Hungarian Spectrum

To refresh our memories: The prime minister of Hungary (1998-2002) and Tokaj

The other day I read with some dismay that nowadays the European Union is paying subsidies to owners of vineyards to cut out the vines because there is a glut in wine production not only in Hungary but all over Europe. In addition, very good Australian, South American, South African, and American wines are inexpensive and plentiful.

I had to recall the times when the Hungarian government spent just in one year, in 2001, about 1.5 billion forints for subsidies given to 570 winemakers to plant more wine producing grapes. The number is quoted by Péter Kende, in my opinion the best investigative journalist in Hungary. I have no idea how many winemakers are now getting money to cut out the very same plants they planted eight years ago. Or, if you don't like wine, take milk. A few years ago the European Union was putting a lot of money in the pockets of farmers, urging them to produce more and more milk. Today there is such overproduction that the farmers are pouring the milk down the drain. Literally. Lately in front of some supermarkets. For good measure they also placed a few cow heads on the pavement while they busily poured milk over them. It was a really disgusting scene.

All that brought back the old story of the time (yes, 2001, three years into the prime minister's term) that the Orbán family received government subsidies to improve their recently acquired vineyard in Tokaj. It was in 1997, that is before Viktor Orbán became prime minister, that his wife, Anikó Lévai, purchased a 5.5-acre lot in Tokaj for 100,000 forints. A couple of weeks later she and two lawyer friends of the family joined forces to form a joint venture to grow wine on a total of 48 acres of land in Tokaj. She put up this lot as her share in the company, claiming that it was worth 3 million forints. As it turned out, the learned lawyers didn't know that according to Hungarian law you cannot use agricultural land as a proxy for cash to buy a stake in a company. I don't remember how the problem was resolved, whether the Orbáns had to dig deep into their pockets for the 3 million forints or whether, as often happened, an "angel" helped them out.

In those days the vineyard business seemed lucrative enough. During the socialist period the once highly sought after Hungarian wines, especially from Tokaj, Eger, and the Balaton region had become debased. The big Hungarian state company was mixing wines from various small producers as well as wines from different years, and therefore for even very ordinary table wine one tried to avoid Hungarian labels. However, with the change of regime individual winemakers producing quality wines emerged, and it looked as if there would be big money in these ventures. (As it turned out there wasn't.)

Buying land in general seemed to be a promising business in those days, and even today. Agricultural land prices are still very low but anybody with some business acumen, which both Viktor Orbán and Anikó Lévai seem to have, knows that once the restriction on foreigners buying land in Hungary is lifted, prices will go up and up. In addition to the Tokaj investment, the Orbáns also bought quite a few acres of agricultural land in the village where Orbán grew up. I had to laugh when I heard Orbán say on one of the videos available on his website that once he retires he wants to be a farmer! Somehow I don't think that we will see Viktor Orbán sitting on a tractor any time soon, if at all. My guess is that they purchased the land for speculative purposes.

But let's go back to the year 2004 when during the summer HírTV and Magyar Nemzet found out that Ferenc Wekler, an SZDSZ member of parliament and one of the deputy speakers of the house, requested and received government subsidies to revitalize the old vineyard in his family's possession. Not only that, but he managed to effect a change in the classification of the region to a higher category, a change that would make his wine more valuable. Soon enough he had to resign from politics. Apparently Zoltán Lengyel, who has gone through many parties but in 2004 happened to be a member of the Fidesz delegation, was outraged at Wekler's behavior and wanted to know how many more such scoundrels could be found in the Hungarian parliament. He surely meant among the representatives of the government coalition parties. Well, as it turned out, there were at least two others: Ervin Demeter (Fidesz), formerly minister in charge of national security, and Viktor Orbán. Or rather his wife.

Now there is nothing in the books that forbids members of parliament or the government from taking advantage of subsidies. And there is nothing wrong with the government granting subsidies. But there is a definite conflict of interest if the government hands out subsidies to a company co-owned by the wife of the head of the government. Of the 570 applicants in 2001 481 received less than 10 million forints and only two received more than 40 million in national and county subsidies. The highest subsidy was 44,636,000 forints to the Royal Tokaji Borászati Kft (39 St. James Place, London) whose owner was Sir Nigel R. Wilson. The second highest (34,324,000 ft.) sum granted by the state went to the Szárhegy Dűlő- Sárazsadány-Tokajhegyalja Kft. (a mouthful all right!), that is the tract of 48 acres owned by Anikó Lévai, the two lawyer friends, and by this time a well-heeled Hungarian refugee from 1956, Dezső Kékessy. (Kékessy settled in Geneva and became a research physician and owner of at least two companies: Bio Medical SA and Bio Analitic.) The company also received another 7,151,000 ft. from the Megyei Területfejlesztési Tanács, i.e. the Land Development Council of the Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County. That county subsidy, of course, also came from taxpayer money.

I'm not going to list all the lucrative and influential positions Anikó's partners received during the Orbán period because the list would be too long. But perhaps one example will suffice. Dezső Kékessy became ambassador to France, where his activities were outrageous. His most memorable act was moving the Hungarian embassy from a central, very good address to quarters within the Hungarian House far from the city center. That move cost 200 million forints. And what became of the former embassy ? It was transformed into the private quarters of the new ambassador to the tune of 500 million forints. In general, Viktor Orbán adopted the unfortunate American tradition of rewarding generous campaign contributors with ambassadorships. In Kékessy's case, the contribution may have been personal as well.

When it became known that Anikó Lévai's company had received a very generous subsidy, the not too competent socialist minister of agriculture simply didn't want to believe his ears. Later, when socialist MPs addressed further questions to him regarding this highly suspect subsidy, his only answer was that he was no detective but he would check the archives of the ministry. Well, it turned out to be true enough. Moreover, because of a messy divorce case of one of the owners and the vindictiveness of his jilted wife, copies of the minutes of a critical company board meeting came to light. Viktor Orbán himself had taken part in this meeting. One topic of discussion was how they could privatize certain portions of state-owned Tokaj Kereskedőház Rt., a bottling company and exporter of Tokaj wines. They were especially interested in the research section of the business. As Viktor Orbán pointed out, such privatization could be accomplished only if they divided the business into smaller units and privatized the parts separately instead of the business as a whole. Moreover, as he told them, this could be done only after the elections of 2002. As we know, this business dream didn't materialize because Viktor Orbán's party lost the elections.

One of the most frequently quoted sentences of Orbán at that fateful meeting was that "we shouldn't get the greatest amount" of money granted to applicants. And indeed, they didn't. Only the second highest. And because, as Péter Kende rightly points out, on the application form there was no line to request a specific amount, only the government authorities could decide who would get how much. Therefore it is more than likely that Orbán send a friendly order to József Torgyán, then minister of agriculture, or one of his underlings and instructed him about the details of the grant.

In any other "normal country," I'm certain, the Hungarian equivalent of the attorney general would have immediately begun an investigation. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, Viktor Orbán sued Élet és Irodalom, the weekly that first published the documents and a series of articles about the case. He and his clever lawyers didn't contest the truthfulness of the journalist's reports; they based their case on a technical distinction. Although the participants themselves called the meeting a "board meeting" (taggyűlés), the company's lawyer argued that it was not an official board meeting because the minutes were not officially filed. The minutes that the jilted wife printed from her husband's computer was therefore an unofficial document. As Viktor Orbán repeated many times, "I have never been present at any board meeting." And what about the rest? Well, Orbán refused to deal with that and so did the Hungarian justice system.  

The end the beginning: Reflections of a Hungarian by S.K.

Today, being the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin wall’s demise, what would be more timely than telling you about my own reflections on the anniversary? For Hungary and the Hungarians the whole thing started much earlier.

The first day I walked out to the Corso in Budapest, my first visit after many years of absence, at the river bank, almost immediately I came face to face with George Cohon walking there. I almost fainted. Mr. Cohon owned the franchise of MacDonalds hamburgers for Canada and he opened the first store in Budapest in the eighties. Obviously he was showing off capitalism on the Corso and he and it looked good.

