Hungarian Spectrum

The return of the gendarmerie?--written by S.K.

I want to thank my friend S.K. for writing this post on the historical role of the Hungarian gendarmerie.

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There is no reason whatsoever to be surprised over the fact that the Hungarian ultra-right is busy trying to resuscitate all the odious institutions of pre-war times, including the gendarmerie. For those who need to be introduced to, or just reminded of, this tough specialized police force, it was originally created to keep "order" in the countryside and soon enough acquired a reputation for ruthlessness and freewheeling violence. When the time came, it was also the gendarmerie who carried out the deportation of Jews into the arms of their executioners in Auschwitz and other destinations. Also, they were the ones who attempted a coup against Governor Miklós Horthy in July 1944, from which only a tank division of the military could dissuade them.

 

But back to our time! Enter Zsolt Lipusz. This unusual name belongs to a successful and respected high school teacher of history in the city of Nyíregyháza. He moonlights as the deputy chief of the local organization of Jobbik and is also the author of incredibly vicious articles, where else, but on www.kuruc.info.hu and of course Szent Korona Rádió (the Radio of the Sacred Crown). Lipusz also advocates the re-establishment of the gendarmerie because, as all ultra-rightists believe, only a super hard organization like that can restore "order" in a country riddled with "Gypsy crime." He nostalgically tells the story of how a couple of gendarmes scared a whole village of Gypsies into submission by just threatening them. None of that fancy-schmancy due process for those gendarmes! He even supplies  pictorial support for his assertion, and indeed the picture speaks for itself:

 

No wonder the word "gendarmes" was often hyphenated with "terror": "csendőr-terror." But Lipusz, in keeping with Jobbik's highest desires, calls the picture "heartwarming."

 

The gendarmerie was not only an instrument of terror in the villages. They were also key players in the Hungarian Holocaust. As an arm of the state, they collected all the worldly possessions of the dispossessed Jews before shepherding them into the ghettos. They made sure that the Jews got no food, water, or any other "comfort" before they were forced into the cattle cars.

  

  Gendarmes escort the deportees in Nagykőrös

 

Gendarmes lead the Jews to the railroad stations

 

 

 

They bring the Jews of Kiskunmajsa to the wagons

 

 

 And they deliver these children from Transylvania to Auschwitz

If all these "heroics" of the gendarmerie were not enough, one of the highlights of their activities was the occupation of Northern Serbia, particularly Novi Sad (Újvidék), in the winter of 1942. In order to establish a reign of terror that was unknown in those lands before, in only two days in April they murdered several thousand people, male and female, without respect to age or ethnicity. The number of victims was never firmly established; some estimates are as high as 12,000, but even the lowest is 3,000-4,000. Some victims were rounded up on the frozen river Danube, in which openings in the ice were created by grenades, and the people were shot and tossed into the water through these holes. This was also the work of the gendarmerie:

 

Novi Sad in 1942

 

And of course, they were not without a sense of humor. For amusement they humiliated the local rabbi, forcing him to wash their car:

 

 

The Jobbik and with them the entire right-wing of the Hungarian political class, with the support of the Catholic Church, is enthusiastically campaigning for the resurrection of the gendarmerie. They believe that this is the only way to restore order to the country. In the meantime, to accomplish that goal, they don't hesitate to break the law and they work feverishly to overturn the present regime at every opportunity they find, because, they claim, the present order is not order. To them only the gendarmerie's order is the true order.

 

So far this politics has garnered the approval of 15% of the Hungarian electorate and it is rising.

 

 

Back to 1939: The Hungarian right-wing press

One of my favorite essayists is András Nyerges who for a number of years has been writing a column entitled "Színrebontás" (Color Separation) in Élet és Irodalom and earlier in Magyar Hírlap. Nyerges is also a poet and novelist, but I'm most familiar with him through his writings in the press about the press. In his column he talks about the past as part of today. In almost all of his pieces he calls attention to the continuum of past and present. He must have spent countless hours in the Hungarian National Library's collection of newspapers and periodicals pouring over thousands and thousands of newspapers from the interwar period. He is especially fascinated by the publications of the extreme right. I wrote about Nyerges in this blog twice previously. Once when I finished his autobiographical volume about his childhood and again when I read one of his "Color Separation" pieces about Hungarian journalistic reactions to the rise of Hitler and the fall of the Weimar Republic ("The Hungarian Republic and Weimar," March 14, 2009). Last week he wrote about the 1939 elections apropos of the European parliamentary elections of 2009.

Nyerges doesn't dwell on the reasons for the rise of the extreme right in that particular election but rather concentrates on contemporary comments on the results of it. These comments have a familiar ring. For example, Nemzet Szava, a paper close to the Arrow Cross party, noted that the elections showed that "we are not extremists." Yes, they are mainstream and "the extremists are those leftists who are trying to turn the hands of the clock backwards." Magyar Szó, another far-right daily, proclaimed that "in the coming years there can be no other political trend but that of the right. The masses behind the last Mohicans of the liberal past have disappeared. The party that until very recently considered itself the only rightful representative of the Hungarian working people is in its death throes. As a political factor it is already gone." It might be useful here to quote Viktor Orbán from yesterday: "What happened was not an electoral accident. On June 7 a new political system came into being" that Orbán calls "centrist." "This new order has been taking shape for a long time down in the deep but now it came to the surface....The essence of this new system is that only one political force exists that is capable of governing." The demise of the socialists and liberals is complete, their resurrection, if at all, is far in the future.

The newspapers that supported MÉP (Magyar Élet Pártja), just like newspapers close to Fidesz today, were not too worried about the spectacular showing of the extreme right. Instead they rejoiced over the meager results of the left-liberal camp. For example, Új Magyarság's editorial a day after the elections stated that "the days of liberalism and democracy are over for good. From the very beginning of the campaign the public mood clearly predicted the victory of the right and the triumph of nationalism. Their march couldn't be stopped either by judeo-liberalism or by democracy whose credibility and reputation have been lost. Marxism, which everybody knew sooner or later would be the representative of only the Jewry, has suffered a frightful defeat. The liberal parties completely disappeared because the people realized that they have nothing in common with them." Not a word about the extreme right.

But the Hungarist/Nazi press had its answer to the editorial of Új Magyarság. Magyar Szó wrote: "The remaining small liberal camp and its weak press as well as the swollen [traditional] right try to frighten the political illiterates with the bogeyman of radicalism and comfort themselves that everything is just fine and dandy." (Similar to the voices after the EU election that hoped that the extremists once in parliament would be tamed because after all the voters for these parties are not really nice respectable citizens but members of the underclass.) Kálmán Hubay, president of the Arrow Cross Party in the absence of Ferenc Szálasi who was in jail at the time, made it clear that the size of their electorate shows that these parties are no longer representatives of fringe elements but must be considered mainstream. They need no taming. Hubay strongly objected to the "disrespectful" way others talked about them and their voters. "He regretted that he had to be the one to explain that one ought to talk differently about the second largest party in the country."

