Hungary at the Dawn of a New Era
KENEZ, PETER
BUILDING A DEMOCRACY Hungary at the Dawn of a New Era BY PETER KENEZ Budapest The superficial symbols of yesterday have been quickly swept away: There are no teams of border guards when you...
...In fairness, it should be noted that the Democratic Forum and the Free Democrats, by scheduling the voting for July 29 and leaving the Socialists little room to campaign, practically assured the outcome...
...Perhaps these Central Europeans understand that it is best not to look too deeply into the past of individuals in a world where almost everyone was more or less a player...
...It is as if Chekhov or Tolstoy were responsible for Stalin...
...Only 13.8 per cent of the electorate turned out, and the rules demanded majority participation...
...After all, even Imre Nagy and his comrades, today rightly regarded as martyrs, hardly had morally unambiguous records before 1956...
...Commercial activity abounds...
...General Keri, a nonagenerian Democratic Forum deputy, announced proudly in Parliament that he had spent his entire life fighting Communists and that the Hungarians participated in World War II for ajust cause, theretaking of territories lost in 1918...
...Second, the Constitution so circumscribed the President's powers that the office became chiefly ceremonial...
...In fact, in almost all the cinemas only American films are playing...
...When they were growing up Communism had already lost its ideological appeal to such an extent that they have trouble understanding how their elders were ever genuine believers...
...Certainly there is anti-Semitism in Hungary, and certainly Jews are distressed by its manifestations...
...In August a Jewish pianist, Zoltan Kocsis, probably the best known musician of his generation, became embroiled in a public dispute...
...They correctly thought they had a good chance of thus putting over one of their own, Imre Pozsgay...
...Consequently, the really important questions—how to handle privatization, how to protect the poor, whether or not the country's interest is best served by selling national assets to foreigners—are not being confronted...
...To build a functioning democracy, a broad consensus is needed on fundamental issues that must be faced...
...BUILDING A DEMOCRACY Hungary at the Dawn of a New Era BY PETER KENEZ Budapest The superficial symbols of yesterday have been quickly swept away: There are no teams of border guards when you get off the plane...
...Hungarians are as rank conscious as Germans...
...While attractive, the style requires some getting used to...
...So newspapers give the new address—that is, the old, old address—and bracket the Communist street name...
...They stress that this has been a Christian nation, the implication being that Jews might be tolerated in the land but could never be true Hungarians...
...You feel like a person arriving at a party in full swing...
...Today, unlike 1945, everything must be reconstructed from the foundations, and the nation does not have the luxury of excluding all who lent their talents to the maintenance of a discredited system...
...Much changed in the intervening period...
...Now Kocsis writes that he was treated better in the era of repression than he is being treated by the new guardians of cultural orthodoxy...
...This gives politics here excitement and, it might even be said, a certain charm...
...Vaci Street, with hundreds of sidewalk vendors peddling everything from fake folk art to old and new books and used clothes, reminds one of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley...
...Those who speak loudest in condemnation were not necessarily the most courageous, and those who played important roles in bringing down the system were often the most compromised...
...this and Dr...
...A man from a village, proudly and self-consciously a peasant, assumed the famous writer was defending the Communists because he himself was one, and sent a scurrilous letter to a newspaper protesting the very idea of comparing the persecution of ex-Communists and kulaks...
...Who is to throw the first stone...
...Now some public personalities have advanced the process...
...Some Hungarians are naive enough to think behavior of that kind is inimical to democracy...
...One day I watched the parliamentary debate on television for a couple of hours...
...The main topic during the summer was an ill-fated and ill-considered plebiscite...
...He would deprive the bread "produced by the sweat of the brow of honest peasants" from the likes of Konrad...
...That was going too far for many...
...You do not need to fill out a currency declaration form any longer...
...The response at official levels was, to say the least, curious...
...They seemed convinced that their speeches might actually make a difference...
...The major political parties do not disagree about solutions, because none of them has any...
...It is not merely individuals, however, it is entire segments of history as well that must be dealt with...
...Csurka used the occasion to attack liberals in general, and to say he was not interested in the good opinion of those Europeans who had put up with the Stalinists for so long...
