Ferenc Fejtő

François Fejtő
political scientist

Ferenc Fejtő (31 August 1909 – 2 June 2008),

specializing in Eastern Europe.

Biography

He was born in

, several members of his family became Yugoslavian, Italian, Czechoslovak and Romanian citizens.

He studied literature at

.

In 1945, François Fejtő headed the press department of the Hungarian embassy in Paris. He resigned his position in protest against the condemnation of his longtime friend László Rajk, and cut all links with Hungary. He returned to his native country only once, for Imre Nagy's national funeral in 1989.

After the war, Fejtő attended the Congrès des intellectuels pour la liberté, alongside Raymond Aron, François Bondy, and David Rousset. The publication in 1952 of his book A History of the People's Democracies (translated in seventeen languages and re-edited several times) earned him suspicion on the part of several intellectual figures close to the French Communist Party.

Between 1944 and 1979 he worked at the

for his literary output.

François Fejtő devoted most of his journalistic and literary career to the study of Eastern European regimes. In his lifetime, he observed their birth, growth, decline and fall.

He also contributed to numerous French and non-French journals and newspapers, including Esprit, Arguments, Contre-Point, Commentaire, Le Monde, Le Figaro, La Croix, Il Giornale, La Vanguardia, Magyar Hírlap and The European Journal of International Affairs.

François Fejtő remains one of the great European intellectual figures of the 20th century. Close friends with

. On his death, Hungary declared a period of national mourning.

Bibliography

Translated into English:

• A History of the People's Democracies: Eastern Europe since Stalin, 1971
• The French Communist Party and the Crisis of International Communism, 1970
• Behind the Rape of Hungary, 1957
• The Opening of an Era, 1848: An Historical Symposium, 1948
• Heine, 1946

References

• Le passager du siècle, François Fejtő, 1999 (in French)

References