The Island of Serbia
By Dragan Velikic

"I proposed that on an island in the Danube near Belgrade, an island which is indeed called War Island, we build a place called Miloševic-land. This land [...] would provide President Miloševic and his regime with a real little oasis where they could happily and freely advance their own visions without anything standing in their way. In this small island country, Miloševic could pursue his policies to his heart's content, under "laboratory conditions", without endangering Yugoslavia's citizens or "the rest" of the world. ... the experiment I spoke of as an incredible madness has actually happened, and sadder still, it is being conducted [...] throughout the whole of Yugoslavia itself."

So begins this sombre essay by one of Serbia's leading writers, completed eleven weeks after the NATO air-strikes had begun.

Hungary's Road to NATO
By László Valki

László Valki, who heads the NATO Information and Research Centre at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, here reviews the preliminaries to and the objectives involved in Hungary's accession to NATO, which took place in the Spring of this year. He outlines the challenges posed to the Hungarian armed forces by their initial involvement in the Partnership for Peace and in IFOR and SFOR before describing the final steps to admission.

Our European Future Together
By Geoffrey Howe

Lord Howe of Aberavon served in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet for eleven years in senior ministerial posts, six of them (1983-89) as Foreign Secretary. This is the text of an address he gave recently in Budapest, in which he reviews the momentous decades which brought parliamentary democracy and a free market to Hungary.

Treasure
By György Spiró

A short story reflecting on the ethnic potpourri of Central and South-Eastern Europe through the ultimate dignity a human can aspire to, that of being mourned.

A Word or Two on Hungary
By István Bárt

Novelist and publisher, István Bárt has compiled a Hungarian glossary to describe the "thoughts, concepts and images that are invoked for the native speaker by the name of a town or region, a festival, a form of address, a dish peculiar to his country or by the lines of a song." The extracts included here focus on aspects of Hungarian landscape, nostalgia and history.

The Tenth Year
By Zita Mária Petschnig

A Senior Researcher at Pénzügykutató, the financial consultancy, Dr Petschnig considers the prospects for the Hungarian economy as it enters its tenth year of post-socialist transformation. The article provides an overview of macroeconomic conditions as of the end of 1998, with the cracks that have appeared along the way. The flows that can be expected in 1999 are outlined and attention is also given to the budgetary changes planned for this year or anticipated for future years.

CLOSE-UP
This illustrated feature section is devoted to the work of a remarkable film-maker, Péter Forgács, whose films are mounted from amateur home-movies, and to a unique collection of discarded amateur photographs, the Horus Archive, put together by Sándor Kardos, also distinguished as a cinematographer. The three articles are reproduced here in full.

Watching the River Flow
By Erzsébet Bori

Our film critic discusses the film-making of Péter Forgács and in particular his latest prize-winning documentary, The Danube Exodus, which uses wartime amateur footage shot on a Danube riverboat transporting first Jews from Bratislava and then Germans from Bessarabia.

The Horus Archive
By László Lugosi Lugo

The photographer and writer here provides a succinct history of the collection of photographs built up over some twenty-five years by the cinematogapher Sándor Kardos.

Balilla
By Albert Kováts

The painter and art critic writes on one of the Horus Archive photographs reproduced in this issue, a simple snapshot of a woman on a restaurant terrace, drawing out the "something extra in a particular moment".

Isadora
By Oszkár Beregi

Once the idol of the Hungarian stage, Beregi wrote his memoirs as an old man, unemployed and unemployable in Hollywood. This extract records his first meeting with Isadora Duncan, their passionate affair and its inevitable aftermath, when the American dancer was making her first professional engagements-in Budapest.

Elsewhere in this issue, the theatre historian Péter Molnár Gál writes a note on Beregi, his life and career, describing changes in acting styles and the pressure the extreme right exerted on the theatre in the twenties and thirties.

The '56 Exodus to Austria
By Ferenc Cseresnyés

The 1956 Revolution and its immediate aftermath set off an enormous flow of refugees within a very short space of time. Dr Cseresnyés, an historian specializing in the major migrations of our time, sets this within the context of the major shifts of population in Europe since 1918. He describes how the burden fell on and was handled by Austria, how the UN, voluntary organizations and the Soviets responded; he shows how potential host countries reacted as the scale of the exodus became clearer, not least the US, the most favoured host.

The Living Tradition of Bartók's Sources
By János Kárpáti

"Irresistible proof that the genuine Hungarian and Romanian folk tradition is alive and kicking," is one of the comments the musicologist and leading Bartók scholar makes here in his review of a remarkable recording by Muzsikás, Hungary's leading folk-music ensemble, who have combined with the singer Márta Sebestyén and the Romanian violinist Alexander Balanescu. Three of Bartók's 44 Duets for Two Violins are juxtaposed with the original phonographs Bartók made (and with later gramaphone recordings of amateur performers) and with the ensemble's own renderings. In full and compelling detail, Professor Kárpáti discusses The Bartók Album's unique presentation of Bartók's original phonograph recordings, Muzsikás's reconstruction of the originals and Bartók's own use of the sources.

History in Safe-Keeping
By Katalin Lukács

This review by Katalin Lukács, a Népszabadság journalist, covers the commemorative volume published by the British Embassy to mark the recent restoration of their Neo-Classical Budapest building, designed by Károly Rainer, an architect whose work is considered "one of the defining elements of the centre of Pest".

This piece is complemented by Pál Ritoók's discussion of the urban scene and of the architecture of the building.