...Onethinks of the collapse of Admiral Miklós Horthy's rule in 1944-45, yet the Hungarian form of authoritarianism, or fascism, neither desired nor had the ability to draw everyone in...
...The outcome was clear from the outset, since the main opposition party, the liberal Affiance of Free Democrats, had agreed with the governing party, the Democratic Forum, that a simple majority would do...
...A friend of mine, distressed by the decline of Budapest's most impressive shopping area, went up to a policeman and asked him to do something about this public nuisance...
...Some of the sellers are gypsies, some are peasants or are dressed to look like genuine peasants, and some seem to be middle-class men and women or university students...
...If he then received considerable powers under a constitution yet to be drafted, the party's influence would remain substantial in spite of its failures...
...Of course, hostile, aggressiveand ugly voices can be heard...
...He wrote an article entitled, "Driving Hungary into Europe with a Whip...
...The exchanges were heated, but good humored...
...They saw only blatant opportunism...
...But how should the past and its leading figures be treated...
...In many respects the current political situation is unparalleled...
...Prime Minister Jozsef Antall of the Democratic Forum was slow to dissociate himself and his party from the General, though ultimately he did so...
...In the days of the Communist regime Kocsis acquired a reputation for outspokenness and was in constant trouble with the authorities, who periodically made it impossible for him to perform...
...As an example of the possible destructive consequences, he recalled the Soviet antikulak campaigns of the 1950s...
...His works, unlike Konrad's, were freely published in Communist Hungary, and his anti-Semitic outbursts are well known in intellectual circles...
...The Hungarians do have a consensus, but they don't quite know how to implement it...
...Similarly, Imre Pozsgay, the most popular man in the country a year ago, undoubtedly did more than any other single Hungarian to destroy the old order, yet he also rose to the top of the Communist hierarchy...
...Rather, they expressed fear that his words would be damaging to Hungary in the eyes of Westerners at the very moment when Hungary was desperately trying to win their good will and help...
...The Speaker of Parliament called on the members as " Dr...
...Stephen with its cross on top—have further contributed to making Jews feel excluded...
...Hungarian society is not falling apart...
...Keri's speech produced a scandal...
...By and large Hungarians are urbanized, well educated, and suspicious of any form of authoritarianism as a result of their recent experiences...
...There is a resounding rejection of anything Russian...
...At that time the Socialists, as the ex-Communists began to call themselves, pressed for a national presidential contest in January...
...Still, everything is open and possible...
...Everyone is trying desperately to make a living...
...In October 1989 this had been a significant issue...
...The question was whether the President should be elected by popular vote or by Parliament...
...The head of Hungaroton, the Hungarian recording company, one of the country's few internationally successful business enterprises, was removed by the new government because it wanted greater emphasis on a national style and on folk music...
...Peter Kenez, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is a professor of history at the University of Calif ornia, Santa Cruz...
...The Socialists cried foul...
...Supported by the polls in their view that the people preferred a direct election, they wanted the plebiscite in order to show the party continued to count...
...it tolerated an opposition that was unthinkable under the thumb of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev...
...you may bring in, and therefore presumably take out, as much convertible currency as you wish...
...Apparently they are strong attractions, for films not made in the United States, such as The Gods must be crazy, are also advertised as "American...
...Individuals who did well in that oppressive society usually went through a stage of belief, and to a smaller or larger degree compromised themselves...
...No more "November 7 Square," "Lenin Boulevard," "Avenue of the People's Republic," etc...
...If anything, the results of the parliamentary elections show it is highly doubtful that at this point there would be a constituency for a mass based antidemocratic party...
...Populists look for the "Hungarian essence" in the village and in the countryside, and see no place for Jews...
...In 1945 politicians could emerge who had not been part of the old ruling elite...
...One of Keri's outright defenders was a prominent writer, Istvan Csurka...
...The actual street signs have not yet been changed...
...Kocsis organized his fellow artists in a protest...
...He is not about to found an extreme Rightist movement...
...These people worry, too, about the compulsive search for a "Hungarian essence," with its suggestion that some people are more "Hungarian" than others...
...it takes a few minutes to figure out what is being talked about...
...Located on once elegant Vaci Street, it has been transformed into a foreign-language bookstore where you can buy English, French, German, and even Italian and Spanish works, but during a brief inspection I did not see a single Russian book...