This was in 1988. But there were other, more interesting developments. The whole country was rife with demonstrations. Nothing too heavy, mostly about Transylvania. This was the first time I have heard and soon enough learned the Szeklers Anthem (composed in 1921 by two Hungarian refugees from Transylvania).

In June 1989 Ronald Reagan gave his “tear down that wall” speech and in August a European Picnic was held alongside the Austrian-Hungarian border and, as you probably remember reading on this blog, earlier in September the East German “tourists” were let go for good. This was an intoxicating summer; the air was redolent of freedom. The whole country was heaving with a collective, extended sigh of unbelievable relief, after having held their breath for forty-five years.

Although there were a few dissonant voices, coming mostly from the communist hardliners, on the whole liberty was at hand.

The newspapers arrived here daily from Budapest to the city library, with a delay of 3-4 days, and I spent an hour every day there drinking up the news of the “revolution.”

There were “round table” negotiations, new parties were formed, all kinds of names and organizations were bandied about, and I had hardly any understanding of who was who. My impression was that the faceless party bureaucracy of the communists was rapidly caving in under the irresistible and universal pressure.

The whole country begun to behave like drunken sailors. People crossed over to Austria for the sake of a day’s shopping, the border posts could hardly deal with the traffic. The government removed the limit of currency transactions; those shopping trips drained the country’s foreign reserves in a few weeks.

The months of transformation was a veritable free-for-all; some organized referendums, other formed parties and others again were campaigning for the departure of the Soviet military.

Comrades! It’s Over.

In the spring of 1990 an obscure historian, József Antall, was elected prime minister to head up a conservative coalition of other obscure historians and politicians. In comparison to the governments of the previous forty-five years almost anybody would have looked better. Even this motley crew of amateurs looked good for a while. But it was a short while. The economy almost immediately began to plummet, inflation started out climbing to the 25% level, rising fuel costs triggered a blockade of taxi drivers in the fall that paralyzed the country for days, and unemployment sky-rocketed to 14%. While all that was taking place inexorably, Mr. Antall’s government was occupied instead with the introduction of mandatory Catholic education in schools, smuggling back into position the long departed aristocracy and opening up the economy for the purposes of corruption for their friends, clients, and relatives. They reinvented nationalism too. They figured the country already had all that it needed except nationalism, so they unleashed a campaign for it.

Mr. Antall died after just three years of governing (this punishment was more than I wished for him), but his short term in power was enough to help the socialists come back like gangbusters.

Let me pause here for a moment to show you (as if you needed it shown), that at this time, the spring of 1994, all was ready for the national disaster that Hungary worked itself up (or rather down) to be. From Antall’s MDF party the anti-Semitic fringe already separated to form the “new” MIÉP party of illiterate small-time nazis. The economy was infiltrated by party apparatchiks, this time sent by the MDF, nevertheless in many cases former communists. The already deeply indebted country needed further loans just to pay the bills and the government of historians had no idea how to get out of the debt-spiral.

The country was rife with conspiracy theories. Many people were claiming, “sotto voce,” that Mr. Antall made a sinister deal, called the “Rosehill Accord,” with the powers that be (it was only implied and winked who that might be), to the effect that he would, in exchange for his position, protect the Soviet economic interests, help the former communists to acquire legitimate economic power, and guard the Jewish interests. Of course, not a word of that was true, but such rumors had a devastating effect on Antall’s credibility.

Those were the days when the descent into economic purgatory began. The population, of course, discovered the “survival strategy” as a substitute for jobs. Many vestiges of the pseudo-welfare state of the socialist past were still functioning. Therefore, a lot of people who had lost any chance of ever getting back into employment chose early retirement, disability retirement, welfare with black market activity, et cetera. They cannot be blamed. This process resulted in the present state of affairs when slightly more than three million working people keep the country of ten million going.

The twenty years of “freedom” brought about membership in NATO and the EU. These were the epitome of Hungarian aspirations: belonging to the West. These accomplishments went far beyond the goals of 1956. Yet, popular majority opinion is that the accession to the EU was a net loss to the country and instead of receiving riches from them, Hungarians are subjugated to overlords akin to the Soviet occupiers.

Nationalism is also reeling from the unsympathetic reception the demands for autonomy received on behalf of the Hungarians in neighbouring countries.

Anybody listening to the most popular ideas about Hungary’s last twenty years will hear that the whole thing was no more than a ruse. The communists and Jews converted their power, the people are suffering and the system didn't change in 1989, or any other time, but only the façade. In many respects I am tempted to agree, but for different reasons.

The reforms that István Bibó demanded already in the 1930s, and without which a modern state is impossible in Hungary, were resisted by all. Hungary is still wallowing in its nineteenth century state of organization. Over three thousand different governments at local, municipal, county, district, city and national levels are “working” their sinister magic of incompetence and corruption.

The issue of nationalism that was supposed to be put to rest by the European Union and its effect of removing borders was resuscitated by the belligerent Right, because without it their raison d’être would be largely lost.

Indeed the fruits of the revolution of ’89 are few and far between. Yet there are those few for which the revolutionaries of 1956 were prepared to kill and even to die.

All Hungarians are free to travel anywhere on earth and they are taking advantage copiously, vacationing in countries from Tunis to Florida, at least the few who can afford it.

The press is free. Yes, it is often lousy and often says the stupidest things, but it is free to say them.

Association is also free. Yes, even the most unsavoury people are free to create the most disgusting organizations and promote them with abandon. People are flocking to their events.

There are free elections. This is probably the greatest value accomplished so far, even if the electorate often refuses to participate.

All the above liberal institutions were the most fervent desire of Hungarians ever since the revolution of 1848 and they never came close to any of them, not even by an inch, until 1989. Now, within a mere twenty years the institutions of democracy are functioning well, despite all the attacks and detractions against them. So, looking back to the history and accomplishments of these twenty years, I think it was a success of a small, sour, unloved kind that would deserve more appreciation from its beneficiaries, if only they were not so busy hating and complaining about it.

Fight over the Hungarian airwaves or more than that?

For weeks now the Hungarian media has been full of news, editorials, and speculation concerning ORTT's decision not to renew the license of two popular radio stations, Sláger Rádió and Rádió Danubius. ORTT (Országos Rádió és Televízió Testület = National Radio and Television Commission) is the body that administers Hungary's airwaves. I must admit that I paid relatively little attention to the whole affair, partly because I don't have much interest in popular hits ("sláger" actually means "hit") and partly because it seemed to me too much guessing and too little hard data on the circumstances of the case.

The story briefly is as follows. The frequencies used by these two radio stations are strong enough to broadcast nationwide. So someone traveling by car could listen to his favorite music uninterrupted from the Austro-Hungarian border all the way to Romania or Ukraine. Strong stations like that are exceedingly valuable. There are very few frequencies allotted to Hungary capable of broadcasting over such a wide range. Most of the stations like InfoRádió or KlubRádió can be heard in only about a one hundred-mile radius from Budapest. Sláger and Danubius are exceedingly popular. By the way, anyone who's interested can listen to practically all Hungarian radio stations on the Internet at http://delicast.com/, which seems to me the easiest way.

The licenses that had been given out for seven years expired this year in the case of these two stations, but almost everybody took it for granted that they would be renewed. After all, Sláger Rádió's owner Emmis Communications claims that Sláger Rádió is the number one station in Hungary. Emmis is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ) that owns and operates radio stations in the U.S. in addition to three stations in Bulgaria and Radio Expres in Slovakia. Danubius is owned by Accession Mezzanine Capital, an investment fund based in Vienna. Accession Mezzanine also owns the Hungarian company Borsodchem, a leading European integrated producer of isocyanate-based specialty chemicals for various industrial markets. The company is also a major regional PVC producer. In addition, Accession Mezzanine owns Lux Med (Poland's leading private health care provider), a telecommunications company in Bulgaria, Solaris Bus and Coach S.A. in Poland that manufactures low-floor city buses, Devin bottled water company in Bulgaria, and a company manufacturing aircraft surveillance technology in the Czech Republic. ORTT went up against real heavyweights.

