Hungary:A Stillborn Utopia

Election a snapshot of national mood and now join the European Union

Jurgen Habermas, the greatest living German philosopher, says, "The elections for the European Parliament were not European elections, but the mirror image of each Member State's mood."
Here in Hungary, like elsewhere, this election took a snapshot of the national mood; in other words, it was a test of the government's popularity. The government came out of it with a lot of bruises. However, here, more clearly than elsewhere, one can perceive a feeling that pervades Eastern Europe: on the one hand, old Europe keeps fascinating these people; on the other, new Europe - the Union - doesn't warm them up yet. That's understandable. Now that the Union has a Constitution at last, some processes will gain steam, because the Member States will go from being spectators, albeit in a VIP box, to main actors. Having one Foreign Minister, for instance, will do much to prevent centrifugal trends such as those that, on the issue of the attack on Iraq, split Europe between faithful friends and loyal friends of the United States. Faithful friends aren't always reliable.
But the Constitution was still in the delivery room when, on June 12 and 13, Europeans went to vote, so the Hungarians were scarcely interested in Strasbourg. The important date was May 1, 2004, when they officially returned to the Common Home. Even though the Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, this is the date that marks the watershed between the virtual Europe of the past and the real one of the future.
Anyway, the pragmatic and unceremonious Hungarians did not join the Union wearing a cowboy hat. The situation is summarized nicely in a poster that is plastered all over Budapest. It bears a significant title, "Gierek" ("Come"), and addresses the youth. In the background, it shows several young people; in the foreground, a direction sign with three arrows. One says "Hungary", another "European Union", and the third "USA". The arrows reveal the popular mood: "European Union" and "Hungary" point in the same direction, "USA" points the opposite way. One does not need to be Sigmund Freud to understand the poster.
There is no antiamericanism, but there's indifference, which is possibly worse. It's the same indifference I noticed 20 years ago towards the Soviet Union, just below the façade. And just like yesterday people here did not rejoice for the deeds of the Red Army in the Baltic Republics or in Afghanistan, today they liquidate the U.S. war on Iraq with a dismissive comment, "They don't know history."
International policy expert Laszlo Urda offered me a more articulate explanation. "Nobody noticed that the fourth world war is being fought."
The 'fourth' world war? "Follow my reasoning," says Urda. "The first was fought in 1914-1918, the second in 1939-1945, the third began in 1946, when Churchill first mentioned the Iron Curtain, and went on until 1989 under the name of Cold War."
What about the fourth, then? "It began on September 11, 2001, with the attack on the Twin Towers. This is another full-blown war, but unlike the other conflicts it must be fought with more than weapons. Politics and intelligence are the keys, because the enemy we face is not clearly defined. Nobody knows where international terrorism hides, where it may attack next, where we might attack it. The Americans made the mistake of thinking they might fight this war in traditional ways. Both historical and political conditions have changed. Anyway, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq did not defeat international terrorism."
Urda tells us that this war must be fought with politics and intelligence. What should the role of intelligence be? "To supply politics with assessments. We've seen that this enemy cannot be engaged on the battlefield. We need to prevent its attacks. We can only do so through dialogue and diplomacy. Those who bargain, win."
The Hungarians have a long history of bargaining. They managed to withstand 150 years of Turkish domination by coexisting with the Ottomans, learning their passion for baths and teaching them how to eat pork. In recent times, after the bloody insurrection of 1956 when Budapest was stormed by Soviet troops, they managed to carve a significant margin of autonomy by bargaining with Moscow and avoiding direct confrontation. At the time of the great reform of the 80s, which introduced private property and bank accounts, they managed to keep the Russian Bear at bay through diplomacy. The Kremlin was not run by innocuous philantropists then, but by hard-eyed custodians of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy like Brezhnev and Andropov. Andropov, despite his good looks, was a tough customer. He ran the Soviet counterintelligence - the infamous KGB - for decades.
Janos Kadar, secretary general of the Party, kept talking to the Kremlin dinosaurs until he managed to convince them that his reforms were not against Moscow but for Budapest. He avoided open dissension and any rift with the USSR (the West would have welcomed him with open arms if he had done so) because he felt that any gesture in this direction would imply unthinkable international complications, and additional suffering for his people, which he would never accept. Grateful Hungarians called him "Jancsi bacsi" (Uncle Johnny).