Then, just as now, everybody tried to figure out where the votes for the extremists were coming from. The traditional right tried to quiet fears that the votes came from their side and kept emphasizing that the Nazi votes came from the left. According to an interview published in Magyar Szó (June 2, 1939), Hubay was offended because such a supposition would indicate that "the present advance is not the triumph of an idea." After all, that would indicate that those who voted for Arrow Cross are people "who are always in opposition, who are only restless revolutionary elements. They were behind the Reds and now they stand behind the extreme right." However, said Hubay, this is not so and he can prove it by the numbers. He took the figures from the 1926 elections that he described as the "golden age of the Reds" when the social democrats received 128,000 votes; in 1939 they got 102,000 votes. The Arrow Cross Party alone received 673,871 votes so for Hubay it was a "mathematical puzzle" how it was possible that national socialist parties got their voters from the Social Democratic Party. Let me point out here that Hubay was misleading. In 1926 altogether 1,143,583 votes were cast; in 1929 almost double that--2,193,054!

It was also pointed out that the Arrow Cross campaign was well organized and their propaganda more effective than that of other parties. Magyar Szó dwelt on this on June 2, 1939. "The Arrow Cross party proved at the elections that masses are behind it and that in its functioning, in its tactics, in its propaganda and in its organizational methods they are cleverer, stronger, and smarter than the others." I think a similar situation exists today. Both Fidesz and Jobbik are much better at propaganda, organization, and campaign tactics than their opponents. Jobbik's discovery of the not so latent anti-Roma feelings prevalent in the country and its organization of the Hungarian Guard certainly were very effective in its campaign and brought unexpected and spectacular results.

As for the relationship between the traditional right and the extreme right, it is worth reading István Milotay's piece in Új Magyarság, a government paper (June 4, 1939). According to Milotay the Hungarian press "that is still in mostly Jewish hands" tried everything to stop the march of the right. They waged a "crusade" against their leaders and "yet they didn't succeed." But then comes the really interesting part. Milotay realized that the appearance of the extreme right that "is behind the [traditional] right majority is restless" and thus the "conservative right" is facing an opposition like "its own shadow." And he continued: "the right-wing majority must face those spirits that they themselves let out from the magic bottle and which now freed know neither limit nor consideration." Nyerges remarks here that if Milotay had finished his analysis here he could be considered an objective observer. However, he offered his advice to the "right majority" on the issue of how to handle this delicate situation. He suggested cooperation with the extreme right. After all, the extreme right-wing parties "cannot be suppressed by sheer force and their repression would only increase their resistance and their conquering strength." At the end of the article he added that, after all, these extremist parties "may become useful, stimulating, improving factors.... My guess is that as far as the larger goals are concerned there is hardly any difference between the right-wing parties."

This Milotay piece also sounds very familiar. There are those who keep repeating that Viktor Orbán allowed the evil genie out of the bottle and now is facing an opposition on his right as well. There are also voices that suggest not fighting the extremists because any attempt at suppressing them would only give them strength. There are those who suggest cooperation with the extreme right on the, in my opinion, naive assumption that they can be tamed. As we know, Viktor Orbán for weeks after the election refused to deal with Jobbik. For a while he acted as if Jobbik didn't exist. His party did extremely well and he didn't seem to care that Jobbik received almost 15% of the votes. And finally, according to many observers there are no basic differences between Fidesz and Jobbik. The differences are superficial and mostly noticeable in linguistic usage.

But let's get back to 1939. Milotay's offer of cooperation wasn't welcomed by Hubay who in light of his party's strength answered in A Nép. "We are not intoxicated by our victory, we are not celebrating, we are not partying, we are not toasting and we don't heap praise on each other. It's not our style.... We want to prepare ourselves for the next elections that will be decisive." And finally he made it clear that "we are not making deals with anyone. We are going ahead on our lonely road." How familiar. Viktor Orbán only yesterday made it clear for the first time that he will not have Jobbik members in his government. It didn't take more than an hour before Gábor Vona answered: they have no plans to share power with Fidesz or anyone else. He is going "on his lonely road" to the decisive moment when he will govern Hungary.

According to Nyerges the results of the 1939 elections didn't lead to self-examination on the part of either the left or the traditional right. Neither of the two camps took the warnings coming from the extreme right seriously. Just like Vona, the national socialists were certain that at the next elections there will be a "national socialist majority." As it turned out, without Hitler's help that couldn't happen. So let's be hopeful. The only worry is that Orbán might cooperate with Jobbik out of desperation and  make too many concessions to the extreme right. Something like that happened once, between 1998 and 2002, but then MIÉP was nowhere near as strong as Jobbik seems now. The consequences of such cooperation might pose a greater danger in 2010 and beyond.

Two elections in Hungary: 1939 and 2009

Of course, the 1939 election was a national election while in 2009 it was a European parliamentary election, but there is one thing that these two elections have in common: the unexpectedly strong showing of the extreme right. In 1939 there were six parties that could be described as right-radical, and altogether they received more than one million votes. It is true that the traditional government party still got 71.92% of the votes, which meant 187 seats in a 260-member parliament, but the parties of the extreme right received 18% of the votes and could send 46 people to parliament. Even in Budapest where the liberals and the social democrats were traditionally strong, the extreme right gained ground. Four years earlier these small radical parties had received only 50,000 votes. Four years later over one million! One might add that prior to 1939 voting in the countryside was not secret. The 1939 election was the first to have secret ballots everywhere. At the same time Law 1938/XIX increased the minimum voting age and introduced stricter educational requirements. However, it didn't help. Just as István Csurka's MIÉP enjoyed a strong showing in the well-off Buda districts in the 1990s, so the Arrow Cross, the most important extreme right-wing party, was the favorite of the upper middle classes in 1939.

Even then, as now, pundits debated about who voted for these parties. The conservatives gleefully pointed to Red Csepel (a working class district in the southern part of Budapest) that went solidly for the Hungarian Nazis and to their strong showing in mining towns. Western Hungary, an area that remained firmly in the Fidesz camp in the EU election, was an Arrow Cross stronghold in 1939, especially around the city of Keszthely and along the Magyaróvár-Zirc-Enying axis. The extreme right in 1939 was also very popular in central Hungary. In 2009 Jobbik was successful in counties with high Roma populations due to their anti-Gypsy rhetoric while "the Roma question" was a non-issue in 1939.

Several articles appeared lately on the the growth of the extreme right in Hungary. I want to focus on one that I found especially interesting: Andor Ladányi's "Kísért a múlt?" (Élet és Irodalom, July 3). Andor Ladányi as a young historian wrote a little book on the radical youth of the early 1920s which I found particularly useful when I was working on this period. Ladányi, like others then and later, believes that in large part the votes for the extreme right came from the left. In 1935 there were eleven social democratic members of parliament. In 1939 only five. But the smallholders also lost out to the Hungarian Nazis. In 1935 the party had a parliamentary caucus of twenty-two while after 1939 it was reduced to fourteen. In Buda, in the so-called "Christian middle-class" districts, the Arrow Cross party received 32.92% of the votes. Looking at the details of the 1939 election one can safely say that support for the extreme right was wider and deeper than it is for Jobbik today. First of all, the 18% figure is misleading because the radical parties, including the Arrow Cross Party, were unable to compete in every district. In those days there were districts where one could vote only for parties and others in which one could vote for individual candidates. There were thirty-eight districts where one could vote only for parties, and the Arrow Cross Party was on the ballot in only twenty-one of them. But when they were on the ballot, they received 29.35% of the votes. Then there were 135 districts where the electorate voted for individual candidates; here the Arrow Cross Party managed to get on the ballot in fewer than half of them. When they were represented, they received 26.37% of the votes. So, although it's not scientific to extrapolate based solely on these numbers, it's still not difficult to imagine what would have happened if they had been on the ballot in all 173 districts!

