Részletek

Készült: 2024. március 31.

The Soviet Union was not part of the international sports circuit during the Interwar period. After the Bolshevik October Revolution, the newly formed communist state focused on developing its own political structures, which also affected sports in the Soviet Union. After the Second World War, the policy of isolation was given up and the Soviet sports management targeted the Olympic Games as a platform to demonstrate the superiority of the communist system by planning to win the Olympic medal tally. The Soviets considered fencing a class-hostile, ‘bourgeois sport’ and did not promote it among civilians during the Interwar period. This radically changed as soon as the Soviet political and sports leadership decided to participate in the Helsinki Olympic Summer Games of 1952. The 21 medals that the Olympic fencing competition had to offer became interesting for the medal ranking. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, knowledge and experience in fencing became highly relevant for the USSR. The geopolitical relations had changed after the Second World War; now, the Soviet Union was ruling over Central and Eastern Europe, and Hungary became one of its satellites. Hungary had a long fencing tradition and dominated international and Olympic fencing competitions, especially in saber, during the Interwar period. By the end of 1951, a delegation of Hungarian elite fencers and coaches was brought to Moscow to prepare Soviet fencers for the 1952 Olympic Games. Based on this exchange and its follow-up sessions in the first half of the 1950s, the success of the Soviet fencing team progressed quickly, and in the course of the 1960s, the Soviets took over the Hungarian hegemony in the Olympic discipline of fencing.

Keywords: Hungary, Soviet Union, fencing, Hungarian elite fencers, 1951 Moscow joint Soviet-Hungarian training camp, Olympic Game

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Részletek

Készült: 2024. március 31.

In this thesis, I seek to answer one of the central questions in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: who is entitled to hold hegemony in Europe, and more importantly, based on what claim? The novel treats race as the primary decisive factor in answering this question, but also links race to policies of language, national identity, and civilizational progress. The novel approaches this question through a normative English subjectivity, such as that of Jonathan Harker’s travel narrative, which juxtaposes English modernity and rationalism to the, supposedly, racially decadent Transylvanian locals. On the other hand, the novel presents Dracula as a cruel, authoritarian leader constructing an ideology of Székely (Sekler) racial purity based on militaristic achievements and an ancient Hunnic origin. The novel argues that these ideas are morally reprehensible, hence it deems these ideas a despicable, dangerous monster. Ultimately the novel is ideologically confused: it both positions the Dutch and America as potential leaders of a future of indefinite Western hegemony, and, strangely, appreciates some aspects of Dracula and his Transylvanian home. The first chapter deals with Harker’s travel narrative and the English’s claim to power based on modernity, while the second chapter analyzes its counter text, Dracula’s lecture on Transylvanian history, a rhetorical speech promoting the racial status of his Hun-Székely background. Lastly, the third chapter elaborates on the novel’s indecisiveness to the hegemony question and how its treatment of Dracula with both fear and fascination reflects tendencies in nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish Gothic literature.

Keywords: Dracula, Stoker, Transylvania, Székely, race, hegemony, language, national identity, modernity

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