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Source translated and discussed: Letter, sent by Mrs. István Bordás and Mrs. Gábor Magyar to Róza (Rosika) Schwimmer, dated 1 June 1908, National Archives of Hungary-National Archives (Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára, MNLOL), Fond P 999, Feminist Association, 1904-1959, batch 5, no. 40, handwritten.1
The letter, published here in English translation, is one of a few existing sources in which a poor woman peasant worker living in Hungary during the Habsburg Monarchy speaks about the experiences and struggles of women belonging to her social group in her own voice. Mrs. István Bordás penned her letter at a moment best described as an exceptional confluence of three greater historical contexts in the "giant village" of Balmazújváros, her home community: the gendered history of agrarian socialism; the Hungarian suffrage struggle, in which gender played an important if often unacknowledged role; and contact between women belonging to radically different social classes involved in the political struggles of the time. The letter, dated Monday, 1 June 1908, reports an incident that happened the day before on Sunday, 31 May, when women tried to improve their labor conditions. The document, the first known letter written by any of the women engaged in and describing the local struggles, is the first of a long series of letters between the women of Balmazújváros and the Feminist Association (Feministák Egyesülete) in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, written between 1908 and the interwar period. The incident and the letter had been preceded by contact and correspondence between local male leaders of the agrarian-socialist movement and the Feminist Association, and a visit to Balmazújváros on Ascension Day, Thursday, 28 May 1908, by the suffragist and leader of the Feminist Association Róza Schwimmer, internationally known at the time and today as Rosika Schwimmer. The cooperation between the two groups of women would bring the women of Balmazúj10.3167/asp.2018.120107 város to the attention of the Hungarian political elite and the international women's movement. This public attention, the politics of the Feminist Association in relation to the women of Balmazújváros in the period following Schwimmer's visit to the village, and a sociography by the author Péter Veres entitled Falusi krónika (Village chronicle), first published in 1941, all played an important role in keeping the memory of these peasant women...