The publication of Ignác Romsics’s new book is a major event, not only because this is the first comprehensive and coherent overview of the Hungarian 20th century, but also because it is the first (successful) attempt to sum up the nearly fifty years of Communist rule in this country. Scholarly works of various leanings and academic standards have already been published on the eras marked by the names of Francis Joseph and Miklós Horthy, but the greater part of this century (the period after the Second World War) has, aside from the wildly erratic products of political journalism, only been covered by research into particular subjects.

Both the strength and the weakness of Professor Romsics’s book lie in the fact that it is the work of a single author: a historian’s independent interpretation of the past, rather than a compilation of earlier publications. We know too much about the 20th century, and no single individual can be a specialist in all fields. Economic historians or authorities on the political struggles before the First World War might raise their eyebrows at some sectences by Romsics, they might perhaps wish he expressed himself more unambiguously on this or that event—in eight or nine thousand words. Nevertheless, comprehensive treatises assembled from many specialist studies usually contain contradictions and, therefore, prove largely unsuitable for the general reader or student. Here, however, we are given a homogeneous picture—one that occasionally might be open to debate and perhaps raises questions and needs further elaboration; this can be said about every scholarly work, but not all academic treatises are as clear, comprehensive and unequivocal as Romsics’s new book.

The book deserves much credit for being able to transcend the perennial debates and extreme prejudices deep-rooted in Hungarian thinking, which are growing more and more tiresome and stereotyped, such as the evaluation of the Compromise of 1867, the overall character of the Horthy era, the world wars and the left and right wings of the political arena, or even the clashes between "national" and "international" views of history. This will obviously be a welcome relief for students (the book is intended as a university textbook, although it is much more than that), who are fed up with their grandfathers’ generation fighting it out over the graves of outmoded ideas. Not that Romsics has nothing to say about these controversies (in fact he tells us where he stands), it is more that he resists the temptation to complicate unnecessarily the tangled web of ancient conflicts, preferring to concentrate on what seems relevant today, while showing the utmost patience with the views of others. Since he applies the methods of the modern social sciences in discussing traditional issues, his approach is novel, even on subjects where the basic facts have already been established.

Comparing various chapters of the book, one asks oneself how one might define the century now coming to a close: whether it is better to accept the now fashionable idea of the "short century", confined to the period between 1914 and 1989, or whether to insist on the formal, and also safer, option of the calendar itself. Romsics opts for the latter, beginning his account with a description of the early 20th century and finishing it with Hungary’s admission to NATO in March 1999. The notion of a "short century" seems perfectly acceptable to me, all the more so in Hungary’s case, where the year 1914 stands for both the source of all our problems and marks the burial of the old order, when, in the poet Endre Ady’s much quoted words, "all things whole were fragmented". And while no one can foresee what the 21st century might have in store for us, that century clearly started in 1989 in this part of Europe. In spite of this, Romsics’ choice is both unassailable and unequivocal, regardless of its drawbacks.

I do not feel it a drawback that the events of the 1990s have been dealt with in a rather summary manner and will have to be expanded in a second edition (which will follow no doubt), since it is a problem for the author rather than the reader, who will find this up-to-date account rather handy. More problematic is the fact that the years between 1900 and 1913 are very much part of the established order of the 1867 Compromise and therefore really belong to the previous century.

Romsics opens with a freeze-frame: over more than eighty pages he paints a broad tableau of the economic, social and cultural conditions prevailing in Hungary at the beginning of the century; of this only a few pages are devoted to the political struggles of the years between 1910 and 1913. It is fair to say, therefore, that he was able to strike a delicate balance between the two possibilities, as the chronological narrative only begins with the outbreak of the First World War. Still, this is the point where we feel shortchanged: we do get a description of half of the period of the Compromise and yet we do not; hardly anything is said about the immediate antecedents of the Great War, nor about the crisis of 1908 and the Balkan war of 1912.

Right until the 1960s, the Compromise between Austria and Hungary in 1867 was viewed by just about everyone, from the extreme nationalists to the dogmatic Marxists, as the darkest evidence of that original sin, the surrender of national sovereignty. Beginning in the 1960s, a new view was taking shape, primarily as the result of the efforts of the late Péter Hanák, which presented 1867 as a great step forward and as the only way to achieve modernization and economic and social de-velopment. Seeing Romsics performing a balancing act between these two views, we may even regard this as a move backwards; at the same time, to my mind, he seems to be too lenient to Count István Tisza, the Prime Minister, who was the staunchest defender of the 1867 Compromise right until his death in 1918.

