issued in the autumn of 1953, and it records my progress through three years as a medical student in Budapest, Hungary.

Fig 1 Registration document issued by the medical school of Budapest in 1953; it serves as a testament to the state of medical education under communism

In 1953 Stalin died, and this triggered a power struggle in the Russian Politburo, closely mirrored by an upheaval among Hungary’s Muscovite leaders. How did the Byzantine machinations of the time affect medical students?

Political events in Hungary, 1945-56

1945—Free election in Hungary; the Communist Party suffers humiliating defeat
1948—Stalin’s “salami tactics” launched to eliminate all opposition to communism
March 1953—Stalin dies; struggle between hardliners and reformers in the Kremlin begins
June 1953—“Stalin’s best disciple” in Hungary, Rákosi, forced to resign; Imre Nagy appointed as prime minister and initiates reforms
January 1955—Rákosi returns to power; Nagy branded a “right revisionist”
February 1956—Khrushchev makes a “secret” speech denouncing Stalin’s crimes
July 1956—Rákosi resigns (again) and leaves Hungary; Ernő Gerő appointed
23 October 1956—Student demonstration turns into an uprising
31 October 1956—Russians withdraw, start negotiations with Imre Nagy
4 November 1956—Russians reinvade, crushing the uprising; Imre Nagy arrested and executed
November, December 1956—200 000 refugees flee Hungary

The medical curriculum

My leckekönyv records the subjects we had to study during my first semester (fig 2⇓). Physics, chemistry, anatomy, and biology were taught, but we had few textbooks. This was partly because of postwar shortages but also because many of the heads of preclinical …