As I said, facts are sadly lacking in this case. I'm not at all sure that the guessing game in the liberal Hungarian media about some kind of a deal between MSZP and Fidesz concerning the fate of these two music stations has any merit. But according to the widely accepted version, one of the winning bidders, Advenio, belongs to a group that owns pro-Fidesz media outlets. The other winner, Econet, a modest player on the Budapest Stock Exchange, owns a listings magazine that has no identifiable editorial bias. The conclusion observers reached was that Fidesz was hell-bent on getting one of the stations and since half of the members of ORTT are delegates of Fidesz, the MSZP delegates made a deal with their Fidesz friends and voted to pass both stations on to the new owners. In brief, they made a dirty deal. If Fidesz gets a station they ought to get one.

Being a pragmatist, I wasn't especially upset about the "deal" if there was one. If the media law is written in such a way that it allows politics not just to interfere in but to direct the media outright and one party is taking full advantage of this situation then the other side must act accordingly. The other side is practically forced into making "deals" however distasteful that maybe. However, independently from political considerations, it seems that not everything was legal. László Majtényi, chairman of the commission, resigned because according to him licences were awarded to companies that are not fit to run the stations. Majtényi told the Financial Times that "they had business plans which had no chance of succeeding.... They were offering 50-55 percent of net revenues as licence fees... About 20 percent of net revenues is the maximum a commercial station can pay and still be profitable." The current owners offered 10 to 15 percent, which is apparently a realistic sum.

I heard Majtényi being interviewed several times, and the reporters always pressed him to admit that some kind of political hanky-panky had taken place. However, he refused to get embroiled in any political squabble and kept repeating that he as a lawyer could only say that the award of the licenses was not legal. That's why he resigned. However, both foreign-owned radio stations claimed that before the tender process began they received visits from people claiming to represent the two parties offering a deal that their licenses would be extended if the parties received 50 percent of the companies' equity. "We were approached by a political party and it seemed clear that a deal was being offered in return for the party's support in the tender," said Barbara Brill, senior vice-president of Emmis Communications' international subsidiary. We hear here only about "one party" and Sláger but, of course, it is possible that both parties were involved.

Majtényi in his interview with the Financial Times happened to say that "these are people [meaning the party leaders] who will fight to the death over a village radio station licence." While "these people" were playing their provincial little games they somehow forgot that there was a world outside of Hungary's borders. They forgot that these two stations are owned by foreign companies and the way the Hungarian authorities dealt with them might not easily be forgiven. In fact, the games they are playing might have very serious repercussions. It is enough to read the headline of The Economist (November 5): "Are populist politicians turning on foreign capital?" The beginning of the article is not too promising either: "Foreign investment helped catapult central Europe to prosperity over the past 20 years. To escape the current recession it will need more of it. But a populist response to the economic crisis is pulling in the opposite direction, as several recent incidents in Hungary illustrate."

According to The Economist Fidesz is responsible for this state of affairs because the party "has stoked discontent with privatization, foreign investors and, to an extent, free-market capitalism in general." And then the paper gives examples: in 2008 Fidesz helped stop Apollo, an Indian company, from building a tire factory in Gyöngyös that would have created 900 jobs but that Fidesz argued-- wrongly--used technology banned in the European Union. Fidesz also backed a referendum to block private investment in the failing national health service.

Fidesz of course denies that it is anti-business. The paper mentions Fidesz's enthusiastic support of a big new Mercedes plant in eastern Hungary. What the paper forgot to mention is that while the Apollo plant was to be built in Gyöngyös, an MSZP-led town, the Mercedes plan will be built in Kecskemét that is run by Fidesz. So, the way I see it, this is not just a simple populist anti-capitalist upsurge because of the recession but rather the result of petty, provincial party struggles that pay not the slightest attention to the country's interests or to the possible international reaction. This is a very dangerous game, and the foreign press considers Fidesz responsible for these developments. As The Economist concludes its article on Hungary: "Outsiders must hope that Fidesz can contain the genies it has so casually unbottled." I'm not at all sure whether it can.

Fidesz and the Hungarian political police

An awful lot has been written about the extensive spy network that existed in Hungary during the "socialist" period. I myself wrote about it several times. We can all be grateful to those diligent historians who are now allowed to study the organization's archives. That is, those documents that survived and those that aren't still held back for national security reasons.

It is almost certain that a great deal of the material was destroyed. The still intact internal security forces systematically shredded tons and tons of documents even after the official declaration of democratic Hungary on October 23, 1989. In January 1990 SZDSZ and Fidesz found out about the illegal activity of the national security office and managed to put an end to the destruction. The minister of interior, István Horváth (who happened to be the father-in-law of István Stumpf, college dean of the Fidesz boys), was forced to resign. We don't know whether the internal security forces were indiscriminately or systematically destroying the office's very extensive archives. We do know that they began their work on the newest material.

Maybe that is the reason that Peter Kende found relatively few documents relating to the activities of Fidesz in the late 1980s when he was doing research for his second book on Viktor Orbán. The other reason for the dearth of material on Fidesz is that, as rumor has it, embarrassing documents on the leading politicians of the Young Democrats were illegally removed from the archives. Suspicions to that effect were reinforced when Viktor Orbán made the second most important man in the party, László Kövér, minister without portfolio responsible for overseeing the national security offices and, of course, their archives. Kövér spent less than two years in this low-profile post. Some wagging tongues claim that he needed that amount of time to "clean" the archives of compromising documents. Theoretically the ministers in charge couldn't take anything out of the archives, but we know that even József Antall used the archives to blackmail József Torgyán whom he considered a nuisance and a menace, and he did the same with István Csurka when Csurka started straying from the basic philosophy of MDF.

The suspicion that certain Fidesz documents were smuggled out of the archives has been strengthened somewhat by Péter Kende's research. The most important indirect clue in my opinion is that while there is complete documentation of the surveillance of Anikó Lévai, then still Viktor Orbán's fiancée, there is not one document available on the surveillance of Orbán himself. Yet from other documents we know that there was such surveillance. Lévai's surveillance had the cover name of "Bojár," Orbán's was "Viktória." It is highly unlikely that Anikó's documents are intact while Viktor's documents were all shredded by those nasty security men in late 1989.

Kende also found reports on Fidesz by people who, given their knowledge, must have belonged to the inner circle of students who later established the Association of Young Democrats. Yet Fidesz never made any attempt to find out who these people were. Here are a few code names: Nyűzsgő (Busybody), Benjámin, Hortobágyi, Aradi, Virág (Flower), Fazekas, Cérna (Thread), Rolf, Költő (Poet), Kotta (Sheet Music), Festő (Painter), Tirolia, Dombegyázi, Adidas, Andrea, Piroska, Csaba László, just to mention a few. That is a heck of lot of agents reporting on the activities of the top brass of a small group of students. And they seem to know fine details. They can report opinions expressed when very few people were present.

Nyűzsgő was indeed a busybody. He reported in April 1988 that János Kövér, Tamás Deutsch, and Viktor Orbán had visited István Csurka in his apartment and that Csurka gave them 10,000 Ft from MDF's treasury. In May the trio asked for money from George Soros, but he turned them down. Csaba László reported about the upheaval in the leadership that was occurring because of the Fidesz representatives' political stand on certain issues at the "Round Table" discussions. (The "Round Table" discussions were a series of talks between MSZMP and the new political formations in which the future shape of the new regime was hammered out. Thanks to Csurka, the Young Democrats were invited to participate. Without him Fidesz most likely wouldn't have been at the table.) The same László reported that--and this is worth quoting verbatim--"Viktor Orbán had an earlier 'situation' which, although it was subsequently smoothed over, causes him a lot of anxiety because if it became known it would mean the end of his political career." What could that be? Will we ever find out?