Although there are many similarities between the Arrow Cross and Jobbik, there are obvious differences. In those days the extreme right didn't face such issues as globalization or Hungary's relation to the European Union. Rascism was of course present but the "Gypsy question" was not an issue. First of all because the number of Gypsies in those days was much smaller than today, and in the late 1930s this minority group was not really visible. The extreme right found a common cause in anti-semitism, manifested more openly and virulently than today. Or at least in those days it wasn't necessary to use code words. Nationalism was an important component then as now, but irredentism dominated the vocabulary of the extreme right in 1939 in a way that it no longer does. By 1939 German Nazi propaganda exercised a powerful influence on the Hungarian extreme right, and the Hungarian national socialist parties even received financial assistance from Germany. For the 1939 election campaign this financial assistance was substantial. Ladányi believes that Jobbik doesn't receive financial assistance from other European right-wing parties. I might mention here that György Lázár, who often writes from California in Élet és Irodalom, makes a case for Iranian financial support of Jobbik just as an earlier Hungarian right-radical group received generous sums from Saddam Hussein (http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;23303). I don't know where the money for the 2009 election came from, but surely not from the local supporters.

Finally, Ladányi recalls that in 1939 the extreme right won votes from the opposition parties (social democrats, smallholders, and liberals). The "government party" MÉP (Magyar Élet Pártja) actually gained voters. MÉP had more than a two-thirds majority in parliament. Prime Minister Pál Teleki and Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer immediately distanced themselves from the extreme right, and the policies of the government were in no way influenced by the presence of a fairly large national socialist group in parliament. The situation is somewhat different today. Fidesz's attitude toward Jobbik is ambivalent, making it more difficult to marginalize the Hungarian neo-Nazis.

As opposed to Ladányi I still don't believe that the majority of Jobbik's voters came from the left. The Progresszív Intézet came out with a new study that is very similar to the early Medián poll. See here: http://nol.hu/belfold/20090710-fokent_a_fidesz_szavazoibol_toltekezett_a_jobbik But to me even more telling is that half of Fidesz voters are opposed to the court's decision to ban the Hungarian Guard, and we know from other sources that one-third of them actually want cooperation between Fidesz and Jobbik. See http://nol.hu/belfold/20090709-nem_az_egyenruha_teszi And, as we know, the pollsters expected Fidesz to do much better in the EU parliamentary election than their final  56.36% figure. All in all, I believe that the majority of the Jobbik voters came from first-time voters and former Fidesz supporters.

The real question is whether Jobbik will make further strides and receive an even greater number of votes next year or whether the same thing will happen now as happened after 1939. The right radical groups splintered and again became insignificant. It was only after October 15, 1944, that Ferenc Szálasi, the head of the Arrow Cross Party, gained power, but only as Germany's puppet. Today I think a lot will depend on how the government handles the situation. From today's news it looks as if at last they decided to be courageous and take steps against any future activities of the Hungarian Guard. Meanwhile I wouldn't like to be in Viktor Orbán's shoes. His situation is very difficult given the presence of Jobbik sympathizers among Fidesz voters. But I don't think that ignoring the problem is the right answer to the problem.

János Kádár of Hungary, May 26, 1912-July 6, 1989

It was exactly twenty years ago that János Kádár died. Whatever we think of him politically he was, as János M. Rainer, director of the 56-Institute, said a few days ago, "one of the most outstanding and important personalities of the political history of the twentieth century." In his own lifetime a historical period was named for him: Kádár-korszak (the age of Kádár). He is a controversial man. Some of his former subjects remember him and his age with affection and nostalgia while others consider him a cruel murderer. Both assessments are gross simplifications of a very complex and controversial life. After 1956 he was the man responsible for the death of hundreds and the imprisonment of thousands. But that phase of his rule ended by the mid-1960s, and from there on he managed to make Hungary the "happiest barracks of the Soviet bloc." At his funeral there were as many people following his coffin as paid tribute to Imre Nagy at his burial.

Kádár was the illegitimate son of Borbála Czermanik (or Csermanek) who worked as a maid at Villa Austria in then Abbázia, today Opatija, a fancy seaside resort. She was born in today's Slovakia in the county of Komárom/Komárno and went to school for only three years. Getting from this little village to a hotel at the other end of the country shows an enterprising spirit, although it is true that at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century Hungary experienced unusually high mobility. According to some sources about 600,000 Hungarians moved from their place of origin, mostly villages, to cities, especially to Budapest. This was especially true of the area that is Slovakia today. Kádár's father was most likely János Krezinger from the county of Somogy who spent his military service in an infantry regiment stationed in Fiume (today Rijeka). Kádár didn't know who his father was until the late 1950s, but then he met Krezinger and three of his presumed half brothers.

The baby was left with foster parents in a village not very far from where the Krezinger family lived.  Kádár to his dying day spoke in a dialect used in that region. At the age of six he joined his mother in Budapest where he finished four years of elementary school and four years of middle school (polgári). He was an excellent student but further study was out of the question. At the age of fourteen he learned a trade: fixing typewriters. That was a relatively "elegant" and well-paid profession. However, he didn't feel at home among these "aristocratic" workers and a few months before he would have gotten his papers he quit.

It was at this time, in 1930, when he was eighteen years old that he became involved with the "movement." His destination wasn't the social democratic party but the illegal party of the communists (KMP) or rather its youth branch. The communist movement was very small, but the authorities paid a lot of attention to their activities. Kádár, then still called Csermanek, ended up in jail several times. By 1942 he was among the important leaders of the illegal communist movement. He was one of the homegrown communists, as opposed to the Muscovite branch of Mátyás Rákosi, Ernő Gerő, and Mihály Farkas who arrived with the Soviet troops in 1944-45. He changed his name to Kádár (meaning cooper in Hungarian). Without going into all the details, eventually all the homegrown communists became suspect and one after the other fell victim to Mátyás Rákosi's ruthless elimination of all who, in his opinion, could be his rival. (An exception to this division between Muscovites and locals was Imre Nagy, who spent about fifteen years in the Soviet Union.) In 1949 Kádár played a shameful role in the arrest and show trial of László Rajk. Two years later he himself ended up in jail and was released only in 1954. Thus in 1956 a lot of people felt that Kádár was one of the "good guys." As it turned out, however, he was cautious when it came to choosing sides.

