<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p>After the Second World War, the population policies of the socialist countries were not free from the dilemma of natalist/anti-natalist policies. This essay focuses on the Hungarian population policy discourses of the Kádár era and the present day, with some references to Central European specificities. The fear of the disappearance of Hungarians has been present in Hungarian intellectual discourse for several centuries, and by the twentieth century, it had become a fundamental idea that reached society as a whole. Given the growing interest (not independently of contemporary trends) in the international sociological literature not only in the transformation of biopolitics in recent decades but also in the historical antecedents of earlier periods, I believe that it may be interesting to examine the fear of national death in both a Hungarian and a Central European context.</p>
</abstract>

After the Second World War, the population policies of the socialist countries were not free from the dilemma of natalist/anti-natalist policies. This essay focuses on the Hungarian population policy discourses of the Kádár era and the present day, with some references to Central European specificities. The fear of the disappearance of Hungarians has been present in Hungarian intellectual discourse for several centuries, and by the twentieth century, it had become a fundamental idea that reached society as a whole. Given the growing interest (not independently of contemporary trends) in the international sociological literature not only in the transformation of biopolitics in recent decades but also in the historical antecedents of earlier periods, I believe that it may be interesting to examine the fear of national death in both a Hungarian and a Central European context.

Natalism as a Nationalist Biopolitical Response from Socialism Till Today in Hungary

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Social Analysis

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

After the Second World War, the population policies of the socialist countries were not free from the dilemma of natalist/anti-natalist policies. This essay...

Natalism as a Nationalist Biopolitical Response from Socialism Till Today in Hungary

Published Online: Oct 30, 2023

Page range: 114 - 136

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/aussoc-2023-0008

Keywords
socialism, population policy, natalism

© 2023 Erzsébet Takács, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Natalism as a Nationalist Biopolitical Response from Socialism Till Today in Hungary

Published Online: Oct 30, 2023

Page range: 114 - 136

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/aussoc-2023-0008

Keywordssocialism, population policy, natalism

© 2023 Erzsébet Takács, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
socialism, population policy, natalism