My feeling is that the complete destruction of all traces of documents simply cannot be achieved. Apparently so many copies were sent to so many different sub-archives that sooner or later from somewhere a copy of the document will emerge. As it is, here is this lone sentence about the "earlier situation" that might "mean the end of [Orbán's] political career." This is of course no proof of anything, but it plants suspicion in the reader's mind. Already rumors were rife in the 1990s that Viktor Orbán had in fact been an agent himself who worked for the internal security forces. The rumors were so loud and incessant that eventually he felt he had to prove his innocence. Therefore he put a number of documents from the security office's archives on his website. These documents showed that indeed Orbán was approached by security officers but that he had courageously refused cooperation. Kende noticed that some of these documents didn't have the compulsory stamp of approval from the archives. So Orbán managed to get hold of these documents through unofficial channels. Those who were certain that Orbán wasn't entirely innocent were not convinced by the documents he made public. They claimed that he in fact was approached twice and that the second time around he agreed. Of course, this is just talk.

Apparently, the complete list of agents working for the secret police has been kept on miles and miles of tapes that were produced by an early computer. The machine is no longer in use, and security officials for a long time tried to maintain that the tapes were thus unreadable. The information they contained is lost forever. That is not the case. The machine still exists, Hungary managed to get a working model from the manufacturer, and apparently they are working at present to save the information and put it in a more modern form. If that list becomes available, we will have all the real and code names of those who wrote weekly reports on their friends and even family members. I have the feeling there will be a lot of surprises.

Soccer and politics: The story of Gyula Grosics

Gyula Grosics is in the news again, although it was quite some time ago that the Black Leopard was the idol of the country. In case not everyone is familiar with the source of his fame, he was the goalie of the Hungarian national soccer team known as the Golden Team (Aranycsapat), and he was called the black leopard because he dressed in black. The Hungarian team had been undefeated for three years and ranked No. 1 in the world when they played against England, ranked No. 3 but undefeated by any foreign team on its home turf for ninety years!  It was 1953, and the British press hyped the match by christening it the Match of the Century. Even those who didn't care at all about soccer but who either listened to the match over the radio or learned about the results later (Hungary trounced the English 6-3) can still rattle off the names of the players: Bozsik, Budai, Buzánszky, Czibor, Gellér, Grosics, Hidegkuti, Kocsis, Lantos, Lórant, Puskás and Zakariás.

If I'm correct, of the twelve only two are still alive: Buzánszky and Grosics. Buzánszky, although still active in the Hungarian Soccer Association and the subject of a book last year, is not in the news as frequently as Grosics, who at almost every Fidesz meeting or demonstration can be seen sitting right behind Viktor Orbán. Orbán, himself a soccer player, finds it politically important to collect famous faces as backdrops to Fidesz's carefully orchestrated performances. Orbán obviously figures that if he can show the country that such famous people as Gyula Grosics are in his camp, then Fidesz must be more than okay.

There is no question that Grosics is a man of decidedly rightist political views. The once good-looking Grosics is not in the best shape. He is in and out of hospitals. Every time he undergoes treatment the prognosis is bleak, but then he bounces back. He is released and soon enough is expounding on his favorite political themes. His criticism of the Rákosi and Kádár regimes sounds a bit hollow because, after all, he and his colleagues lived extraordinarily well in those days. They were pampered because their accomplishments brought fame to the country and a certain level of support for the regime from the soccer loving population. Yet Grosics attacks the regime that practically made him with astonishing fervor.

Although it is hard to know how much one can believe Grosics (as we will see later he is not the most reliable storyteller), it seems that he was born into a dirt poor family. His father worked in a coal mine as a locksmith and the family lived in two rooms, kitchen and living-bedroom, without running water. However, his parents were ambitious and thought that their son might succeed if he became a priest. We must remember that Grosics was born in 1926. Instead of the priesthood came soccer and fame.

According to the biography released by the Sports Museum, in 1944--that is when Grosics was eighteen years old, Szálasi's men "collected the members of Levente," a paramilitary youth organization, and "with food for three days they were sent west by train. They apparently reached Salzburg where they spent their days in camps." According to the biography, details of which were obviously supplied by Grosics, "they could return to Hungary only in August 1945." Relatives thought them dead, but they were only half starved.

This story is not quite accurate. It is indeed very possible that Grosics spent some time in Austria and it is also likely that he didn't return to Hungary until August 1945, but, as we will soon discover, his trip west had nothing to do with the Levente organization.

This year the City of Budapest wanted to honor Grosics and decided to present the freedom of the city (díszpolgár) to him. He took a good look at the list, decided that all the other recipients were politically to the left of him, and announced that he was not going to accept the honor. For good measure he added that he didn't want to join a list of recipients that contains the name of Joseph Stalin. He also called the mayor of Budapest, Gábor Demszky, a well known opponent of the Kádár regime, a communist. Stalin is not on the list because the city council more than five years ago unanimously decided that "Stalin is no longer considered to be a citizen of the city." However, Grosics either didn't take notice or, if he did, he doesn't care. Once these fellows get something into their heads it sticks. Facts don't matter.

There is a saying that "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." How true it is in this case. As soon as the media became full of Grosics's decision not to accept the honor, someone discovered an old story buried in a book about Viktor Orbán (Péter Kende, Az igazi Orbán. A Viktor 2 [Budapest: Hibiszkusz, 2006]). I read the book when it came out, but I must admit I had completely forgotten the story. According to documents unearthed by Kende from the Archives of the National Security Office, Gyula Grosics in the 1980s suddenly decided that he wanted to become a party member. The district party committee sent the application to the Ministry of Interior, a routine followed with every membership application. To their greatest surprise the word came back that Grosics couldn't be accepted as a member of the party because in 1944-45 he had been a volunteer in the 25th SS Hunyadi Páncélgránátos Hadosztály (SS Hunyadi Armored Division). They added that according to the Treaty of Paris any volunteer in this SS division is a "war criminal."

A huge upheaval followed and the case went up all the way to János Kádár, who didn't budge: no party membership. "Our Gyula should support socialism and the party as a Bolshevik without party membership. After all, what would the Soviet comrades say if we allow a man who served in the SS into the party," says Kende sarcastically in the book. As compensation he received a salary from two different places. In addition, he remained an officer in the army, receiving income from that source as well.

One can add an interesting tidbit in this connection. In November 1956 Grosics escaped from Hungary with his family and joined the rest of the team that happened to be abroad. They toured South America after which they returned to Vienna. There he decided to return to Hungary while Kocsis and Czibor chose Barcelona and Puskás the Real Madrid. According to Kende he returned to Hungary not because of homesickness but because he was told abroad that they were aware of his past and therefore his chances of playing soccer in the west were slim. If that was the case, the foreign clubs must have received this information from the Hungarian government.

When Kende found these documents in the Archives, he believed that Fidesz didn't know the details of Grosics's sordid past and that's why he could have a place of honor at Fidesz meetings. However, it turned out that Kende was wrong. Viktor Orbán knew about Grosics. Kende spoke with one of the officials from the MSZMP district party headquarters who knew about Grosics's membership application. This official, it turns out, passed the information on to his acquaintances in the Fidesz leadership. Obviously, Grosics's SS past didn't and doesn't bother them.

In addition to the 2006 revelations by Kende there is a newer exposé that appeared in April 2009. The author is Tamás Szemenyei-Kiss, a controversial man about whom I wrote at some length on July 16, 2008. The title of the piece is "Legenda és valóság" (Legend and Reality). Szemenyei-Kiss used the same documents as Kende, but he also visited the Archives of the Military History and the Hungarian National Library. He most likely also used two books that appeared after the publication of Kende's volume on Viktor Orbán. One contains a series of interviews with Grosics conducted by a person whose political sympathies most likely more or less agree with his. I base this supposition on the publisher, Kairosz, where for example Zsolt Bayer's books have been published. The editor of the 2007 book is Ildikó Benkei and its title Fekete párduc a nemzet szolgálatában (The Black Leopard in the service of the nation). Another book is by András Kő, A Grosics (Apriori International Kft, 2008). Szemenyei-Kiss draws from these sources to recount some of the stories (tales) told by Grosics that are highly suspect. What I can't understand is why Grosics, given his past, is calling attention to himself.