During the revolution it looked as if Kádár were on the side of the revolution. He became the secretary of the newly formed communist party and seemed to have accepted multi-party democracy. On November 1, however, Kádár ended up in Moscow and soon enough came back with the Soviet troops. Apparently he was more or less kidnapped. Once he agreed to "consolidate" the Hungarian situation, he accepted a role that inevitably led to political suppression and the murder of many, including Imre Nagy. Kádár was "immensely ambitious and didn't shrink back even from violence because he felt that he had a mission." This mission, as he saw it, was to save the Hungarian people from "the horrors of the Horthy regime." According to historians of the period, Kádár wasn't really a reformer. He kept the regime firmly within the Soviet mold. But he managed to get as much out of the system as was humanly possible. Mind you, by the 1970s only through foreign loans. The problems that became obvious by the 1970s could perhaps have been avoided if in 1968 Kádár had allowed the country's reform economists to make the necessary changes. But he refused to admit that the Hungarian economy was floundering.

By the mid-1980s Kádár was experiencing severe mental problems. Most likely cerebral sclerosis. Near the end of his life, against his doctors' advice, he went to the April 12, 1989, meeting of the Central Committee and delivered a speech. Among his incoherent sentences the recurring theme was the murder of Imre Nagy, though he never mentioned him by name. The speech can be read in the original here: http://www.kornismihaly.hu/a_kadar_beszed.pdf  Kádár sought forgiveness: "I committed a mistake ... and what follows from that. Forgive me!" He said that his churning mind keeps returning to one thing, that he cannot stop thinking about that one thing. He claimed that the people present could have no idea what a difficult situation he was in.

Apparently at the end he foresaw that the regime he created was going to crumble and he was truly afraid for his life. He was afraid that perhaps he would suffer the same fate as his nemesis, Imre Nagy. I'm sure that if Kádár hadn't died in 1989 he would have lived his remaining years in peace. In fact, his grave is one of the most often visited in the cemetery reserved for the famous men of Hungarian history. But his remains suffered what he didn't. Kádár's grave was vandalized on May 2, 2007; a number of his bones, including his skull, were stolen, along with his wife Mária Tamáska's urn. A message reading "murderers and traitors may not rest in holy ground 1956-2006" was written nearby. The perpetrators have never been found.

I think one reason the majority of Hungarians prior to 1989 liked Kádár was that, contrary to some of the other communist leaders, he lived a simple life. He detested the personal aggrandisement so widespread in the communist world. He and his wife lived in a modest house, and they even raised chickens. He kept to himself; he had no close friends with whom he felt free to share his thoughts. Perhaps his thoughts were too painful. From his illegitimacy to his role in the revolution and his part in Imre Nagy's murder. He did play chess with György Aczél, another high level party apparatchik who was in charge of cultural matters. Apparently he didn't call anyone by his first name and didn't use the familiar form in talking to anyone. Behind his back his co-workers called him "az Öreg," the Old One. Several books were written about him. I especially enjoyed Tibor Huszár's Kádár János: Politikai életrajza, 1912-1989 2 vols. (Budapest, 2001-2003).

Hungarian Gypsies (Roma): Past and present (Part II)

As promised yesterday I'm moving on to the topic of Gypsies in the work force. Traditionally Gypsies were artisans and traders. In the eighteenth century some of the settled Gypsies worked as blacksmiths and were considered to be very skilled in ironwork. Others were traders, especially involved in the buying and selling of horses. And, combining these two interests, some were farriers, an important profession in those days. Most of them lived in villages in segregated sections, usually at the far ends of the usually one-street hamlets. This is still pretty much the case. Think of the serial attacks on Gypsy houses lately: almost all of the houses burned or shot at were situated at the far end of the village. The Gypsies owned no land although in the eighteenth century there were all sorts of attempts to apportion some land to them, coming from the estates of the local, usually noble, owner whose land was cultivated by the local peasants. Legislation regarding these land grants was even enacted, but in practice nothing came of it. Thus Gypsies had no agricultural experience in a country where more than 60% of the population was employed in agriculture as late as the 1930s.

In 1945 there was a radical land reform. The huge estates owned mostly by the nobility and the Catholic Church were cut up into very small strips of land and given to people who owned no land at all but who were employed as hired hands. Gypsies were excluded. I don't know what the thinking was behind this exclusion. Perhaps they argued that Gypsies who had never worked the land wouldn't be able to take advantage of the opportunity. Or since there wasn't enough land for the non-Gypsy needy they were simply left out. In any event the change that occurred in 1945 didn't make any difference as far as the Roma population was concerned.

As late as 1971 (again here I quote the data of István Kemény) two-thirds of the Gypsies lived in segregated Gypsy settlements. Two-thirds of their huts (one couldn't really call them houses) were made of adobe bricks (vályog in Hungarian). Forty-four percent of these huts had no electricity, only eight percent had running water, and only three percent had toilets. Thirty-two percent of these huts didn't even have outhouses!  Most of the houses Gypsies live in today in the countryside still have no running water; water must be brought from a well, often quite distant.

During the socialist period there was one major change from earlier times: 85% of the heads of households worked, mostly in factories either in Budapest or in bigger cities nearby. Admittedly, among Gypsy men only 11% were skilled and 10% semi-skilled workers. Thirteen percent of them were employed in agriculture, doing mostly heavy physical work. Some migration took place between the countryside and cities, but many Roma men shuttled between home and workplace either daily by train if the workplace was close enough or stayed in workers' hostels during the week and went home only for the weekend.

The full employment fostered during the socialist period concealed the fact that most of the work these people did was superfluous. In 1989-1990 came the moment of truth. Factories producing unwanted goods had to be closed, more profitable ones were sold to mostly foreign companies that brought along modern equipment. This meant that they needed fewer workers and those that they hired had to be skilled. An incredible number of workers lost their jobs. After 1990 only 29% of Roma men managed to retain their jobs in contrast to 64% of the non-Gypsies. And in the last twenty years there has been no improvement in this respect. By now perhaps even two or three generations of Roma families live on welfare. The youngsters don't see their fathers or grandfathers get up in the morning and go to work. Gypsy girls get pregnant at an early age and women in their thirties might already be grandmothers. They have large families as is usually the case with the less educated, but in the case of the Roma their love of children is legendary. The more children the larger the cash benefits from the government, but even so most Gypsy families live in poverty. Because most of them live in the countryside job opportunities are practically nonexistent, and they either have no transportation to travel to work or they can't afford the fare. And there is also discrimination against them. Gypsies complain that as soon as employers find out that the applicant is Gypsy suddenly the advertised job has already been filled.

Non-Roma resent the welfare payments doled out to able bodied men and women who are, according to them, simply lazy. They don't want to work. Mayors who are responsible for distributing some of the welfare money started demanding public work for assistance. That demand turned out to be illegal. Then the second Gyurcsány government tried to take the wind out of the sails of local potentates by introducing a public works program for the able bodied. What happened to this project I don't know because there was a change at the head of the ministry of social welfare after Gordon Bajnai became prime minister and I haven't heard anything about it since. The Orbán government tried to tie family assistance to school attendance, which I thought was a good idea. However, the socialists then in opposition attacked the legislation and after 2002 they abolished it. In the last few months of the Gyurcsány government the idea resurfaced, mostly to appease the non-Roma population and to reduce tensions. Again, lately I've heard nothing more about this plan either.

