Viktória Cseh Istvánné Túri’s autobiography My Life Story (Életem története) is a vivid, first-hand account of a woman’s struggles within the Hungarian rural labour movement during the early twentieth century. Born in 1897 to a smallholding family, Túri described a lifetime of agricultural labour, family tragedies – her father died when she was young – and gradual engagement with the socialist and labour movements. The later chapters, in particular, record her experiences as a member of the local social democratic organization in the early 1930s. Viktória Túri described the difficulties she faced due to her activism, including conflicts with the police and men within the movement, including her own husband.

Loading carts with hay, 1940s (Source: Hungarian Agricultural Museum and Library, EF_2953)

In the 1920s and 1930s, Viktória Túri had to navigate a political environment in which women’s participation was treated as socially and morally suspect. When she was first nominated to be elected into the leadership of the local branch of the agrarian workers’ trade union, a comrade in the leadership intervened to prevent her from assuming the position. He declared to her husband: “There must be no woman in the party leadership; with us that counts as immorality”. Viktória Túri called out other activists who expressed similar attitudes, and did not shy away from stressing the gendered discrimination within the movement. Even when men campaigned against exploitation in general, she noted, they “immediately became oppressors” whenever women asked for rest, better payment and free time. The contradiction outraged her:

But why do they not forbid me and the other women from heavy labour? That is not immoral… if women work from dawn to night… And if… they dare to speak or act, then it is immoral?

Men’s expectations regarding women’s household labour reinforced barriers to women’s political participation. Viktória Túri’s husband was concerned that if she took on leadership duties, “the household work would be left undone”, and even threatened to drag her out of meetings. Viktória recounts physical intimidation and accusations of sexual misconduct – claims she firmly rejected – as ways of policing her public activism. The police questioned her activities and suggested impropriety. Fellow comrades hinted that her political engagement was motivated by sexual infidelity – accusations that her husband believed, and saw her activism as betrayal. She replied in writing that she needed “neither witnesses nor evidence” to defend her honour and would stand by her own words and actions.

Set against the background of hard rural life, Viktória Túri’s reflections expose a double standard with which women activists were confronted at the time. Women were expected to do heavy labour in the fields, to carry pregnancies and raise children, to work until old age, and to accept harsh treatment, including sexual violence, in silence. When they raised their voices and tried to participate in the decision-making bodies of the labour movement, however, such political action was branded immoral and not appropriate for a woman. By recounting these experiences in detail, Viktória Cseh Istvánné Túri left a rare first-person record of the intersection of class- and gender-based discrimination in poor agrarian women’s lives. She shed light on how discrimination operated inside a men-dominated agrarian socialist milieu, and how a politically conscious working woman analysed and resisted it.