Boglárka Kőrösi is a PhD Candidate in Interdisciplinary History at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, with a broad focus on contemporary social history.

The Barriers Are in the Minds of the Decision-Makers:” A Struggle for Accessible Urban Spaces in 1989 Hungary

Abstract: In late state-socialist Hungary, new discourses on physical disability emerged that challenged previously constructed images of passivity and dependence. National advocacy groups formed in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s not only negotiated plans for adequate housing and employment opportunities for citizens with physical disabilities, but also accessed various written resources on social inclusion through their growing international network, which contributed to knowledge building in Hungary. Moreover, the country's state-controlled campaign for the 1981 UN International Year of Disabled Persons prompted broader public interest in the issue. This resulted in the circulation of both expert and lay opinions and comments in the press, which frequently proposed the local implementation of „best practices” observed during travel to destinations such as the Nordic countries or West Germany.

This conference paper seeks to employ the concept of uncertain boundaries to better understand the changing narratives surrounding notions of dis/ability, normalcy, and welfare in 1980s Hungary. A case study will be presented, using resources from newspaper and television archives, of a young Hungarian nondisabled architect who, following a one-year study trip to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, became a media sensation in Hungary in 1989. This was following his construction of a wooden ramp over the stairs leading to a grocery store in Budapest as an act of defiance against the state authorities, which he called “Stalinist and paternalist”. This instance, which occurred just a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, sheds light on the personal frustrations associated with the limitations imposed by physical, mental, and cultural boundaries, during a period of transition between the "East" and the "West".