Nationalism on the Rise in Hungary

...and old enterprises, including some that were not especially inefficient, are going broke...

...Today there is absolutely nothing that cannot be bought in the shops—if you have the money—and most Western conveniences are taken for granted...

...The Hungarians seem to have a passion for reburials: Laszlo Rajk, a Communist victim of the purge trials, is being interred for the fourth time...

...The official orators of August were a relatively moderate lot...

...The vigorous growth of nationalist feelings in the newly free East European countries is a disheartening phenomenon...

...The nascent capitalist economy has obviously made some progress...

...Hankiss has an international reputation as a scholar of literature and a sociologist, and has taught at Stanford...

...And while none of the speakers emphasized it, everyone in the audience knew that Stephen's kingdom stretched through the entire Carpathian basin...

...They don't want to be reminded that there were, after all, alternatives...

...Interestingly, extremists like Csurka have not been ranting at the largest national minority, the Gypsies...

...But perhaps most important, it has managed to give the appearance, relative to the rest of the region, of political stability...

...That settlement detached three fourths of the former kingdom's territory, leaving what remained nearly ethnically homogenous...

...The directorship of radio went to Csaba Gom-bar, and that of TV to Elemer Hankiss, both respected nonparty intellectuals...

...Although he and his closest associates regard themselves as democrats and good Europeans, they more accurately reflect old, aristocratic Hungary and its peculiar strain of liberalism...

...As aresult, Jewish ancestry is a major handicap in Hungarian politics...

...Ironically, many of the opposition leaders being labeled "Communists" spent years in prison under the Soviet-style regime...

...After virulent attacks on Gombar and Hankiss in Parliament, Antall attempted to remove them, but for that he needed the President's signature...

...Now the gap has widened further: While Russia has sunk into Third World misery, Budapest has acquired a shine...

...Democratic Forum, though, also includes politicians of a more brazen stripe...

...other MDF deputies have participated in the protests as well, and even entered the radio building to interfere with ongoing work...

...it would lead to a loss of everything the country has gained in the last few years...

...Following the fall of the Communist regime, the new parties reached a compromise that gave the largely ceremonial office of President to Arpad Goncz, a dissident writer who had suffered under Communist rule and enjoyed the support of the main opposition party, the Alliance of Free Democrats...

...Small businesses and joint ventures have mushroomed, and Hungary has been more successful than any former Communist country in attracting foreign capital...

...The MDF, itself a motley group, is led by Prime Minister Jozsef Antall...

...They portray them as traitors, employing two lines of specious reasoning...

...That characters like Csurka appear on the new political stage is not at all strange...

...He no doubt recalls that after World War II the Communists destroyed the Small Holders Party, then the largest anti-Communist force, by compelling it to expel the "fascists...

...Goncz refused to sign...

...The moderate Left and Right are distinguishable neither by differing versions of capitalism, nor by contrasting ideas about how to help those suffering the fallout of economic transition, but by their distinct understandings of what constitutes a good Hungarian...

...In their minds, that would mean more than a new group taking office and attempting to tackle social and economic troubles with somewhat different policies...

...Stephen, Hungary's first King, who in the year 1000 accepted Christianity...

...This infuriates the nationalists...

...Istvan Csurka, a vice president of MDF, can properly be regarded as a Hungarian Milosevic...

...Hungarians hold dearly their self-image as early defenders of Christian, civilized—and ungrateful—Europe against the Eastern barbarians...

...the huge, outdated heavy industrial producers have only been partially dismantled...

...the loss of Soviet and Eastern European markets has not been made up by Western consumers...

...It is true that most, if not all, of the dissidents in the Janos Kadar era started out with at least Leftist convictions...

...It is not surprising that the media have turned out to be the most fiercely contested ground on the Hungarian political map...

...This is not to say the Gypsies haven't suffered: They are subjected to shameless discrimination and are probably the main victims of Communism's collapse here, losing State-provided jobs and apartments...

...In his incoherent essays he advances a point of view that is both antidemocratic and anti-Semitic...

...Since Parliament is working on a law governing the media, presumably the question of control will be resolved shortly...

...To the Rightists, moreover, staying on top is of inestimable importance...

...Politicians pointed out that the great King did not shrink from using cruel and forceful measures to push Hungary into the European world...

...At present, the only significant minorities are about 500,000 Gypsies and 80,000 Jews...

...Nevertheless, the prominent —and bitterly divisive—political issues of the day are entirely abstract ones, and have little to do with the country's pressing economic and social problems...

...Now the Rightists define them not by the years spent in jail, but by the "crime" of once taking Marxism seriously—for which there is apparently no atonement...

...Even the moderate Antall at one point referred to himself as the Prime Minister of all Hungarians, a statement that created understandable concern across the borders...

...His new book, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917-1953, has just been published by Cambridge...

...Their existence is so separate it would be impossible to portray them as a threat to "Hungarianness...

...The extreme nationalists vilify all their opponents with extraordinary passion, often in language hardly suitable for decent political discourse...

...Whatever the case, the very fact that a man of Csurka's stripe remains the vice president of the ruling party is a blot on Hungary's young democracy...

