John Jablonski
Politics, English and the Hungarian-English Dictionary: The Work of László Országh

•	László Országh was born in Szombathelyin October 1907
•	He studied English & German at Pázmány Péter University in Budapest
•	László Országh went to the Us, enrolling the Rollins College in Florida in 1930
•	He wrote a dissertation, published in Hungarian; The Evolution of the Writing of American Literary History
•	When he returned to Hungary, he began teaching at a gymnasium and at the Eötvös College
•	After the war he became the Chair of the English Department of Kossuth Lajos University  his task was to rebuild the department as well as physically ( German occupation & Soviet invasion destroyed it virtually ): this was the period between 1946 and 1949  FIRST REBUILDING
•	BUT in 1949, the government decided that teaching any western languages would take place only at the university in Bp  universities in the countryside were confiend to teaching Hungarian & Russian
•	László Országh remained without department  he was appointed head of the lexicography division of the Linguistics Institute at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences where he worked as the general editor of the 7-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language
Hungarian-English Dictionary
•	Entries could be emended in any of 3 ways
1)	Completely deleting entry that a censor “recommended” be removed
2)	Adapting the entry with a politically correct explanation
3)	Ignoring the censor totally
•	Some entries were explained as “pre-socialist usage”
•	Some entries were simply eliminated because they were ideas that were “alien to socialism” ( like curettage )
•	Folk expressions were questioned
•	An incident: - in the dictionary bolond was followed by bolsevik a word had to 
     be found to intercede; this was bolonyik
After the Revolution of 1956
•	László Országh returned as a Chair of the English Department in Debrecen and to his rebuilding the department for the 2nd time
•	However he had no use for the socialist regime, the party tried to control the department
•	László Országh advocated American studies as a part of the English curriculum in Hungary he called for more than a “superficial journalistic knowledge” of the US and the systematic study of American literature, books, exchanges of lecturers & an American chair or at least professorship at one of the Hungarian universities
•	As a result: - The Slago Chair in American Studies was established at the Eötvös 
    Loránd University in the early 1980s
 - László Országh Chair in American Studies in Debrecen was founded
 - 1st free Fulbright Commission in Eastern Europe opened in Budapest 
    in 1990
•	He retired in 1969, but he continued to work on his dictionaries, to lecture at the university in Budapest, to supervise doctoral dissertations, to hold offices in academic institutions and at the Academy of Sciences
•	He died on 27th January 1984