Kassák, Lajos (1887–1967)
Poet and writer. Kassák was among the major figures of the early 20th-century Hungarian avant-garde. During the brief Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, he was on the writers’ directory, but criticized the dictatorial system and its cultural policies, so that his periodical was banned in July. He was arrested after the regime fell in August. Released in 1920, he emigrated to the West, but returned in 1926. He became active in 1947 in the Social Democratic Party (SZDP), chairing its arts committee, but he was sent into internal exile at the end of the 1940s and his works could not appear. Expelled from the Hungarian Workers’ Party (MDP) in 1953, he was only allowed to return to the arts scene in 1956. In September, he was elected to the presiding committee of the Writers’ Union.
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