...respect for authority is low, the crime rate in Budapest is rising, and they are catching a much smaller percentage of criminals than in the past...
...On the whole Hungarians, like the Czechs and Poles, have generously refrained from vendettas...
...I was impressed by the articulateness of all the participants, and particularly by the representatives of the Young Democrats, who were fighting for a lost cause...
...The situation is full of paradoxes...
...The Free Democrats, fearing both the survival of Communist influence and a strong executive, countered by organizing and winning a plebiscite that postponed choosing the President until sometime after the spring Parliamentary elections...
...Only the Communist regime, which lasted 20 years longer than Horthy's, had that special genius of making virtually everyone an accomplice...
...This is not a good time for the police...
...Moreover, Keri does not possess the charismatic appeal of France's Jean-Marie Le Pen or Germany's Franz Schönhuber...
...Several who objected to Keri's statement were not offended by the notion that fighting on Hitler's side could be considered just under any circumstances...
...The Horthy era, including Horthy personally, was gradually being rehabilitated during the dying days of Communism...
...The vendors are not supposed to be there...
...Whether or not Hungary possesses democratic traditions is debatable, but it is evident that the social composition of the nation at present is vastly different from what it was at the end of World War II...
...Not long ago, Budapest had an excellent Russian-language bookstore where you could buy a far larger variety of titles than anywhere in Moscow...
...evidently that takes quite a bit of work...
...Western goods are generally available for the local currency, the forint, although in one shop window I saw the price of watches quoted in Swiss francs...
...They accused their opponents of arranging a situation that served their own immediate political goals...
...But it is harder to transcend 45 years of Communist rule than these surface changes might imply...
...Such views cause understandable unease among democrats, liberals and especially Jews...
...Unless the economic situation deteriorates to the point where intolerable suffering is experienced, there seems every reason to believe that Hungary will enjoy reasonable political stability and representative democracy...
...The tactic turned into a debacle...
...Perhaps because of the tendency to focus on abstract rather than concrete problems, or because many of the new politicians and political writers have literary backgrounds, speeches and articles are full of allusions, clever turns of phrase and metaphors...
...The deputies were discussing legislation concerning the reorganization of local government: Should these laws be enacted by a simple majority or a two-thirds majority...
...But the anti-Semitism here cannot be equated with that of the Soviet Union...
...The movie theater that had featured Russian films exclusively has changed its policy...
...it does not have the deep conflict and bitterness that characterize the Soviet Union today...
...Instead, in Parliament and in magazines and newspapers that are popping up like mushrooms following a rain, people are passionately arguing such elusive matters as what the "Hungarian essence" consists of...
...First, it became clear that Pozsgay's Communist baggage was too heavy for him to be a victor...
...All the Red stars have been removed from buildings, and the streets have regained their prewar names...
...At every opportunity the officials address you as "Ur" ("Mister"), giving the impression that they are still savoring the word...
...Nevertheless, the Socialists gathered enough signatures to force a plebiscite on the method of selection...
...The attempt to revive compulsory religious education in schools, and the return of the old national emblem—the Crown of St...
...Precedents are no help either, because none exist...
...Relatively speaking, the Horthy regime was pluralist...
...The woman who checks your passport smiles rather than frowns, as if she were happy to see you...
...Political discourse is excessively rhetorical...
...Indeed, after you see the steadily climbing prices in the shop windows and learn how much your friends earn, you wonder how they can feed their families...
...However good and courageous a new Soviet film might be, it could not possibly find an audience here...
...that...
...He refused, obviously afraid of conflict...
...One manifestation of the generation gap is the Alliance of Young Democrats, a party of bright men and women radically opposed to everything connected with the past...
...George Konrad, one of the few dissidents who never compromised with the regime and accepted every punishment it inflicted upon him, spoke out recently against taking revenge by persecuting ex-Communists...
...It is widely recognized, for example, that the number one issue no w is the economy...
...A Hungarian equivalent of Pamyat, for instance, would be difficult to imagine...
...His books include Civil War in South Russia, 1919-1920 and The Birth of the Propaganda State...
...Interestingly, the very young, those in their 20s, are the least affected...
Vol. 73 • October 1990 • No. 13
