On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the events of the 1956 Revolution and War of Independence, the ELTE University Library’s 1956 newspaper collection – which includes Egyetemi Ifjúság (University Youth), the newspaper of Eötvös Loránd University – was once again placed in the hands of its former editor, György Gömöri, a poet and literary historian.
Our library’s collection includes a unique collection of periodicals published during the 1956 Revolution. Following the revolution, library staff set aside not only the revolutionary issues of each newspaper but also some of the subsequent numbers, as well as every newspaper published at that time. The collection was not accessible to researchers until the change of regime; the newspapers were stored in unlabeled boxes deep in the storage area. For a long time, aside from the librarians, only one or two “friendly” researchers knew about the boxes containing the revolutionary newspapers.
Thanks to this isolation, the documents have been preserved in excellent condition. The collection houses numerous rare and unique publications, including ELTE’s weekly newspaper, Egyetemi Ifjúság (University Youth), which is of exceptional historical value from the perspective of the university’s history. This material, which for a long time was known only to a few, has been fully digitized since 2017 and is freely available for research.
The newspaper was originally published under the title Tudományegyetem (University); its name was changed to Egyetemi Ifjúság (University Youth) in 1955, and from 1959 onward it continued under the name Egyetemi Lapok (University News). On 25 October 1956, the editorial board – composed of students – decided to put the newspaper at the service of the revolution. The first issue hit the streets on 28 October, and within a few days it became one of the revolution’s most popular newspapers. Serving as the voice of the University Revolutionary Student Committee, the publication played a significant role as an underground newspaper during those events.
The head of the editorial board, György Gömöri – a former student of Hungarian and Polish at ELTE’s Faculty of Humanities – spoke with Csaba Borsodi, former dean of ELTE’s Faculty of Humanities and a researcher of that era, about his role in the events of 1956. The interview is available on ELTE’s YouTube channel.
