Under the counter-revolutionary regime that followed the Soviet Republic, those who did not flee abroad were prosecuted for "serving" the regime during the proletarian dictatorship. In the one-party system after 1945, which was sympathetic to the Soviet Republic, these procedures were viewed extremely negatively and described as a means of retaliation. A reassessment of the topic has begun in the present day. In this paper, I will evaluate the trials of two leaders of the proletarian dictatorship in Veszprém County, examining whether the proceedings and the verdicts in their cases were in accordance with the law in force, or whether there was a conceptual character to these proceedings.

After the emergence of the Romanian national consciousness, there was a continuous effort to unite the Romanians, who were scattered in several states, to create the so-called “Greater Romania”. In the 14^th century, two almost ethnically homogeneous Romanian principalities, the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, were established in the Balkans. The first phase of the Romanian national awakening, however, did not take placehere, but in neighbouring Transylvania, which belonged to the Hungarian crown. The first leaders of this movement were Transylvanian Greek Catholic church leaders, and it was only in the 19^th century that intellectuals and politicians from the Transylvanian and Moldavian regions joined in. The main ambition of the movement was expressed by its slogan: “From Dniester to Tisza”, which meant the acquisition of the territories between the two rivers. As these areas were also inhabited by a Romanian-speaking population – mixed with other peoples –, the leading ideologists believed that the areas should be united to create the ideal homeland of the Romanians. According to the idea, in addition to the two principalities that were united in the second half of the 19^th century and later became kingdoms, Bessarabia, which belonged to the Russian Empire, Dobruja, which belonged to Bulgaria, and Transylvania, the largest and most populated territory, were considered part of the Romanian homeland, the “Tara Romanesca”. In the stormy Balkan (and European) history of the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the former two territories were attached to Romania for longer or shorter periods, but the most serious attempt was to acquire Transylvania, which was finally annexed in 1918, establishing “Greater Romania”.

In the Kingdom of Hungary, the process of secularization started rather late. After 1867, the country was led by liberal political forces but, despite this, the separation of church and state continued for a long time. Some ecclesiastical dignitaries were members of the upper house by virtue of their position, which obviously slowed down the process of secularization. By the 1890s, there were still many legal institutions in which public power was exercised by the churches instead of the state. The most important of these was the area of marriage law. Civil marriage was introduced by the Marriage Act passed in 1894, the adoption of which was preceded by sharp parliamentary debates. This was the culmination of the first wave of discourse on secularization in the country, which ended with the adoption of the law. Károly Hornig was appointed bishop of Veszprém by the pope in 1888 and, as a result of his position, he became a member of the upper house. Assessing Hornig’s parliamentary activities is more difficult. Joining the spirit of Rerum Novarum, he spoke, for example, in favor of the prohibition of industrial workers from working on Sundays. On the other hand, in the debates about secularization, he advocated positions that would have hindered it, although he eventually withdrew several of his proposals due to counterarguments. In my work, with the help of Hornig’s example, I would like to present an important stage of the process of secularization in Hungary.