Alexander Balogh

* Pereszlény, July 31, 1926 – † Budapest, December 15, 2004 / historian, ; university professor ; ; The son of a railway track worker. He worked as an agricultural worker, started high school in Ipolyság, then graduated from the people's college in Balassagyarmat. In 1947, he enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Budapest, where he studied history. While continuing his studies, he was a college teacher and then director. Party member from 1948. In 1950, he entered the MDP140 Party College as a university student. In July 1952, he was a political associate in the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the MDP Central Committee, and from May 1953, he was the acting head of the university department. From 1954 he was a post-graduate student at Moscow's Lomonosov University, when he defended his dissertation he became a candidate of historical sciences, and from 1973 he was a doctor of historical sciences. From 1958 he was the scientific secretary of the Scientific Society for the Propagation of Knowledge (TIT). In 1960 he returned to the party apparatus, becoming the sub-department head of the Scientific, Public Education and Cultural Department of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. From 1964 he taught as a historian at the Department of Modern and Contemporary Hungarian History of ELTE, first as an associate professor, then from 1967 as a university professor, and a member of the university party committee. Between 1964 and 1967 he was vice-rector for education. Between 1986 and 1991 he was president of the Hungarian Historical Society. In August 1988 he was appointed director of the Institute of Party History of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. He retired from the institution, which changed its name to the Institute of Political History in 1990, in 1991. He is known mainly for his works dealing with Hungarian history after 1945. ; ; His main works: ; Parliamentary and party struggles in Hungary 1945–1947, 1975, ; Parties and party programs in Hungary (1944–1948) (with Lajos Izsák), 1977, ; Land, republic, state school! Debates in the Hungarian parliament 1944–1948 (with Lajos Izsák), 1980, ; The foreign policy of a people's democratic Hungary 1945–1947, 1982, ; Elections in Hungary 1945, 1984, ; Chronicle of Difficult Years 1949–1953 (ed.), 1986, ; The Hungarian State and the Nationalities. Legal Sources of the History of the Nationality Question in Hungary 1848–1993, 2002.