There are constant complaints about Roma thievery. Of course, not all Gypsies steal, but Jobbik and the Hungarian Guard introduced a new concept: "Gypsy crime." Liberals have been fighting this stigma. After all, they argue, there is no such thing as "Hungarian crime." Those who don't find the term objectionable claim that in police textbooks the term exists and describes petty thievery: stealing wood from the forest, taking fruit from other people's trees, stealing a couple of chickens at night from neighbors' yards. Apparently, the Hungarian police refuse to look into these petty crimes because they don't bother with any loss that is under 20,000 forints. And the resentment grows. With it the prejudice. A vicious circle. Jobbik and Hungarian Guard offer simple solutions: "we will keep them in line." They want to bring back the gendarmerie, a notorious force that was in charge of the countryside before 1945. Some people want to send them back to India. Actually, the European Gypsies are most likely from the area where today the Pakistani and American forces are battling the Taliban!

As we know from other examples, the integration of a fairly large group that is different looking is a difficult business. The integration of American blacks who in many ways were a great deal better off fifty some years ago than Hungary's Gypsies are today is still a work in progress despite the fact that United States has a black president. It takes time, targeted legislation, and a lot of money. Quite a few billions of forints were already spent without making a dent. Apparently, a large portion of this money never reached those who were supposed to benefit from it.

Once the economic crisis passes, the European Union should pay some attention to this question because after all there are many European countries with large and ever growing Roma populations. The problem is particularly acute in Eastern Europe where the concentration of Gypsies is the greatest. Unfortunately these former socialist countries have the least resources. Therefore perhaps western countries should come to the rescue, not just with money but perhaps by sending social workers and volunteers. I just read that Péter Balázs, the new foreign minister, had a meeting with Hilary Clinton yesterday and the two of them talked about the "Gypsy question." There might be some U.S. help, not necessarily financial. Perhaps American experience in integrating American blacks might be helpful. Help is sorely needed.

Hungarian public education: 1956-1990

Because I have no personal experience to rely on, I have to turn to historians dealing with this period. I chose Ignác Romsics's Magyarország története--A XX. században (Budapest: Osiris, 1999) mostly because Romsics spends a fair amount of his book on educational and cultural matters. I learned from him about the educational changes introduced, what worked and what didn't. It seems that the ministry of education and the experts came up with new ideas about every ten years.

Romsics considers the expansion of kindergartens a real success. In 1938 there were only 1,140 kindergartens, most of them private, but between 1960 and 1980 the regime built 2,000 new ones. With this expansion the number of children who could enjoy the benefits of early education tripled. By 1986 92% of children between the ages of four and six attended kindergarten. The number of kindergarten teachers also grew enormously--to 33,500. While in 1950 one teacher had to look after 44 children, that number was only 13 by 1985.

During this period the quality of education improved substantially in the lower grades (that is, the first eight grades in the 8 + 4 model). I mentioned earlier that the reform of 1945 establishing a uniform school system was slow to take hold due to the huge discrepancies inherent in the old system. It took a couple of decades to close the old one-room village schools. In their place the government established larger district schools to which children were bused from a number of smaller villages. Just to give you some idea of the changes. In 1960 there were 6,300 "general schools" but by 1980 there were only 3,500. Seventy-five thousand children under the age of fourteen were bused while 10,000 lived in boarding schools. In 1955 98% of children attended elementary schools, but 37% of them never finished the compulsory eight grades. By 1980 the dropout rate was under 5%. You may recall that in earlier years the teacher-student ratio was 1:44. By the 1980s it was 1:15. The quality of education was further improved in 1978 when new textbooks were issued, and in some better schools the teaching of a foreign language (in addition to Russian) was introduced, occasionally starting with grade three.

Unfortunately high schools didn't participate in this improvement in educational standards. According to Romsics the problem lay with the regime's failed attempts to extend the duration of compulsory education to ten or twelve years. Between 1960 and 1965 the number of high schools grew by 50%. There were about 200 new high schools, mostly in small towns and larger villages. The number of high school students also mushroomed. In 1955-56 there were 119,000 students attending high schools (gymnasiums, technical high schools, or teachers' high schools); by 1965 their number had reached 236,000. Moreover, over time the classroom size decreased. In 1960 there were 35-40 students per class, but by the 1980s that number was only 28-32. The teacher-student ratio during the same period changed from 1:18 to 1:13. These statistics may sound impressive, but they gloss over the huge differences among high schools. On the one hand there were the elite gymnasiums, mostly in Budapest; on the other, the mediocre to outright inadequate high schools in the small towns. (This is still the case, and that's why on international educational olympics a small number of Hungarian students excel while on general tests [PISA for example] Hungarian high school students as a whole perform miserably.)

The last time I wrote about education I neglected to mention a new type of high school that was introduced in 1949. These schools were called "technikums" or technical schools; they were designed  to produce "middle cadres." I remember their beginnings. In Pécs, a city with coal reserves nearby, the first "technikum" trained middle cadres in mining. These "technikums" were not a great success and by 1968-69 they were discontinued. Instead a new technical high school (szakközépiskola) appeared on the scene. It was supposed to prepare students to become well educated workers with specialized skills. Since relatively few students could enter university and the gymnasiums with their matriculation examinations prepared students only to enter college, these technical high schools became more and more popular. Between 1970 when they were first introduced and 1980, 367 such technical schools were established; by contrast, the number of gymnasiums shrank from 258 to 165. About 30,000 more students studied in technical high schools than in gymnasiums.

During the 1956-90 period higher education was also expanded greatly. According to Romsich the changes were in fact injurious to the quality of education in these institutions. Between 1960 and 1965 the number of institutions of higher learning more than doubled. From 43 to 92. This expansion was mostly due to changes in name only. Educational facilities training teachers for kindergartens or lower grades were upgraded to universities. That move further lowered the quality of higher education. (A similar situation occurred in this country as well when rather inferior teachers' colleges were transformed into universities offering both undergraduate and advanced degrees, mostly in education.) Out of these 92 there were only 24 bona fide universities. The rest were colleges training future teachers or nurses. (I would like to mention here that, unlike in English, Hungarian has two words for teacher: "tanító" and "tanár." The former can teach only in the first four grades while the latter is qualified to teach in the higher grades. Even in that second category one normally distinguishes between "általános iskolai tanár" and "középiskolai tanár." I.e. the general school teacher and the high school teacher.)

In the 1960s only 18% of students who finished high school entered college or university. By the 1980s 35%, though many more would have liked to enroll. In 1962 the regime gave up the idea of strict quotas based on social origin, so the percentage of students coming from a working-class or peasant background slowly dropped. In 1956-57 it was 55% but by 1984 only 37%.

Acceptance to college was based on a point system. The formula combined high school grades and  entrance examination results, with more weight given to grades. I never considered this fair because, after all, grades vary greatly from school to school. An "A" from an elite school simply can't be compared to an "A" from a substandard school. I also found it strange that after the centrally administered matriculation exams students still had to take entrance exams.

Prior to the war the favorite course of study was law. That changed after 1948. Who wanted to be a lawyer, a judge, or a prosecutor in a dictatorship? Even at the end of the Kádár regime only 4-6% of university graduates got law degrees. (Note that there are no separate law schools in Hungary. Law is essentially an undergraduate "major.") Engineering students, on the other hand, were in great abundance: 27-30% of the undergraduate population. Eleven to fourteen percent chose teaching.

