An insight into the life and death issues of the Reformed Parish of Túrkeve period of radical social transformation (1944–1953)

Abstract

This paper offers a microhistorical perspective on the social history of the congregation of Túrkeve in the context of the unfolding communist dictatorship’s church and social policies. The town of Túrkeve was a key area of forced agricultural collectivisation — it was declared Hungary’s first „cooperative town” on the 18th February, 1951. The sites of investigation of the congregations’ history in the period between the Second World War and the First Wave of Forced Collectivization are the congregation’s faith-life-missionary activities, the stages of — and responses to — the loss of economic space, and the transformation of the presbytery’s social base. In the transforming ecclesial public sphere, the post-war inflation, the loss of schools and the remaining church-owned lands were severe obstacles to pastoral care work. These processes, with the persecution of the wealthy peasantry — labelled „kulaks” — and the end of the town’s collectivisation — permanently changed the social composition of the parish council.