Sándor Csoóry, b. 1930
Born in Zámoly, Fejér County, Csoóri completed his secondary education at the Pápa Reformed College and then studied for two years in the Russian Institute of the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. Poetry of his began to be published in 1953. He worked for the Irodalmi Újság (Literary News) in 1953–4 and the journal Új Hang (New Voice) in 1955–6. In the autumn of 1953, he was among the writers who set out to demonstrate the destructive effects that the policies of the Rákosi period had exerted on Hungary’s villages. His most celebrated poem of the period, ‘Pamphlet’, appeared in the Irodalmi Újság. On the afternoon of November 3, 1956, he took part in the students’ meeting at the History Department of the Loránd Eötvös University. Csoóri became one of the Writers’ Union’s liaisons with the Revolutionary Council of the Hungarian Intelligentsia after November 4. For a time after 1956, he lived by his writing. In 1968, he joined the film company MAFILM as a story editor. The periodical Kortárs (Contemporary) published a short documentary novel by him, Iszapeső (Mud Shower), in 1963. Protests over this from the Soviet Embassy led to a publication ban on him for a year. In the spring of 1977, he collaborated on the samizdat volume Profil. Csoóri was also a member of the editorial committee for the volume in honour of István Bibó. Another year of silence was imposed on him after he wrote a foreword to a book by Miklós Duray in 1983. In 1988, he became chairman of the board of editors of the new journal Hitel (Credit). He was a founder member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and later a member of its presiding committee. From 1991 to 2000, he served as president of the World Federation of Hungarians.
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