ABSTRACT
Approaching Tiszadomb in 1998 on the road leading from the neighboring village of Szentkirály through the borderlands, I am startled to discover that the familiar landscape has disappeared. Gone are the vast fields of corn and wheat that in the past stretched as far as the eye could see and were only occasionally interrupted by the dispersed groves of acacia, signaling the presence of a homestead. Instead, small plots of different color and texture, indicating the cultivation of a variety of crops on a much smaller scale, now dot the landscape. Hedges and fences have sprung up, and a straggling row of new houses borders the highway. The land has been returned to its original owners. The cooperative has not completely disappeared, but it is now a much smaller entity, one owner among many others. The postsocialist changes are thus visibly inscribed into the landscape, indicating the birth of a new order—or perhaps a return to an old one. This latest land reform is not the subject of this work, however. The purpose of this postscript is a brief visit with the town and the individuals whose lives we left in 1988. What are the Boglárs, the Faragós, and Pintér Katalin doing ten years after the reform? Is Tiszadomb a more just and open society with a new generation of leaders ushering in a bright and hopeful new era?