...He talks about a vast conspiracy—comprising Washington, Communists, Jerusalem, the World Jewish Congress, and the Hungarian liberal opposition?that was formed to undermine Hungary's interests...

...The nationalist winds blowing with gale force south, east and north of the border can, to some extent, be felt here...

...First, they contend that the liberal—not to mention socialist—ideas of the urban intelligentsia are incompatible with the Hungarian soul and heritage...

...One issue that has especially aroused the nationalists and dominated the political scene for many months is control of the media...

...Consequently, a quarter of the people live under the poverty line, and the majority have a lower standard of living than they did five years ago...

...They realize, of course, that the prewar world cannot be revived, yet at the same time they have no desire to draw a sharp line between themselves and the authoritarian, conservative regime of Miklos Horthy, who ruled from 1920 to 1944...

...Antall and his colleagues are particularly concerned with nationalist causes...

...To be sure, the country's ethnic homogeneity and historical traditions militate against a monster like Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic or Slovakian Prime Minister Vladimir Merciar taking control in Budapest...

...What is puzzling is the MDF's tolerance of him...

...their denouncers, meanwhile, lived quiet and frequently quite comfortable lives...

...This is largely because the nation has an entrepreneurial class, a history of reform, and a government that welcomes outside investors...

...He believes it is self-evident that his country's liberals follow orders issued by world Jewry, expresses contempt for the West, and advocates the use of force against political opponents...

...The general tenor of politics, too, is not all that different from what one finds throughout Eastern Europe...

...No one doubts that Hungarians in neighboring states are mistreated...

...According to public opinion polls, the ruling coalition trails far behind the opposition, thanks to the generally poor economy, and would certainly be beaten were an election held today...

...his equivalents exist in almost all countries...

...Csurka has demanded that they be removed from their posts by force...

...Any attempt at direct intervention, they are convinced, would do more harm to the oppressed minority than good...

...In addition, there is no danger the country will crumble into warring regions...

...But the tumult persists...

...For Hungary, not surprisingly, has much in common with the ex-Com-munist states: The decline in total national output has yet to be halted...

...It is also possible that Antall, who surely deplores his colleague's ungentleman-ly way of expressing his thoughts, does not find them altogether repugnant...

...Stephen's day was marked in August with a four-day celebration that occasioned a great deal of speech making...

...The main repository of nationalist thought is the Center-Right governing coalition, a fractious alliance dominated by the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) that includes the Christian Democrats and the Small Holders, a peasant party...

...Peter Kenez, a frequent contributor, is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz...

...The growing gap between the rich and poor insults the sensibilities even of those made cynical by the failure of Communism's egalitarian promises...

...If this approach wins adherents, and if having been a dissenter is by no means a plus in the present Hungarian political arena, that is because, as in all Eastern European countries, the vast majority of people acquiesced to Communist rule...

...Indeed, Russians always thought that crossing the Hungarian border was tantamount to traveling into capitalist Europe...

...The villas being built in the hills of Buda for the newly rich, with two-car garages for their Volvos or Mercedeses, would not look out of place in an affluent German or American suburb...

...MDF politicians, overestimating the power of propaganda, believe they could win over the people if they were able to get their message out...

...Since the forint is, for all practical purposes, a freely convertible currency, no black market for the dollar exists...

...when a cab is ordered, you can be certain it will arrive in a matter of minutes...

...rather, it is the day of St...

...Jews are another matter...

...Hankiss and Gombar are being denounced as anti-Hungarian, and demonstrations are held regularly outside their offices...

...Its great historical tragedy, the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, is paradoxically a source of the current good fortune...

...Appearances, however, can be misleading...

...The most significant holiday here, for example, is not March 15, the day of the 1848 revolution against the Hapsburgs, for that was fought under liberal and democratic slogans...

...Maybe in times of hardship people crave a connection to a real or imagined past in order to anchor themselves...

...Before long, the MDF nationalists began to criticize radio and TV programming policies, claiming ethnic Hungarians in other nations were being given inadequate treatment...

...Calling the United States, for instance, is no harder here than in Paris...

...In the opinion of Csurka and company, they are not only hopelessly alien, forever incapable of becoming "real" Hungarians, but are dangerous subversives...

...When his authority to do so was subsequently challenged, a constitutional court returned an ambiguous decision, leaving the matter at an impasse...

...Already a functioning democracy, Hungary is in the midst of hammering out a new constitutional system responsive to the demands of contemporary society...

...The liberals believe that given current realities, Hungary can do no more than urge the offenders to respect human rights...

...The deeper explanation, one suspects, is that the Prime Minister realizes a significant faction within the Forum shares Csurka's views, and he is determined to keep it in the fold...

...In fact, the government welcomed the idea of returning Horthy's remains to his birthplace for reburial...

...Having lived for decades under an oppressive regime, they are petrified at the prospect of a defeat at the polls...

...Antall has repeatedly referred to Csurka's ugly ravings as "private opinions,' as if the widely publicized positions of a major figure in a political movement have no public impact...

...The second line of attack pursued by the nationalists is to accuse liberals of not paying sufficient attention to the plight of oppressed Hungarian minorities in Romania, Slovakia and Serbia...