At the universities the teacher-student ratio was outstanding by any standard--1:4. However, the quality of the professors was uneven. According to Romsics "it was way below international standards." One problem was the cultural isolation of the country. Another was linguistic isolation. To help alleviate the latter problem by the mid-1980s some bilingual high schools were established. And among well-off families many children attended private language classes. Slowly but surely more people took higher-level foreign language examinations.

The main indicators showed progress. By the 1980s 18.5% of the population had high school degrees (still very low) but that was a marked improvement over 1960 when it was only 6.2%. Those with college or university degrees grew during the same period from 2.3% to 7%, though in comparison to other western countries anemic. The problem is that statistics don't lend themselves to qualitative analysis. What do students learn (to analyze, to be creative, or to spout back)? How do they spend their free time? What is their relationship to their college or university (as alums or potential contributors, for instance)? Of course, I realize that this is not part of the Hungarian model, but it can have a powerful influence on the quality of the institutions.

I was talking to a university professor the other day who attended one of the better universities in the second half of the 1980s. She told me that "quality was bad when I was a student but today it is is even worse." And one hears the same thing over and over again. The student body grew tremendously but the teaching staff didn't. New colleges and universities were established some of which, according to their critics, don't even deserve accreditation. But that is another topic.

Hungarian public education: 1945-1956

First a few words about the war years, especially 1943 and 1944. Although the Soviet troops were still nowhere and Hungary was not yet a battlefield, the education of children was not without its problems. During 1943 Hungary was the target of aerial attacks so attending school wasn't always easy. In Budapest, for example, the "siege" lasted for months; most people were happy to survive in bomb shelters. And when there was door to door armed conflict, going to school was out of the question. Even in cities where the German takeover was relatively easy, with armed opposition lasting only a few days, schools were closed for the first semester of the 1944-45 academic year. No teaching, no grades. And what was especially academically damaging was that many school districts didn't insist on repeating this term. They simply passed students on. This was especially harmful to students in the lower grades.

Where the fighting was intense, schools were not spared. Across the country sixty percent of the high schools were damaged and about half of the elementary schools. Two thousand schools were very heavily damaged. Although repair began immediately, over 800 couldn't be used as late as 1947. There was not only damage to the buildings; often such items as desks, books, and lab equipment were gone.

In spite of these difficulties the coalition government launched the democratization of the school system because in the years prior to 1945 the school system was effectively organized along class lines. The lower classes (mostly peasant boys and girls) attended the six-grade elementary schools, the lower middle-class the "middle schools" (polgári), and the children of the middle- and upper-middle-class attended gymnasium between the ages of 10 and 18. This system was immediately changed with the introduction of eight years of "general school" (általános iskola) and four years of high school that could be either gymnasium or teachers' high school. Later the ministry here and there tinkered with the system, but the formula of 8 + 4 has remained to this day.

Educational reform got off to a rough start. In the first couple of years the change was often merely a difference in name. It didn't matter what the old one-classroom village school was called; basically it remained the same old village school. It didn't matter what the law said about the educational attainment necessary for teachers in the higher grades of the general school if there were no such teachers available. And the demand for "specialists" in math-physics, in geography, in literature-history or in a foreign languages for grades five through eight was empty if there were no trained experts. At the top, the former elite gymnasiums remained exactly the same elite schools as before. The teachers were university educated with specialties. There was no shortage of foreign language teachers. Theoretically schools could teach any western language if there were qualified teachers, but in most schools the preferred language was still German. This was the situation until 1949 when Hungary introduced Russian as a compulsory language and stopped teaching everything else.

Between 1945 and 1948 most of the schools were in the churches' hands, predominantly in the hands of the Catholic Church. Sixty-three percent of the eight-grade general schools, 49% of gymnasiums and 74% of all teachers' high schools were parochial. In the summer of 1948, after a huge debate, parliament passed the law on the nationalization of schools. Altogether 6,500 schools were taken over by the state. The Protestant churches and the Jewish community, realizing the hopelessness of their situation, didn't put up a fight. The Catholic Church, under the guidance of the Prince Primate József Mindszenty, resisted--with devastating consequences.

After the nationalization students encountered an entirely new world. Often they had to change schools because theoretically at least the cities were carved up into different school districts and each student was supposed to attend the school in his district. But Hungary was still Hungary, communist or noncommunist. I had classmates in my new school who came from the other end of town because they were attached to the school and its teachers. On the other hand, a former classmate of mine who lived about three doors down from the district school, refused to change schools and remained in the old Catholic gymnasium, most likely because her parents were convinced that standards would be higher there than in the former Hungarian Reformed middle school (polgári) catering to daughters of better-off peasants from the surrounding villages. But the standards didn't remain the same even there because the nuns could no longer teach and most of the lay teachers were transferred to other district schools.

In my new district school some teachers remained from the earlier Calvinist days, but they were not exactly shining lights. Then there were the (I assume) undereducated newcomers. The most amusing was a fellow who was supposed to teach history but got stuck on "primitive man." What I remember most vividly was how "primitive man" tried to discover what in his environment was poisonous and what could be eaten safely. The "taste tester" sampled. If it was poisonous, we know what happened to him. All this high-level teaching was accompanied by the teacher's ostensibly imitative theatrical performances!

Between 1948 and 1955 the number of high school students almost doubled in contrast to the Horthy period when it grew by only 20%. The emphasis was on developing a new educated class with working class or peasant roots. That could only be achieved by the Hungarian version of affirmative action at the expense of children of white collar workers or those of the former "ruling classes." Children whose parents the regime found objectionable were often denied admission to high school. Entrance to university was strictly regulated by quotas; well over 50% of the students came from a lower-class background. To accelerate the process the government introduced the so-called "specialized matriculation course" (szakérettségi) that was supposed to prepare people, often older than eighteen and with very little formal education, to enter college. The "course" was originally one year in length, and when that turned out to be a huge fiasco it was changed to two years. Gyula Horn, prime minister of Hungary between 1994 and 1998 and formerly a high party official in the Kádár regime, went through one of these preparatory courses and from there straight to the Soviet Union to study "finance." I often wondered what kind of economics he could possibly have learned in Stalin's Soviet Union! I'm not saying that these students were undeserving, but many were unprepared. I personally encountered quite a few fast-tracked students as classmates; as far as I know they all finished college. According to rumors, professors were told to pay special attention to their "progress."

As far as the universities were concerned standards dropped considerably. Famous professors were fired to make room for the "politically correct." Some didn't even have to go through the usual promotional procedure. I knew one teacher who without any experience whatsoever became a full professor and head of a department. (Later he became a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences!) Between 1950 and 1952 175 new university textbooks were published. Eighty-six of them were translations from Russian. Everybody had to take two years of Marxism-Leninism and two years of "extra" Russian--basically elementary Russian redux. There were an incredible number of compulsory classes, and attendance was taken. It was like an extension of high school. Classes started at eight in the morning and at four o'clock we were still busily taking notes. Independent work was practically non-existent, and very little time remained to do any extra reading in the library. Each course had a textbook that had to be memorized and spewed back at oral examinations. At the same time some professors had a more self-serving concept of teaching. A later famous literary historian taught us early Hungarian literature in the second semester of the first year. He happened to be writing a book on a minor Hungarian poet. Thus, for the entire semester every lecture was a detailed analysis of everything this fellow ever wrote. Beside his name I don't remember a thing about him!

