Two sides of the coin: clean break and usable history. The case of Hungary

In former East-European communist countries the demand for a clean break was fulfilled immediately after the seizure of power, in the early 1940s and 1950s. The struggle to shape and master historical memory were among the striking phenomena accompanying the transition. The debates on Polish antisemitism, on the substance of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and many other events indicate that history became a central issue in public controversies