Genetic markers in the Hungarian population: Then and now

Due to the scarcity of written sources the origin of Hungarians has been the object of passionate debate among historians, archeologists, and linguists. Lately they were joined by geneticists. With the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, genetic mapping of ethnic groups became much easier, cheaper and therefore more widely carried out. István Raskó, head of a group of geneticists at the University of Szeged, gave his first lecture on the subject in the popular "Mindentudás Egyeteme" (University of All Knowledge) in 2004. He outlined the group's research on the DNA composition of human remains from graves dating to the early tenth century. On the basis of their findings the Szeged reseachers came to the conclusion that the number of invaders was most likely very small because even in these very early graves only 36% of the people had markers indicating Asiatic origin. Fifty percent of them were of purely European origin, and their DNA composition indicated that their ancestors had lived in Europe for at least 40-50,000 years. By now this Asiatic element has almost disappeared: 84% of Hungarians are totally of European origin and only 16% carry Asiatic markers. One ought to keep in mind that in the thirteenth century the Cumans, a decidedly Asiatic tribe, fleeing the Mongol onslaught, sought refuge in Hungary. The Cumans (or in Hungarian the "kunok") settled in one bloc south of Budapest on the left bank of the Danube, that is, the Great Plains.  Their opportunity to intermarry with non-Cumans was somewhat limited. Even in the second half of the twentieth century one could find Hungarians who bore a close resemblance to their Asiatic relatives.

The occasion for the topic surfacing in the popular press is an exhibition that just opened in the Museum of Natural Science. It is entitled "The Genetic Family Tree of Our People." The exhibit relies heavily on the research of István Raskó and his fellow scientists in Szeged. As a result of their research there are many new discoveries and also the "reaffirmation" of earlier held views. About a hundred years ago it was commonly believed that the richer graves contained the remains of the newcomers who ruled over the local Slavic population while the simpler graves contained the bones of the local common people. That theory was replaced in the 1950s by one that claimed that even in the simplest graves less well-off Asiatic newcomers could be found. Now DNA research has at last put an end to the debate. The DNA found in the modest graves is practically identical to the make-up of the present-day Hungarian population. In brief, the earlier theory was correct. Moreover this research offers further proof that the newcomers were very few in number.

I must say that this finding surprised me because I, simply using common sense, figured that if the size of the invading group was very small and the population of the occupied territories large then it would be logical to assume that the invaders would soon be absorbed by the local population. Moreover, I figured, their language would be supplanted for the most part by that of the locals. Anyone who was thinking along these lines was obviously wrong. For some strange reason the linguistic and cultural influence of this small group was important beyond its size while their genetic components pretty well disappeared.

And that leads us to the linguistic debate. As you most likely know by now, the Hungarian extreme right is very dissatisfied with the universally held belief in the Finno-Ugric linguistic relationship. The Szeged group's findings prove that Finns, Estonians, and Hungarians are related even genetically. Although this genetic relationship cannot be established by examining the present populations, the study of the contents of the richer tenth-century graves without exception showed a close relationship with the Finno-Ugric groups (based on an analysis of their Y-chromosomes).

It is most likely that by the end of the thirteenth century the Asian markers pretty well disappeared from the population mix. However, in order to pinpoint the exact development of the population, the geneticists would  have to expand the research to later centuries. I'm pretty sure that this will be the next step taken in Szeged.

Meanwhile there are other anthropological studies dealing with the same period. There is in fact a group of twenty-two researchers from various disciplines (Magyar Őstörténeti Munkaközösség Egyesület = Association of Hungarian Preshistory Workshop) who pool resources. Although the members seem to be bona fide researchers, I'm a bit troubled by the fact that their findings are so enthusiastically welcomed in far-right circles. In any case, I will summarize an earlier lecture of one of its members, Erzsébet Fóthi, who works in the Museum of Natural Sciences where the exhibit outlining the family tree of Hungarians is currently on display. The Workshop held a conference in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2004 where several people gave lectures. Although they might have been engaging, in comparison to DNA studies a lecture on the similarities of Hungarian and Caucasian cooking sounds a tad unscientific to me. I'm equally dubious about the activities of the organizer of the group, István Erdélyi, whose list of publications is a mile long but whose studies of Hun-Hungarian relations are not terribly convincing.

According to the description of the conference the most interesting lecture was delivered by Erzsébet Fóthi using "anthropological-statistical analysis" of graves from the tenth century. According to her in the "rich graves" the shape of the skulls was different from the skulls found in the poor graves. In the former the skulls were "short and wide" while in the latter the skulls were "long and narrow." According to Ms Fóthi the "short and wide" skulls are typical of people living in the East, perhaps as far away as Siberia. The "long and narrow" skulls cannot be found farther east than the Black Sea. She checked the skulls of 475 males and 374 females. Apparently she managed to identify the first-generation skulls, that is skulls belonging to people who were not born in the Carpathian Basin and in this group she could not find "long and narrow" skulls. According to her this skull type shows great similarity to the "early Bulgarians who lived in Magna Hungaria, or in other words, in today's Bashkiria." Apparently these early Bulgarians began their journey from the northern shores of the Black Sea. Some of them went to the area of the Lower Danube and became mixed with the Slavs living there. These people are the ancestors of our Bulgarians of today. The second group, according to her, moved to Magna Hungaria, today's Bashkiria. She claims that the early Hungarian upper class's anthropological measurements show a great deal of similarity to the people of today's Bashkiria. Well, if this is true, no wonder that the western Europeans described the Hungarians in not the most flattering terms. See the chronicler of St. Gallen, Switzerland, who described the Hungarians as very ugly. If these "wide and short" skulled people showed up in Switzerland among the "long and narrow" skulled people it is not at all surprising that the good old ancestors of the Swiss were a bit taken aback! Apparently the Bashkirs are a Turkic people and Fóthi assumes a close relationship between early Hungarian invaders and the Bashkirs. When National Geographic pushed her, she admitted that "the similar anthropological characteristics between the two groups don't necessarily mean that they were one and the same but that both groups came from the same genetic basis."

One gets to the point of actually feeling sorry for these anthropologists who since the discovery and application of DNA for genetic research still rely on wide and narrow or long and short skulls. Because it seems to me that the Hungarian extreme right loves the idea of Bashkiria as the original homeland (Magna Hungaria) it might not be a bad idea to check the genetic markers between today's and yesteryear's Bashkirs and the remains of early Hungarian settlers in the Carpathian Basin. However, I doubt that even if the genetic markers proved that the Bashkirs and Hungarians don't have much in common one could convince the true believers. I read with some interest lately that one of the three Jobbik EP members had a long and I hope fruitful conversation with the Kazakh representative to the European Union about the close relationship between Kazakhs and Hungarians. In case one is a bit foggy on Central Asian geography, Bashkiria, part of Russia, is just north of Kazakhstan. Where the Hungarians started their westward journey is obviously controversial, but at some point they must have gotten in close contact with Persian-speaking people. The number of Persian words in the Hungarian vocabulary is strikingly high. See arany = gold, hét = week, tej = milk, tíz = ten, and so on. Today, we know a bit more on this part of the Hungarians' journey from genetic sources. Not human genetics, but genetic studies of horses. Early Hungarian graves, especially those of rich men, also contained the bones of the man's horse. Originally Hungarian researchers believed that the horses the Hungarians used were short, small animals. Well, they turned out to be horses related to horses that can be found in today's Turkmenistan called "akhal teke" types. These horses were considered the Cadillac of horses in the Middle Ages because on very little fodder they could easily cover 120-130 kilometers a day. And, yes, Turkmenistan is just north of Iran.

Return to a monarchy in Hungary?