If you think I exaggerate, let me quote the historian T. Iván Berend, who attended the same university I did a few years earlier. In his autobiography Történelem-- ahogy én láttam (History as I saw it [Budapest 1997]) he writes about his university years. "The standards of my studies at the Faculty of Arts [of ELTE] were shamefully low. We were unable to become familiar with most of the historical literature of the past. Our 'textbooks' on world history were light-blue colored pamphlets published by the Soviet Party College [Pártfőiskola].... Important historical works were absent from the recommended reading list and often even from the libraries. What they considered to be ideologically undesirable, bourgeois, or 'antagonistic' to the regime were discarded or their reading was restricted to 'researchers' with special passes. Western books and periodicals were not available. We heard nothing of new historical debates or theories.... Language requirements didn't exist, only Russian was available and even that on a low level."

By leaving Hungary I entered an entirely different educational system, and I must say that it was a welcome change. As opposed to my Hungarian university experience the years spent in college in the West were enjoyable and fruitful.

Hungarian public education: The beginnings

It is clear from comments to my earlier post on education that people have rather strong views about the kind of education Hungarian children should receive. Some believe in the old-fashioned "Prussian" model that has been the norm in Hungary ever since 1869 when the first education law was drafted. Although Hungarian education underwent many changes over the subsequent 140 years, the Prussian model that emphasizes factual learning and discipline remained its cornerstone. Yes, today most of the children finish high school at the age of eighteen while about a hundred years ago most sons and daughters of Hungarian peasants quit school after four grades at the age of ten. Yes, a hundred years ago most village schools had only one classroom with a single teacher. Today there are very few schools where there are not enough teachers. In fact, the opposite is true: too many teachers for too few children. While in 1910 the student teacher ratio was 67:1, nowadays the trouble is that in certain places the ratio is 14:1. Discipline until very recently was enforced rigorously. Children were supposed to sit in their seats with their hands behind their backs and no spontaneity of any sort was allowed.

Even today there are a lot of people who are convinced that this was and remains a good model and that new ideas about teaching lead to ignorance and sloth. Our academician, Gábor Náray-Szabó, who gave such a bad name to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in an interview that I translated to everybody's delight, said another terribly clever thing the other day. He thinks that no one should be able to matriculate and go on to college unless the student knows fifty Hungarian poems by heart! Obviously his thinking on education is rooted in the Prussian model. Even in the 1950s for the Hungarian language and literature matriculation exams students had to memorize several dozen poems. As if it served any useful purpose. (But wait, here's an old rationalization made new in a poem by an American high school English teacher: "I make them memorize soliloquies, some lines to keep, should they / be taken prisoner, like John McCain, in some foreign jail.")

In the 1870s illiteracy was high in Hungary--over 65%. By 1910 it was only 33% but still lagged behind Western Europe where illiteracy was around 10%. The 1869 law made education compulsory between ages of 6 and 12 or six grades, but most of the village boys and girls left school after the fourth grade and began to work alongside their fathers and mothers. The overwhelming majority of the village schools had only one classroom and children of all grades studied together. If one could call it studying. The teachers in these schools were not terribly well educated themselves. After four years of elementary school and four years of middle school they attended teachers' high school and at the age of eighteen were let loose on the villages. The lower middle class sent their sons and daughters after the first four grades to middle school called polgári. Most of the girls never got any farther. Girls actually couldn't even attend gymnasium before 1891. They could study at home and take exams in the school. Very few did. Those boys who aspired to greater heights after finishing four years of elementary school entered gymnasium of eight years' duration that ended with a comprehensive (matriculation) exam necessary to enter college. Before World War I  2.5% to 3% of students between the age of 10 and 18 attended gymnasium; put another way, 1.4% of the whole population finished high school. That sounds terribly low today, but apparently on the continent only in Germany was the percentage of high school students higher.

After the First World War the structure itself remained the same but more money was spent on education. More than twice as much, mostly on elementary education. In 1919-1920 there were 5,584 elementary schools with 824,454 students while in 1937-38 there were 6,899 elementary schools with 963,087 students. The student-teacher ratio improved greatly: only 48 students were taught by one teacher. Let me add that even in the 1950s in gymnasiums the average class size was over 40. Illiteracy was lowered from 33% to 15% while the number of high school graduates grew substantially. By the 1930s 10% of the children between the ages of 10 and 18 were attending high school. The percentage of those who finished high school in the population as a whole also grew enormously. It more than doubled from 2.6% to 6%. As for university graduates--before the war out of 1,234 Hungarians there was one university graduate; by 1930 the ratio had improved to one in 759. Put differently, in the population over the age of six, in 1930 1.1% had finished university. Again, this sounds very low but if we compare it to as late as 1990 when only 7.6% of the population over the age of seven had finished university, neither the Rákosi nor the Kádár regime could brag about its achievements in this respect.

Finally, one more thing about the educational system prior to 1948, the year of the nationalization of schools. Most of the schools were parochial, and most of the parochial schools were Catholic. Prior to World War I 80% of elementary schools, 64% of gymnasiums and 59% of middle schools were in the hands of the churches. After the war because of border changes the churches' role in education only increased. By 1920 86% of elementary schools were parochial. The situation was the same in other types of schools as well. Despite the government's efforts to establish new state schools, the situation barely changed. There were cities where there was no choice: all high schools were in the hands of the Catholic Church. For example, in my hometown Pécs. Two parochial boys' gymnasiums and one girls' gymnasium. Interestingly enough, prior to World War I there was a state "reálgimnázium" for boys but after the war the school simply vanished.

It was after World War II that a thorough reorganization of the educational system occurred and in 1948 that the dominance of parochial schools was broken. But that is another story.

Playback: Hungary in 1989

Lately MTV (Magyar Televízió) has been airing a series called "Visszajátszás" (Playback) recalling Hungary in 1989. They just finished the twentieth installment (interestingly the series started with the number zero!). Each program is half an hour long, so viewing the archived videos takes a chunk of time. Moreover, the videos often stop due to server problems and it takes some tinkering not to miss portions of the program itself. Episodes of "Playback" can be found here: http://www.mtv.hu/videotar/?category=459 I would recommend watching it, not only to those who lived abroad at that time but also, and perhaps even more, to those who lived through it but by now don't remember what Hungary was like before the change of regime.

There is a general nostalgia for the late Kádár days. "Playback" belies some of this nostalgia. There is extensive original footage from MTV's programs. These news items, interviews, and political cabaret snippets are interspersed with current interviews with people who played some role in these events. I must say that I found these memories of the olden days less enlightening than the 1989 television appearances of the young László Kövér, Viktor Orbán, Gábor Fodor, Péter Tölgyessy, or Ferenc Gyurcsány, just to mention a few. It was also interesting to see and hear some of the people from the other side: Károly Grósz, György Fejti, or Imre Pozsgay. It is amazing how rapidly the regime collapsed: a few months and "the party" agreed to the idea of a multi-party government and, after some hesitation, also decided to sit down with all the parties at the "Round Table Discussions" in which the parties put together the outline of a new democratic Hungary.

