Balázs
Illényi
Situation Good
But There Is Still Hope
Iván Vitányi: A magyar társadalom
kulturális állapota. Az 1996-os országos
vizsgálat zárójelentése. (The Cultural State
of Hungarian Society. The Final Report of the 1996 National Survey). Maecenas,
Budapest, 1997. 126 pp.
[...] One of the reasons for taking on this 1996 survey was the pessimism
shown by intellectuals, artists and politicians over the past seven or
eight years which suggested that the country was
irreversibly progressing towards a nadir with everything of value in culture
being replaced by facile entertainment. There were others, however, who
argued that the shock caused by the changes was not that profound.
[...]
The questionnaire used concentrated on four fields: cultural institutions,
the reception of culture, territorial distribution, and changes therein.
[...] If we turn to book publishing, which had been supported in many respects
in the previous forty years (though ideologically guided and censored),
no one who pays attention to what is happening around him will be surprised
to find that by 1994 the number of titles published was up by a fifth compared
to 1990, the nadir after the preceding twenty years, and that the list
of authors fortunately included many a name--Hungarian or oreign--who had
been neglected earlier.
At the same time, the number of copies printed steadily diminished, while
prices almost tripled. Sadly, too, local authors increasingly had to take
a back seat to best-sellers from abroad which appeared in huge editions.
The number of public libraries was halved, compared to 1985, and the number
of their users also diminished steadily, though not at the same rate. It
is therefore not surprising that much of what sociologists reveal about
the reading habits of Hungarians is depressing. Of those questioned, 22
per cent said they had not read a single book in the preceding year, and
a third declared that they never read what they called literature. Book
buying, as you would expect from the above, declined to a fifth of what
it had been five years earlier, and most of the books bought were by foreign
best selling authors.
[...]
By the middle seventies, every house- hold owned not only a radio but
also a TV set, which had been generally replaced by a colour set by the
end of communism. Now the Internet has reached households as well, as an
extra addition to satellite, cable and video. Of those questioned, 85 per
cent owned a colour TV set, half were linked to cable and owned a videoplayer.
Two thirds of the latter used it at least once a month, and more than a
tenth used it daily.
The result is that people spend more and more time watching their TV screens.
That subject deserves a survey of its own. 1977, 1986 and 1993 time budget
surveys comparing work, leisure and TV viewing have made it easier to treat
this phenomenon as a process. A comparison of these surveys shows that
Hungarians spend significantly less time at work, men five hours instead
of the earlier six, and women three instead of four. Fast growing post-communist
unemployment had the major role in the shaping of these figures. Available
leisure hours grew, as could be expected, by an hour each for both sexes,
to almost five hours for men and to four for women. Since figures for just
about every other activity remained constant, this extra time is generally
devoted to television. Both sexes now generally spend more than half their
leisure time in this way.
This high proportion is unusual. It seems that, in this respect as well,
Hun gary is following the Anglo-American pattern.
[...]
As regards theatre, the sociologists consider it a good sign that the
number of theatres has not diminished, has even grown a little, especially
outside Budapest. In Budapest, companies that can be described as alternative
(semi-amateur, semi-avant-garde, experimental) flourish. Numbers attending
performances have declined slowly but steadily, from an annual 6 million
in the seventies to an annual 4 million. This decline is most in evidence
in Budapest. Furthermore, the social composition of the public has increasingly
shifted towards the upper classes. Theatregoers these days either have
a special interest in culture, or well-filled pocket-books. In music there
is some good news as well. Earlier the National Philharmonia concert agency
enjoyed a nationwide monopoly as impressario; today there are already more
than a hundred firms in the business and the number of concerts has doubled
since 1989. There has been no decline in total attendance. Unfortunately,
due to the lack of money, there are fewer international guest artists,
and the larger local ensembles live under a constant threat. In addition,
there are negative signs in the composition of the public. While there
is a public, even given the larger number of concerts on offer, no more
than 3 per cent of Hungarians attend concerts, and only impassioned music
lovers and the well-to-do think of such functions as part of their normal
social life. The music market has seen some changes too. LPs have all but
disappeared and the number of CDs has trebled. The number of Hungarian
recording artists has declined significantly: they now account for less
than a third of total record sales.