This is András Gerő's latest idea. On October 18 he wrote an opinion piece entitled "Mozgássérült alaptörvény" (Constitution with disability) in Népszabadság in which he detailed some of his ideas concerning the shortcomings of the Hungarian Constitution. Perhaps not everybody knows that the current constitution is a thorough reworking of the Stalinist constitution of 1949 which, according to some, is so totally changed that the only sentence that remained from the original is "Budapest is the capital of the Hungary." This is a bit of an exaggeration because there are some "socialist" remnants in the constitution that surely don't belong to the basic law of a modern democratic country. But this is not what Gerő is complaining about.

Gerő thinks that Hungary's political ills stem from the shortcomings of the constitution. What are they? According to him there are several areas that should be changed. First, he mentions the question of "freedom of speech" followed by "lack of authority," "franchise," and "taxation." The problem of freedom of speech in Gerő's opinion can be cured by expanding legal remedies to cover not only individuals' rights but also the rights of groups. Gerő here uses the expression "collective stigmatization." In plain language legal remedies should be available to groups--Jews, Gypsies, gays--against those who use either racist or in Gerő's words "cultural racist" language. There is nothing revolutionary in this suggestion since hundreds if not thousands, including the Hungarian parliament, suggested this constitutional change only to be rebuffed by the majority of the Constitutional Court. Gerő's only unique contribution here is that perhaps the jury system could be introduced in such cases. Only a historian dealing with the late nineteenth century would come up with this suggestion because few people are aware of the fact that for a while the Hungarian judiciary provided for the use of juries in certain cases. Gerő thinks that introducing a jury here would ensure the representation of "public opinion" in the courtroom.

Although Gerő also talks at some length about the lack of constitutional guarantees as far as appointments for high public offices are concerned, I will quickly move on to the next and most controversial suggestion he offers. According to the constitution the president of the republic is supposed to express the unity of the nation, but, says Gerő, in fact the president in the last ten years or so has been elected by a simple majority vote. Again, according to the constitution, the ideal situation would be an election by a two-thirds majority. But if no two-thirds majority can be achieved in two tries, the third time around a simple majority will do. As a result the president will most likely be the candidate of one party or the other "no matter what the constitution says." Therefore, Gerő thinks that it "might be time to rethink the form of the government." If a monarchy were introduced, the head of the state would not depend on political whim and therefore could truly represent the unity of the nation. His legitimacy wouldn't depend on changes in the country's political life. The monarch's role would be only symbolic, so he or she would in no way get involved in everyday politics. One thing is sure, says Gerő. The "institution of the presidency didn't fulfill the constitutional expectations" of the legislators.

Gerő has a few more things to say that surely are not going to be welcomed by liberal jurists. He realizes that universal suffrage is a fact of life and he doesn't want to limit it in any way. But he suggests putting in a "filter" that would make sure that only committed people will actually vote. Those who take the trouble of "registering." The idea of course comes from the United States. Although he doesn't elaborate, I doubt that he means registration by party affiliation as is the case in the United States. I suspect he thinks simply in terms of a person's going to an office and registering his or her intention to vote.

And finally, Gerő reminds his readers that the constitution (paragraph 70/1) in no uncertain terms emphasizes the compulsory nature of taxation. Yet thousands and thousands of people refuse to pay taxes without serious consequences. Gerő has a radical suggestion, again based on Hungarian nineteenth and early twentieth-century practice: those who owe taxes should be deprived of their right to vote. After all, says Gerő, if the law can forbid those found guilty in a criminal court of law from exercising their rights as citizens why shouldn't that be extended to those who commit tax fraud?

The reaction was immediate. Zoltán Fleck pronounced Gerő ignorant and made fun of him by calling his solution (Népszabadság, October 30) "Magyar Csárdáskirályság," a takeoff on Imre Kálmán's operetta, the Csárdáskirálynő (Chardash Queen). He accuses Gerő of "stepping outside of the constitutional framework" and of undemocratic impulses. An extension of individual rights to communities could immediately be used against those who in the eyes of the far-right are "anti-Hungarian." Registration to vote? Outrageous. He even questions a suggestion of Gerő I didn't mention that perhaps a professional body should pass judgment on the qualifications of judges nominated to the constitutional court. As for Gerő's suggestion to change Hungary into a monarchy, surely the reader at this point must think that Gerő is joking. Fleck seems to think that "someone who today is advocating a monarchy in Hungary is actually choosing the governing traditions prior to 1946." According to Fleck, "today a democrat can choose monarchy in only one way: to move to the territory of a Western-European kingdom." Those countries have different traditions, a different history. According to Fleck the problem is not about the constitution but about the republic.

I think that Gerő makes some very valid points. He is certainly right about the impossibility, given the present constitutional setup, of having a president who represents the unity of the nation. Either the "job description" must be changed--as Fidesz would like to see it--or the office itself should be transformed. Whether a constitutional monarchy would be a better option is of course subject to debate.

I'm most likely more sympathetic to Gerő's suggestion than most people. Yesterday he was interviewed by György Bolgár while the listeners were chatting on the internet forum. Several people suggested that Gerő must have eaten a toadstool (bolondgomba). Or I'm sure a lot would agree with Károly Herényi who, in another context, said that in Hungary "imbecility is setting in." I don't think that Gerő is joking or has lost his mind, and I regret that the other side refuses to engage in dialogue.

How about those Hungarian liberals? Part II by S.K.

The liberals of Hungary were busy already several years before the change of the regime. Historians, sociologists, lawyers and just plain hangers-on were printing and distributing “illegal” political literature for years. The ferment for change was equally contagious within the monolithic socialist dictatorship as well as without. The ways of the struggle were not without some characteristics of hide and seek, the political police was aware that they were outfoxed most of the time and the pioneers of liberalism knew that it was risky to be caught.

In 1988 the time was ripe to come out of hiding and they formed the Network of Free Initiatives. This Network was decidedly un-hierarchic and rather bohemian, there was no explicit structure to it and all adherents (it was too early to speak of membership) brought their own specialties to contribute. The only person perhaps who was a tiny bit more equal than the others was János Kis, a philosopher, a father figure to most of the others and provided the intellectual underpinning. They formed SZDSZ officially in November 1988.

The actual substance of Hungarian liberalism was the demand for free capitalist economy, demand for maximum personal and collective freedom and a social system completely devoid of any overbearing ideology. They were idealists in their politics and pragmatists in their economics. Because they were fully up to date on the literature of political science, some of them were the professors of the subject; they had an excellent grasp of at least what they wanted.

When exactly twenty years ago, in November 1989, the liberals initiated a referendum, their stock was high, because the questions to be decided were foremost in everybody’s minds. The referendum prevented the old communist party from acquiring the president’s post, exiled all party organizations from work places, demanded an accounting for the wealth of the communist party and put an end to the armed private army of the communists. This was a spectacular success for the SZDSZ, this new, fresh party. They were on the crest of the popularity wave. The following year they also succeeded to get one of their numbers elected as the president of the republic.

When, to their dismay, a conservative government was elected in May 1990, the SZDSZ nevertheless managed a substantial showing (23.83%) and sent the main opposition force to parliament. However, already at this time they gave a clear indication of their fatal flaw: they were ready, nay eager to compromise, make a secret pact with the government without getting anything in return and at the same time giving up some fundamental principals. What is worse, they found time and again, insufficient and unconvincing justifications for those unjustifiable compromises.

The election of 1994 brought back the socialists into power with a 54% majority. Being unsure of themselves and their legitimacy, they decided to invite SZDSZ as coalition partners. The socialists had a comfortable majority to govern, but were short of the two-thirds majority necessary to modify the constitution and they hoped to augment their ranks with SZDSZ. This was a mixed blessing for both parties. Now, the government did have the majority, but the partners were reluctant to alter the constitution, and besides the socialists were uncertain of what they wanted and afraid of messing with it. SZDSZ gave up their courageous earlier stance, accepted minor ministries and was hoping for realizing eventually a reduced liberal agenda. The socialists wouldn’t have any of that, they were too busy arranging the accession to the European union, and besides they also had a horrendous economic crisis on their hands. The liberals had to wait for another day.