But for me the most interesting segments of "Playback" were the ones dealing with the everyday life and travails of citizens. Stories about people who had waited for twenty years to get an apartment from the city "council." Or about people who had to wait five years to receive a Trabant for which they had paid in advance--and it wasn't even cheap. Or that only eight families out of one hundred had a telephone. There was a true story told by the man himself who applied for a telephone in 1967. His son's arrival into this world was imminent, and of course they had no telephone. Not only  didn't they have one but nobody in the apartment building had one, and there was no telephone booth anywhere to be found. Luckily they managed to get to the hospital just in the knick of time. But he decided that a telephone was a necessity. For twenty-two years he waited for that wretched phone. Occasionally he got a letter from Magyar Posta that also handled telephones to inquire whether he was still interested and, if so, he should fill out the attached questionnaire. He did so dutifully to no avail. The last time that Magyar Posta inquired was in 1989. This time they asked what prizes he had received, whether he was he a member of the Workers' Militia. The man got so mad that instead of writing to Magyar Posta he wrote an angry letter to HVG (Heti Világgazdaság), a weekly that in many ways was a pioneer in the new Hungarian journalism.

There was a segment on the "world passport." Prior to 1988 there were two kinds of passports: the red ones and the blue ones. The red one was good to travel in the socialist countries while one needed a blue passport to travel to the west. Travel to the west was greatly restricted not just for political reasons but because of financial constraints. People needed "hard currency," and the country didn't have an abundance of that. Thus a Hungarian citizen could visit the West only every three years and received, if I recall properly, one hundred dollars' worth of hard currency. In 1988 that practice changed, and suddenly half the country wanted to go to Austria to shop for items in short supply in Hungary. Immediately after the government (actually the party because it was always the party that gave the final okay) announced that everybody can have a blue passport, 350,000 requests arrived just from Budapest. And that was just in the first week or so. They were expecting four times that many from the capital alone. And once there was a passport and plenty of hard currency available, families began driving in their Trabants and Ladas toward the Austrian border. There were miles-long lines at the crossing. Often they didn't get farther than the first Austrian village where clever businessmen were waiting for the Hungarians. They brought back freezers, video players, brand names that were not available in Hungary. It is hard to give exact figures, but the loss to Hungary was considerable. According to one estimate perhaps 1,000 billion dollars was spent by Hungarians outside of the country. Eventually the government decided to act: they set up "hard currency" shops where they sold the same items Hungarians were buying abroad.

"Visszajátszás" challenges some of the recollections of friends, always a bit suspect. They try to convince those of us who didn't live in Hungary in those days that by the eighties there were no shortages in Hungary. Everything was available. But here are the original pictures and words of MTV from those days, and it is clear that their memory is faulty. They also seem to forget that all those travels they so fondly remember could have happened only after 1988 when the regime was already on its deathbed.

I will do my best to convince people to watch the series and refresh their failing memory.

"My war with nationalism"

I could have written the article published by Gyula Hellenbart that appeared in the April 10 issue of Élet és Irodalom's "Feuilleton" section. Or, at least, I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiments.

I must say that I wasn't familiar with Gyula Hellenbart's writings, most likely because he is a literary historian who left Hungary in 1956 for Germany. Having lived outside of Hungary for over 50 years, his way at looking at Hungary and Hungarian national identity is obviously different from the homegrown variety. In this article Hellenbart sets aside such obvious components of national identity as language or heritage. Instead, he concentrates on the way in which people's knowledge of history (or lack thereof) contributes to Hungarian societal attitudes. His overarching thesis is that national self-knowledge cannot exist without a critically parsed knowledge of history.

Although Hungarian historiography of the last few decades has been of very high quality, Hellenbart points to the paucity of historical references in the Hungarian media. And when they occur they are mostly untrue clichés. For example: Hungary as the "bastion of Christendom," the Golden Bull as "the first constitution of the Continent," and Hungary as a great power because "during the reign of Louis the Great three oceans washed the shores of the country." A lot of boasting, wishful thinking, half-truths or "outright fiction." All this supports the "ethnocentric bias" and makes it difficult for "the society to grow up." In brief, Hungarian society has not moved beyond the romanticism of the nineteenth century and continues to find in its statues, oils, and operas "a source of national glory that feeds its patriotism and its desire for prestige."

Of course, a stable national self-esteem is necessary but not the kind that is based on illusions. Hellenbart quotes himself from 1967. He wrote a piece in Új Látóhatár, an emigré monthly, in which he outlined the Hungarian refugees' response to the West. The Hungarian university students who found themselves in western Europe after 1956 were upset about how little the world knew about Hungary. But Hellenbart pointed out that people from other countries know very little about other people in general. The "world" knows just as little about Poland, Norway, Finland, or Romania. And what do Hungarians know about German or French history? Mighty little. Apparently, Hellenbart's compatriots didn't buy his argument. A reader from Zurich wrote a scathing critique of the piece. In his rebuttal he recounted an event that actually supported Hellenbart's conclusions. "During the spring of 1965 I saw, together with a friend from Hungary, the exhibition 'Les tresors des églises de France' in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. We went from room to room and admired the masterpieces of this fabulously rich exhibition. Then my friend exclaimed: 'Let's leave because it makes my blood boil!' 'But why'--I asked, surprised. 'Because it is only here that I see what we have lost, while everything these people built has survived.' " This obviously learned friend from Hungary truly believed that Hungarian culture of the Middle Ages equaled that of France or for that matter that of any western European country. The truth is that Hungary even then was an "underdeveloped" or "developing" nation. But there's always an excuse. If Hungarians go, let's say, to Versailles, they immediately start talking about the Mongols, the Turks, and the Habsburg oppression.

"We don't want to accept ourselves as we are. We don't want to understand that ever since Saint Stephen we have been at the periphery." Yes, this is difficult to swallow, especially when the Hungarian school system teaches Hungarian history in a vacuum and never subjects the country to international metrics. A few years ago a series was launched entitled "Hungarians in Europe" that, especially the first volume (Pál Engel, Beilleszkedés Európába a kezdetektől 1440-ig), made a valiant effort to put Hungary "in its place." But how many people read it? Not too many. I have also made efforts to offer a few sobering examples of Hungary's backwardness. I mentioned the economic historian György Ránki's witty remark: "The European Continent slants eastward." It didn't make a dent. I tried to ask: 'Why was not possible to establish a university in Hungary until the seventeenth century?" Why did the two earlier attempts fail? The first under the reign of Louis the Great "whose country was surrounded by three oceans." And the second under the reign of Matthias, the Renaissance king whose time is described as the golden age of Hungary.

At the same time Hungarians look down on some of their neighbors and have an especially low opinion of "American culture." Well, I'm not going to enter into cultural warfare. But let me give an example that may be a bit above the fray. Not long ago, an internet acquaintance belittled American history: "Let's face it. What is two hundred years! Hungary has been an important country for the last 1,100 years!" First I had to remind her that although the war of independence took place only at the end of the eighteenth century, the British settlers came to these shores four hundred years ago. I also reminded her that the Pilgrims arrived here in 1620 and sixteen years later established Harvard University. Hungary's first university was established in 1635, one year earlier. The discussion came to an abrupt halt.