Márkus Keller: Habit and dowry. Ministers of Construction after 1945

The Kádár-era, Kádárism, limited room for manoeuvre: a Hungarian model? national conference on contemporary history was held in Miskolc, Hungary, on 1-3 September 2022. Márkus KELLER, our team leader was heldhis paper entitled "Habitus and dowry. Ministers of Construction after 1945".

"The Ministry of Construction was at once a less glamorous, second-line ministry and a ministry in a strategic position with essential functions. Construction was never in the spotlight like Home Affairs or Defence and did not handle priority areas such as Heavy Industry. However, as a result of the push for industrialisation, construction, the building of factories, blast furnaces and industrial centres, and the development of construction technologies were a priority. The Ministry of Construction also played a key role in the creation of a new state-owned construction industry, which was no longer craft-based but industrialised. And in the Kádár era, the Ministry of Construction was put in the position of solving the housing shortage under state control. In my lecture I will examine who led the Ministry of Construction (later the Ministry of Construction and Urban Development) in this ever-changing and challenging situation, what skills and routines they brought to the work of the Ministry, and where they fit in the elite of the socialist era."