Around this time I met a man in a discussion group on the net, who later, when we met in person at one of my visits, turned out to be one of the socialist city fathers of District XIV of Budapest and as such was well informed about the inside workings of politics. As we had the obligatory coffee and cake in a lovely patisserie, he explained to me the entire money making operation of the government. I was shocked. But I was even more shocked as he introduced me to the fact that the grand masters of making money in government were the SZDSZ. He was a trustworthy man and I believed him.

Corruption was always suspected, but it had a certain “traditional” level people were accustomed to and was not much talked about yet in 1995. The austerity program that decreased real wages by almost 15% was the main topic of politics for this and the following two years. It had its effect, the economy returned slowly to a manageable state and besides the accession and the election were approaching. Amongst these tense circumstances exploded the so-called Tocsik affair in 1996. Ms Tocsik was a bagwoman for both governing parties who performed the role of an intermediary between the central and the local governments for large amounts of money part of which she was supposed to returned into party coffers. This scandal scuttled the electoral prospects of both parties. For the socialists the damage was manageable, because they were a large mass party. But SZDSZ could not withstand the resulting anger and embarrassment. It was hard not to see that they were talking of lofty ideals, but greasy bagmen were stuffing their pockets with cash at the same time. It was time for some of the iconic leaders to resign. Also, the ever-increasing murmur of anti-Semitism found its convenient subject in  SZDSZ, because many of its most prominent members were indeed Jews and the party’s unhealthy association with illicit money provided useful fodder for the hate speeches.

The election of 1998 brought into power Viktor Orbán, reduced the socialists to a substantial opposition party, but made hash of SZDSZ, their earlier 23.5% standing melted down to 5.5%. They were no longer the largest opposition party, far from it; they were a ghost of their earlier selves. But even more devastating was the fact that the years spent in coalition with the socialists consumed their credibility.

SZDSZ all those years was not only unable, but also actually uninterested in garnering wider popular support. They regarded themselves as the representatives of obvious truths that don’t need popular support, because they are self-evident to such a degree that every “smart” person must agree with them and therefore support the party. In retrospect they were arrogant indeed. The electoral annihilation in 1998 still did not galvanize them into action. Most of their stalwart leaders distanced themselves and those who remained were unable to rise to any task.

In 2002 the similarly arrogant Orbán government suffered a defeat that gave the government back, in the absence of any acceptable alternative, to the socialists. Although SZDSZ just barely skipped over the threshold, this time they were indispensible for the coalition government’s slim majority. This new government of prime minister Péter Medgyessy, a former banker and finance minister, embarked on an insane spending spree that was, or should have been, anathema to liberal economic principles, but our Hungarian liberals, again, compromised for the sake of political expediency and complied in silence. But merely a year went by when the prime minister was found out to be a former spook of the old communist secret service. This was an exclusionary cause, and he should have resigned immediately. The liberals, however, held an overnight conference and decided to support him. This was the epitome of spineless groveling at the feet of expediency; the whole country was disgusted. Those who earlier found justification to talk about the unholy alliance of Jews and bankers bankrupting the country had lots to talk about again. All those opportunists who were hoping to make hay based on the Jewish conspiracy had a field day for months and thundered about the encroaching international conspiracy of communism, the colonizing intentions of international finance and the sinister Jews behind it all.

However, in a few months Péter Medgyessy was gone, his government morphed into the Gyurcsány government. Hope was in the liberal air, Gyurcsány a man with two diplomas, a successful businessman and a pragmatist, was an ideal partner for the liberals, being a closet-liberal himself. But Gyurcsány despite all his good ideas and intentions has proven to be less than forceful enough to ram through his promised reforms in the face of hardening opposition. (I doubt if Bismarck himself could have done anything in the given political climate, but Gyurcsány was certainly no Bismarck.) The liberals were practically eating from his hands, as docile as can be; because he was promising them frequently varied reforms from their agenda. However, when nothing happened, the liberals finally bolted from the coalition, with a bit of prodding from Gyurcsány himself, and at the same time elections for party chairmanship had to be held. As it turned out the election was rigged and had to be repeated. The earlier winner was János Kóka while the latter Gábor Fodor who won only with one single vote from many hundreds. In the meantime they supported the government from the outside to prevent a new election. The new leader, an intellectual and ineffectual man whose only distinction was that he was probably the tallest politician in Hungary, was a disaster and resigned in short order. The universal disgust over the party’s shenanigans was understandable. Not because of the stormy anti-Semitic howls, but because the obvious question of how does this “party” propose to run the country if they are unable to conduct an internal election properly.

Today, under the reign of Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, the liberal party has its third leader in two years. The few remaining members who came this far are leaving and resigning in droves, even the parliamentary caucus has now four members who already resigned their party membership. The new leader, Attila Retkes, a nondescript nonentity, makes brave, encouraging noises, but the party is melting away: its membership is probably a few hundred now and in electoral polls their approval rating is well below one percent.

However, liberalism is not dead yet. Only SZDSZ is. There is no purchase for it amongst the electorate, that is true, but the notable departed members of the old SZDSZ establishment are quietly working towards the formation of a new liberal party.

How about those Hungarian liberals? by S. K.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to remind you how the enlightenment, as a philosophy, led to political ideas and ended up to be the liberal political creed. Nor is it forgotten how quickly did it conquer Europe in a few decades and led to the revolutions of 1848.

In Hungary, much more backward and sedate than the rest of Europe, the outcome was the same; the country seemingly in one fell swoop joined the liberal West, at least in its politics. The revolution brought to the fore a generation of “intellectuals,” actually romantic dreamers, whose political activities determined Hungary’s political future for the remainder of the century. Although the ultramontane monarchy achieved a temporary victory in 1849, the absolutist politics bled to death on the battlefield of Königgrätz in 1866 and the Emperor had no option left but to make a deal with Hungary and its liberals.

Admittedly, this is a very cursory overview so far. I also hasten to add that the emperor himself came under the influence of liberalism, so much so, that during the latter part of his reign he turned out to be a truly liberal person in most respects. (Just to mention one example, next to his palace he kept a villa and in it lived his lover, for decades.) Capitalism and liberalism were the prevailing ethos of those decades and the emperor Franz Joseph husbanded and supported both, occasionally even representing the vanguard of liberalism in some cases. For example, while the emancipation and economic advances of Jews were leading to a definite backlash in both Austria and Hungary, Franz Joseph personally protected and advanced their cause. Perhaps, this was the first conflict in which liberalism and the Jews became linked: the capitalist transformation and the Jews at the cutting edge of it.

Until the start of World War I there was a somewhat monochrome political palette, the government was liberal and the opposition conservative cum nationalist with ideas of total independence from Austria. (Of course, even the latter claimed to be liberal as well in many cases.) From a liberals' point of view this was a bipolar system, the opposition was confessing the same principles but wanted an independent monarchy. Some socialists were lurking below the surface, but they were only an exotic minority, representing an almost imaginary segment of society, yet to be created, and with hardly any electorial prospects.

At the behest of the liberal governments, in the prewar years the emperor granted nobility status to 392 Jewish families, all exemplars of the liberal financial and industrial development, all exceedingly wealthy and all engendering the howling disapproval of the nationalist majority. Liberalism became inextricably linked to Jews. The mention of liberalism no longer invoked automatically the name of Kossuth, but rather the Baron Hatvany family for instance, whose members were almost all excelling, some in their sugar monopoly, some in literature and some in the arts, but all of great influence and all liberal.

