Ortutay, Gyula (1910–1978)
Ethnographer and Smallholder politician, later a communist fellow traveller. Ortutay joined the Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKgP) in 1942. In 1945–7, he chaired the Hungarian Central News Company (Hungarian Radio and the Hungarian news agency MTI). He was a leading figure on the left wing of his party, a member of the FKgP Political Committee and a co-president in 1948. He served as minister of religion and education in 1947–50. After the 1956 Revolution, Ortutay was general secretary of the Patriotic People’s Front in 1957–64 and then its vice-president until his death. He returned to Parliament in 1958. He was rector of the Loránd Eötvös University of Sciences in Budapest in 1957–63. He was made an academician in 1958, and from March 1, 1967 until his death, directed the Ethnographical Research Group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
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