The very first thing that the Hungarians did after the fall of the Wall was to erase the public signage in Russian that their 'brotherhood' in Moscow had imposed. Today, the signs are in Hungarian only; in tourist places, some include English or German translations. At long last we can understand them: in the old regime, indecipherable Russian and incomprehensible Hungarian conspired to leave tourists in the dark. How could one distinguish, for instance, the men's ("Ferfi") from the ladies' ("Nöi") room? Looking for clues, one just found signs in Cyrillic characters. Women ended up being greeted by embarrassed smiles; men were stopped by ice-cold stares.
So the Russians and what they implied were erased even from the signs. Also, maintenance improved. When I took the subway, that's what struck me. Even though Hungary was an island in the Soviet ocean, maintenance was often, shall we say, Balkanic: iron fences taken over by rust, walls that had not received plaster or paint in decades, dirty subway stations (especially uptown), crumbling gates, broken windows; and on the streets the unmistakable traces of the passage of dogs. This was not everywhere, of course, as the downtown was kept immaculate; but it was evident that cleaning and maintenance companies would not lose their customer over their poor work. They belonged to the State, and the State could not fire itself.
Nowadays, everything is shiny, clean, functional and restored, and not just downtown. Shops and stores selling indispensable as well as superfluous things abound. The megastores of international chains (Americans, Canadians, Britons, Italian, etc., that formed joint ventures with Hungarians) have been relegated to suburbia. In the name of globalization, one can find anything available in Rome, Toronto, or New York. I think back with a smile to my early years in Budapest, when I had to bring my toothpaste from Italy because the kind I liked wasn't available there; but I also remember, with a touch of nostalgia, an exceptional aftershave lotion, "Fabulissimo," which was made in Hungary and unavailable in Italy. Now it's not made any more: the multinationals wiped out many local products.
Rita Farago, a young colleague at Radio Budapest, insisted on interviewing me for an Italian-language programme. She asked me about the difference I found between yesterday's and today's Hungary. I replied that Hungary changed its clothing, but remained essentially the same.
I explained that while yesterday it insisted on its difference within the Soviet empire, today, it reacts to the cultural assimilation brought on by globalization in the name of the same difference. She asked if would succeed. "It only depends on Hungarians. Yesterday you succeeded," I said.
A couple of friends and colleagues of mine, husband and wife, moved from Budapest to Isaszeg, some 40 kilometres to the north-east. I wished to pay them a visit and decided to take the train, also to test whether rail links are as excellent as they once were. They are. At Keleti Palyaudvar (Eastern Station) I found a few new things and a few old ones.
Among the old, the good Italian spoken (in addition to English and German) at the ticket counter; and the rite of chess, celebrated with diligent commitment in the large square in front of the railway station. Hungarians love chess: wherever they can find a quiet spot - under the trees of a park or on a downtown bench - they pull out a chessboard and start a game. They do so even at the swimming pool (another love of Hungarians): I've seen floating chessboards and floating players, intent to their games and oblivious of anything else around them.
Among the new things, the ticket counter sported the logos of the major credit cards, suggesting that tickets can be bought that way. It may be taken for granted now, but some 20 years ago, in this same Keleti Palyaudvar, I had to struggle quite a bit to get a ticket for Vienna.
In order to pay, I gave some förints to the wiry clerk behind the counter. She peered at me and inquired whether I was Hungarian. "No," I replied, "I'm Italian." "Then you have to pay in dollars," she told me in Italian.
Clearly, by forcing foreigners to pay in dollars, the State stocked up on strong currency. I had no dollars with me, but I had some travellers' cheques, and offered to issue one. "That's no good," she insisted; "you have to pay cash," and I couldn't convince her that travellers' cheques were indeed cash.
To make a long story short, I had to go to a bank, talk to the manager, explain my quandary, and ask him to change a travellers' cheque into dollars. The operation was more easily said than done: even though Hungary had great opening to the West, there were banking rules that could not be ignored. Matter of fact, travellers' cheques could only be changed into förints. However, in Hungary every problem had a solution. The bank manager found one for me: I opened an account in dollars where I deposited a part of my travellers' cheques, then withdrew enough dollars to pay for my railway ticket to Vienna. When I gave them to the wiry clerk, she flashed me an apologetic smile.
