FORTY YEARS AGO -- THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1956
Three contributions encapsulate a brief period in which momentous changes were taking place almost by the hour. Discontent and unrest gave way to hope and then to armed uprising, to be followed by repression and terror.
Simon Bourgin, a correspondent of Time magazine, briefed Radio Free Europe on what he had seen and heard in Budapest in the months preceding the Revolution. The first of a two-part version of the edited transcript of his reports is here published. Bourgin's is an eye-witness account. Film-like sequences evoke the everyday banality of oppression, the decay and drabness in the once elegant and vibrant metropolis, houses in a dreadful state of disrepair, empty shops, bitter, shabbily dressed people circulating their stories, gossip and jokes. All this is complemented with first-hand information Bourgin acquired from his many informants. His report on the revolt of the intellectuals and the Petõfi Circle debates has the immediacy of a live broadcast while Bourgin's comments, especially on the propaganda put out by RFE, we see by hindsight, should have been paid more heed to.
György Heltai was Deputy Foreign Minister in Imre Nagy's Government. What he tells of the events e events t he tells of the events on the trials and tribulations his cabinet faced during its brief existence. It also provides key evidence on some episodes. Two portraits stand out: Imre Nagy's, moving and impressive in its integrity and János Kádár's, as the man of the Soviets. On both, Heltai's judgement has been proved right in retrospect.
Decision in the Kremlin 1956: Debates within the Soviet Party Politburo about Hungary, edited by V. Sereda and János M. Rainer and published in Budapest in June in Hungarian, contains the most sensational findings in the Moscow archives so far. V. N. Malin took notes at seventeen sessions of the Central Committee between 23 October and 4 November 1956; these are the only surviving documents on those discussions and debates. The fragmentary and occasionally informal nature of these notes throws a revealing light on the bizarre complexities of Soviet policy making, the sudden turns in the Central Committee's reading of the situation and on the final decision to intervene. János M. Rainer has condensed the book into a two-part article with this, the first part, taking us until the Central Committee's session on 30 October when a liberal alternative was accepted.
Vojvodina occupies one-fifths of the present Yugoslavia, with three hundred thousand Hungarians also living there. The region has been multi-ethnic and multi-lingual from times immemorial and the Tito regime gave it the status of an Autonomous Province. Béla Pomogáts provides an overview of its history - a history of coexistence and tolerance but also of conflict, hatred and revenge. Already depleted by exodus and war, the Vojvodina Hungarians have been facing the mass influx of the Krajina Serb refugees and there is fear that the ethnic make-up of the region might change drastically.
Erzsébet Õrszigethy complements this with the story of a once prosperous Hungarian family in the Vojvodina, whose members, from grandparents to grandchildren, chose exile and humiliation in a Hungary reluctant to grant even refugee status to their many fellow Hungarians coming from the pre-Trianon territories.
JÓZSEF EÖTVÖS AND THE TIMELINESS OF HIS VIEWS ON NATIONALITY
Francois Fejtõ, Hungarian born French historian, pays tribute to Eötvös the political thinker, who prophetically foresaw the two main evils threatening liberty, one being the dangerous notion of the sovereignty of the people, the other the right of every nation to self-determination. Fejtõ argues that Eötvös's critique of nationalism has not lost its validity. Nevertheless, integration and federation will remain a dream until national autonomies can exist and the rights of national minorities are guaranteed.
By comparing two important works by Lord Acton, the noted 19th-century English liberal thinker, Ágnes Deák examines the proximity of Acton's and Eötvös's views on nationality and traces the influence of Eötvös on Lord Acton, whose notes are evidence that he was familiar with Eötvös's ideas.
ELEVEN HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THE MAGYAR CONQUEST
As a follow-up to Gyula László's article in HQ 141 on how the Carpathian Basin was occupied by Árpád's Magyars, György Györffy, doyen of Hungarian historians and Bálint Zólyomi, a botanist, draw a fascinating picture of the geography of the wider region. They argue that a dry period start the wider region. They argue that a dry period starting in the 8th century triggered off the late period of migrations, as a consequence of which the Magyars too were prompted to move. In the Carpathian Basin the drought eventually caused the fall of the Avar Empire. Climatic changes, such as the catastrophically cold winter of 892-93, also helped the Magyars take possession of a depopulated territory, which matched their needs.