Following the chaotic aftermath of the war, the Christian and conservative system of admiral Miklós Horthy managed by all means of persuasion to make liberalism responsible for the disaster and with that also the Jews. There was some justification to this, liberalism was responsible, but they neglected to mention that it was the result of general consensus and refused to recognize their own role in it. Instead they emphasized the role of Jews in that “sinful” liberalism. And once the sins of liberalism was enumerated, might as well add the sins of the communist dictatorship, although that was just as threatening to liberals as it was to everyone else, if not more. To put it simply, the Jews were saddled with not one, but at least two “original sins:” communism and liberalism. (Of course there were others too, like free masonry, regardless of the fact that the free masons refused to take Jewish members in most lodges.)

During the interwar years liberalism was reviled, although there were some liberals in parliament. But this was a new political landscape, the abstract version of the triple hills in the Hungarian heraldry: a large conservative hill, a distant but menacing socialist hill and between the two a small, nonetheless well visible liberal hill. This is how the political landscape became “tri-polar” in the sense that liberalism was an alternative to both extremes; to conservatism as well as socialism.

In the early years of the post-war era liberalism was most ably represented in parliament as well as in public discourse by one Vilmos Vázsonyi, an ingenious lawyer, need I say a Jew, who became a lightning rod of all the hatred and derision accorded to liberalism from all quarters.

The accelerating movement toward the right in the pre-war years left hardly any room for liberalism in Hungary. The association with Jews took care of any expression of liberal views after the Jew-laws were introduced, it was not a question of expression anymore, but rather an existential question; a matter of survival. For those finding the expression crude or jarring let me point out that they were meant to be so. This is not only the precise translation of how these laws were called, but "softening" it to "Jewish Laws" would be also misleading, because that would mean laws enacted by Jews. Jew-laws were the three, progressively savage laws aimed to deprive Jews of first their livelihood, then their possessions and finally their liberty and life.

After World War II and the advent of communist dictatorship the minuscule liberal establishment, if they survived the war, were the preferred targets of the communist terror. Most of them were jailed and many killed already before 1956. Whoever managed to survive that, emigrated in ’56 never to be heard from again.

Although liberalism in Hungary became extinct in its representation during the communist era, naturally, the ideas and ideals remained strong and thrived in Western Europe.

The transformation of 1989 found a nascent, but promising liberal movement in Hungary. It had two constituents, Fidesz, mostly young, mostly from the countryside and mostly from university campuses. The other liberal party was based in Budapest and came from the mature children of communist party cadres and academics. Both had the same goals in mind, but Fidesz was pushing to achieve change by the dint of pressure of youthful impatience, while SZDSZ, the other liberal party, has gone about it scientifically, methodically as was expected of politically astute academics.

The first free election already made it plain that the two liberal parties are one too many, they had to compete for the same liberal votes and while the SZDSZ did have a sizable following, Fidesz was in actual fact only a few highly visible people and an answering machine. Fidesz needed a following which it could only garner from the SZDSZ. However, SZDSZ became quite successful by the referendum it organized to knock the socialists’ presidential ambitions out, so, there was no room for the expansion of Fidesz.

The 1994 election that brought back the socialists into government presented both liberal parties with a dilemma. SZDSZ chose to be in power even at the cost of shacking up with their arch-opponents, the socialists, and compromise their pristine liberal credentials. Fidesz had to realize that in the ranks of liberal voters they would not find sufficient following. As a result both were forced to give up some parts of their identities. SZDSZ gave up its puritanical liberalism and became the junior adjunct of the socialist governance while Fidesz gave up intentionally its liberal identity all together.

We can depart from Fidesz here, they have transmogrified into a right wing, radical party between 1994 and 96, therefore, they played the outsider’s role as far as liberalism was concerned. SZDSZ however, went on as a junior coalition partner of the socialists to this day at the great price of not only losing their identity, but in fact, by now they also have lost their status as a party; their electoral support is imperceptible, they will not be elected to parliament next year.

The liberals of Hungary presently have no party to represent them.

Tomorrow I shall give you the summary of how liberal politics worked, or didn’t work in Hungary in the last twenty years.

About Hungarian soccer again

The last time I wrote about soccer was on July 15, 2009, under the title "International scandal: Hungarian soccer hooligans." Then the emphasis was on "international." The disturbance made headlines around the world. Last night's outrage was an "internal affair" and therefore it is unlikely that we will read in the international press about the the soccer match between Ferencváros and Diósgyőr that had to be stopped after the 64th minute. Diósgyőr was leading 3 to 1.

In July the trouble occurred at a "friendly" encounter between a famous team, the Hertha BSC of Berlin, and the infamous Ferencváros Torna Club (FTC) or Fradi. It was a test match, a friendly encounter that ended up  being not so friendly. About seventy drunken, tattooed skinheads attacked the peaceful German fans. That was bad enough, but the attack was accompanied by shouts of "Sieg Heil" and "Heil Hitler." The German fans tried to "escape," but before they could two or three were injured.

Although on the surface the latest brawl doesn't seem to have anything to do with national rivalry, I have the feeling that if we dig a little deeper we may find some xenophobic resentment on the part of the Fradi fans against the team's British owners. It was in February 2008 that the bid by the English club Sheffield United, backed by property mogul and club chairman Kevin McCabe, was finally approved. Everybody was elated because Fradi badly needed money. The new owners promised a new dawn for the ailing, failing Fradi. Fradi had fallen on hard times although earlier they had been national champions twenty-eight times. They even lost their right to play in NB1 (National Championship, First Division) and were relegated to the second division, playing against "obscure Hungarian village teams." The new British owners promised a new stadium and Champion League soccer within three years.

For the time being it is unlikely that there will be a new stadium or a return to the team's former glory. This year's performance was dreadful, and the worse the club plays the angrier the "fans" get. And these fans are not nice. Although the leadership of the fan club tries to convince everybody that they are totally innocent, that their members have nothing to do with anything, time and again incredible scenes take place on the field. The videos show inferno itself. The players were afraid for their lives. The fans of Fradi managed to get on the field while lit "fireworks" were being thrown on the ground and bits and pieces of broken seats were hurled at the police and the players. Because of the smoke one could hardly see anything. If I had been the referee I would have stopped the match much earlier, but he stopped it only temporarily in the hope that after the resumption of the game things would calm down. They didn't.

When I dealt with the subject last summer I looked up the website of these "charming" fans and even then I came to the conclusion that we are dealing here not only with "fans" but with a politically far-right group that is attracted to Fradi. In the earlier blog I said a few words about the history of Fradi as the "Christian" club as opposed to MTK that was supposed to be the Jewish club. That might be the historical reason for the far-right coloring of this group even today. Anyway, I decided to visit the website again, and I think that I managed to find the source of "resentment" by these fans. The foreign owners are not treating Fradi the way this "Hungarian treasure" established in 1899 is supposed to be treated. They send second-rate coaches and second-rate players to Hungary. The local British overseer of the club, Terry Robinson, insulted the fans the day before, according to the vice-president of the fan club. The fans managed to get rid of the first British coach, Bobby Davison, because, naturally, he was no good. According to Terry Robinson, Davison was greatly relieved that "the Fradi adventure" was at last over. Now there is a new temporary coach, Craig Short, but according to the fans, he is also terrible because, after all, Fradi was losing big against Diósgyőr in the first sixty-four minutes. And that was Short's first game!

Thus, as far as I can see, the fans are revolting against the owners, the coaches, and the "second-rate" players whose presence is a disgrace to this fantastic NB2 Hungarian team! Terry Robinson is accused on the fan club's website of using language fit only for a "colonial official." Any criticism of their behavior is unacceptable to the Fradi fans. The fault is with him. Robinson wanted to get rid of the fans but "luckily he didn't succeed." Instead he was forced by the fans to get rid of the coach. The "editorial" on the website written the day before the fiasco ends on a pathetic note: "Talk means nothing, intention is something, the deed is everything. Ferencváros forever."

Ferencváros most likely will have to pay a hefty fine amounting to millions. The question is when the British owners will have had enough of it all. Then the fans might be happy. However, it might also happen that Ferencváros after its "glorious past" that demands greater respect from these lowly Brits might have to fold up its tent. That might not be a bad idea because then there will be no Fradi fan club either, and that would be a blessing.