In a downtown bookstore I spotted several biographies of Dracula. "Do you know," the bookstore owner asked me in good Italian, "that Dracula was a Hungarian prince?" "Yes, I know," I replied, with the kind but firm tone of someone who would like to be left alone. He did not get it, and continued. "He was born in 1432 in Valakia, near the border with Transylvania, which at the time was Hungarian. In fact, his real name was Vlad of Valakia." I realized that the bookstore owner wanted to practice his Italian more than he wanted to give me information, so I let him continue and reconstruct the story of the most demon-like defender of Christianity. Emperor Sigmund had bestowed on his father, also called Vlad, the highest honour - the Order of the Drake - for his service against the eternal enemies of Hungary, the Turks. In Valakian, "drake" is "dracul"; but "devil" is also "dracul", and the double entendre fit old Vlad perfectly: his ferocity was legendary. However, he was beaten by his son, who had inherited name and nickname but soon proved more than a match, gaining another name: "Tepes", the Impaler. Any enemies that fell in his hand were doomed: they were impaled on a pole and left to die slowly.
The life of Vlad-Dracula-Impaler was a sequence of ruins and executions, wars and ferociuos raids, against the Turks but also against his own sovereign. King Matyas Corwin, tired of Vlad's bloody restlessness, had him captured and thrown in jail.
Vlad stayed in Hungarian dungeons for 12 years, until 1474, but did not grow any softer, so when the Turks threatened Hungary once again, King Matyas freed him and sent him to the front lines to stem the tide. Vlad carried out his task with his usual zeal: a 16th-century xilography shows him while he feasts while surrounded by a forest of impaled Turks.
His fun lasted only two years: in 1476, during a battle near Bucharest, a Turkish unit managed to cut him off from his troops, attacked him and slaughtered him. That's when Vlad left this world and entered literature and then cinema. Under his battle monicker: Dracula, the devil.
A student brought flowers to the grave of Tibor Klaniczay, internationally renowned Hungarian scholar and historian of literature. He loved Italy passionately, speaking its language perfectly, in addition to French, English and German. Renaissance had no secrets for him, nor anything revolving around it: science, politics, literature, art.
The office of the Farkaszereti Temeto (the graveyard) is furnished in character: a big stone plaque with no name but flower holders with fresh dahlias. In a corner, a boiler for brewing tea and coffee; on a shelf, some packets of cookies and boxes of invoices, and the inevitable photo with kids on the desk.
The two clerks joked and laughed aloud, and this puzzled me: beyond the window, among the trees, graves and chapels lined up in long rows. Life goes on, of course, even in the kingdom of death.
I never met Tibor Klaniczay, and I regret it. I only know him through what he did and wrote, and that's why I went there. He was a scholar, not a politician, but during the years when I stayed away from Budapest rethinking my experiences and my feelings, in my imagination he had become the summary of what Hungary was and might have been, if the Wall hadn't brought down in its fall also those things that deserved being saved.
No other country of the Soviet Bloc could have given Klaniczay the liberty that he enjoyed in Budapest; he was free to undertake humanistic studies, which elsewhere were considered as a bourgeois, reactionary activity, to be impeded and repressed. He reciprocated by bringing to the world, in the most authoritative places, the results of his studies as well as an image of Hungary scientifically reliable, politically tolerant, wholeheartedly European.
That was a fruit of the strategy of Kadar, who never went to Moscow as a beggar. "Those who are not our enemies are our friends," he used to say: that wasn't a slogan, but a programme.
By the mid-80, Hungary was becoming a unique political and economic laboratory: the possibility of combining Socialism and Capitalism, both cleansed of any odious trait, was being tested. Everything crumbled just on the eve of a conclusion. Had the experiment run its course, we might have witnessed the birth of a Social-Capitalism with a human face. Klaniczay could say that history is not made with hypotheses, but thinking of that experiment as a lost occasion is no methodological error. And hoping it might yet be undertaken is not utopian.

This is number 12 in a series of articles written on The Newest Europe.

Publication Date: 2004-07-11
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4153