Lenin as the so called symbolic figure of "socialism" invited very diverse emotions during history. Through highly specific documents, reports on the atmosphere of the time, the article shows how Lenin and the Bolshevik leader­ship were seen by masses of people in the 1920s.

The noted music critic (chairman of the friendship circle of our paper) points out how alienation is linked with the decrease of cultural competence. He describes convincing cases to illustrate how does the imperialism of the multinationals subordinate culture to themselves. He finds contrary exam­ples in the social democratic cultural practice. He draws the conclusion that without changing the basis of the social form only the "suffering can be alleviated".

After a short introduction, the author publicises a document displaying the charges which provided the basis for passing a death sentence of György Marosán and for the then attack against the whole of Hungarian social de­mocracy.

The author starts out from the social democratic features and inclinations of the Kadar system which is in a way connected with our previous issue. Then he describes briefly the history of social democracy from the point of view of the efforts of the working class to get to power, ranging from the move­ment at the end of the last century starting out from the principle of mixed ownership, the Bernstein-Kautsky controversy about the issue of compro­mise to the balking of the movement during fascism and

The author provides a portrait of the somewhat forgotten left wing, social democratic leader, Pal Justus. Justus who was sentenced to life imprison­ment by Rákosi, criticised the then policy of the Hungarian Communist Party from the left, from a basis of principles of consistent, Marxist principles. By presenting Justus's main ideas of principle, the author warns that social de­mocracy does not only contain the social democratic right, the revision of the Marxist concepts but – in a significant trend – also the consistent re­presentation of exactly these concepts. A topical message of Justus is that social democracy is not one single ideal: the bourgeois and the so­cialist ideas of democracy represent two rival concepts.