The general position of fine arts and that of exhibitions in particular
is shaping in a desirable fashion. In recent years both the number of exhibitions
and of visitors to them has grown. There is a growing number of private
galleries and they are doing well. The breakdown of gallery goers, however,
resembles that of concert goers (around 3 per cent of the population).
Shows by contemporary artists, which are the most numerous, are only attended
by a narrow circle of intellectuals who care for that sort of thing, and
only connoisseurs and investors buy pictures. The sociologists argue that
the figures confirm that, once again, a huge gap has opened up between
the tastes of an elite and of the general public, and that there are numerous
groups within both whose tastes isolate them, there being just about no
passage between them. All this may well lead to the atomization of art
life and to the destabilization of the position of artists.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, museums have grown into bastions
of culture in Hungary, becoming even stronger since the Second World War.
Their permanent displays were both the places and instruments in the education,
training and entertainment of millions.
A few decades ago, the country led the world with its annual ten million
visitors to museums. That figure is still around nine million but it should
be borne in mind that in 1985 there were twenty million and thus the decline
can be described as dramatic. And yet both the number of such institutions
and of the objects held by them has grown steadily, unlike their annual
budgets or their staff. Both financial resources and numbers employed have
declined by 20 to 30 per cent since the end of communism.
[...]
Since 1991 less and less of the national income has been devoted to
culture. Earlier, 3.6 per cent of GDP was thus spent, but only 3.2 per
cent in 1995. Expenditure on public education, higher education, R&D,
on the arts and the media by the state has declined from 14 to 12 per cent
at a time of growing administrative and debt servicing costs. The survey
shows--and this is both good and bad news--that the public is now paying
for culture. In 1996, 76.3 per cent of the income of these institutions
came from the public. The state has never before had as small a role in
the financing of culture, 18.6 per cent at present, the remainder being
accounted for by non-profit organizations. A more thorough investigation
of the situation shows that financing was in a similar state in the seventies,
however, then the difference was provided by enterprises and mass organizations.
In other words, the democratic metamorphosis has only resulted in nominal
changes,
the general public still pays the decisive. The really bad news in this
is that two thirds of the 76 per cent coming from the public is made up
by television licence fees and money spent on newspapers, records and casettes;
this means that less and less is spent on the theatre, literature and the
cinema. While it is true that the share of culture has grown somewhat (from
2.5 to 2.8 per cent) within total expenditure by the general public, according
to the analysts, this is due solely to a decline in total spending.
The real problem in the financing of culture is that the role as patron
occupied by the state under communism now devolves not only on market mechanisms
pure and simple, but also on civil society and related non-profit activities.
The survey established, however, that in view of the fragility of the structure
of civil society, business has to undertake this financing role. The analysts
argue that, at this moment in time, this is the weakest point of culture.
The weakness of the non-profit sector alone cannot be blamed, the fact
is that state support is only around half of what is customary in the West.
To sum up: Hungarian culture cannot in any way be described as a disaster
zone. The intellectuals and other groups have managed to hang on to what
they seized in the past. In numerous areas, such as book publishing, concerts,
theatres, records, exhibitions, the range of commodities on supply has
grown much larger. The network of institutions has survived, although the
number of institutions has slowly declined in each field. It is good news
that people still participate in culture in large numbers. Privatization
has taken place in culture as well, without major shocks. What is particularly
important is that cultural processes--particularly as regards geography,
have not followed in the tracks of economic changes, which have often been
unbearably cruel. One should stress all the same that public participation
has declined in recent years, which can be explained not only by money
but also by the declining prestige of culture. All this is evidence that
there has been no spectacular implosion. All there has been is a slow waning,
a process which, the sociologists hope, is certainly reversible.
Balázs Illényi
trained as a historian and is on the staff
of the economic weekly Heti Világgazdaság.
