Ildikó Lendvai

Biography

Ildikó Lendvai was born in Debrecen, Hungary on 20 July 1946. She spent her childhood in Nagykanizsa, Pécs and Szolnok, following the movement of the family due to different jobs taken by her father. She was five when the family moved to Budapest, she graduated from Varga Katalin High School there in 1964. She received a teacher's degree majoring in History and Hungarian from ELTE university in 1972 she added philosophy in 1974.

Between 1969 and 1972, she was a teacher at Móra Ferenc High School and she taught from 1974 at Keszthely University of Agriculture at the philosophy department. In 1974 she became a member of Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) and started working at the cultural department of the Hungarian Young Communist League (KISZ). Then from 1984 started working for the Central Committee of the party again handling cultural matters. After rising through the ranks and becoming deputy department chief she limited the possibility for publication for works and writers considered dangerous by the party and allegedly took a part in the banning of the "Tiszatáj" a literary magazine in 1986. What can be certainly determined is that she worked as a censor in that capacity for György Aczél.

She was a member of the Hungarian Parliament from the 1994 parliamentary election until 2014, when she retired from politics. Since 2002, she was leader of the socialist parliamentary group. Before her election as party leader she requested that the party be led by a three-member executive committee and that Attila Mesterházy is to succeed her as the leader of the socialist faction in parliament. Lendvai led the party into the 2009 European Parliament election in June.

She resigned from her position after the abortive 2010 elections. The party congress elected Attila Mesterházy to her successor on 10 July 2010.