Contradictions such as this are few and far between, and are completely absent once we reach 1914, or the beginning of the "short 20th century". There are no truly up-to-date works on Hungary’s part in the First World War, on which Romsics could have drawn, but he nevertheless gives a concise and authoratative account of the essential facts. He convincingly argues for the inevitability of the war even if there had been no Sarajevo assassination, and shows that the victory of the Allies inexorably led to Hungary’s dismemberment, not so much in accordance with the Wilsonian principles of "national self-determination" (i.e., the ethnic map of the area), but rather to meet the demands of Romania, Serbia and the newly emerging Czechoslovakia. The prime reason why the Tisza government in Hungary was at political odds with both the military leadership and the Austrian politicians was that, although it consented to take part in the hostilities as a defensive war, it was strongly opposed to territorial acquisitions, since those would have added to the main ills of both Austria-Hungary and Hungary, as part of it, i.e., the preponderance of Slavs and Romanians in the population. Since there was no independent Hungarian military command, the book makes no attempt to cover the events of the war in any detail.

The chapters discussing the revolutions of 1918 and 1919, along with the ensuing counter-revolution surpass even the previous ones. Although Romsics is regarded as an authority on the revolutions, he describes the events only briefly (the same applies to the events of 1956), as he wishes to dwell not so much on the colourful and rapidly changing scenes of the revolutions, themselves but on the exploration of their causes and their consequences—in other words, on the enduring historical and social processes. In addition to an exemplary objectivity, this approach explains his decision to turn his back on the "ideological" reflexes which induce people to give a blood-curling account of either the "red" or the "white" terror by exaggerating the number of victims. Instead, he factually states that the 1919 Red Terror only claimed one or two hundred victims, as opposed to the one or two thousand victims of the ensuing White Terror (and not five or six thousand, as claimed in earlier works).

The book discusses the twenty-five years of the Horthy era in more detail—although even here Romsics does not run to more than 120 pages, but the readers can rest assured that they are reading the first objective, balanced and well-proportioned overview of the history of a quarter of a century. The Horthy regime as both the consequence of, and a reaction to the Trianon Peace Treaty is the main motif that can explain much, yet a discussion of the economic processes, the social and school reforms and the rich cultural life also follows. For Romsics, the previous decades’ main bone of contention—was the Horthy establishment a Fascist regime—no longer poses a problem: In his definition, it was "a limited bourgeois parliamentary system also containing authoritarian elements", in other words, "a hegemonistic multi-party authoritarianism." (p. 233.)

This is fair enough; still, one cannot get around the problem of having to choose a particular angle from which to view this extremely diverse period. The view of history and the public thinking over the past decades preferred to see the Francis Joseph era as a successful new beginning, a period of "golden peace", while the Horthy era was seen through the lenses of its terrible end, still vividly remembered by many, thus associating its essential features with the Second World War and the alliance with Hitler. Romsics is inclined to associate the "classic" period of the Horthy era with the decade of Count István Bethlen’s goverment (1921–1931), a period free of excesses and one that verged on liberalism; in general, he seems to regard Bethlen—on whom he has published an excellent biography—as a politician of great vision in comparison with Horthy.

I also think of Bethlen as a more agreeable politician, but at this point I have some reservations. After 1938 the pro-Nazi elements, who had hitherto been kept in check by Bethlen and his followers, were gaining in popularity at such an alarming rate, recruiting new followers from every walk of life, from the political elite down to the working class, that one should ask whether such a distortion of the political arena can be explained merely by outside (Nazi) influences. Romsics factually describes, and properly condemns, the crimes of the Horthy regime after 1938, yet he avoids the question of the nature of the regime in power before and after March 19, 1944 (the day of German occupation). He prefers to criticize Bethlen for not insisting more resolutely on his Anglophile line, rather than say out loud that the pro-Nazi politicians had more followers than Bethlen and his friends.

Precisely half of this well-balanced and ably-judged book is devoted to the history of the period between 1945 and 1989. I have described the previous section as first class; as to the part covering the history after 1945, it is peerless: no scholarly account of that standard has so far been published on that period. In general, Romsics opposes the aims of socialist policy, nor does he consider them feasible; in some sense he looks on the period as deviating from the mainstream of Hungary’s history, in other words, he regards it as something alien, yet he avoids the Cold-War rhetoric of moral judgement, which is (somewhat belatedly) so typical of Hungarian journalism now. His judgement is objective and to the point: instead of asking what was bad and what was good, he considers what was possible and what was not. He examines the economic, cultural and social problems and achievements of the era that he himself has rejected with the same objectivity, as he did in the case of earlier periods. For school teachers, this second half of the book will prove to be an unqualified blessing, since they have had no idea what to teach about the recent past.

Romsics does not share the nostalgia common to many "third-road" thinkers (including István Bibó) that between 1945 and 1948 something remarkable was in the bud, which could have had a glorious continuation, had Stalin allowed it to blossom. Nor does he agree with those who think that Soviet occupation and oppression were the crucial features thus integrating the whole period between 1945 and 1990. (Recently we witnessed the erection of monuments for "the resistance and victims" of 1945–46.) Romsics views the years between 1945 and 1949 as a separate period, acknowledging its great achievements—land reform, democratic suffrage—yet firmly holds that Stalin had decided on the Sovietization of the region already in 1945, and the halting execution of his plans was linked to the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the West. (He gives a detailed account of the policies, peace proposals and border revision ideas of the various powers both for the post-1945 settlement and for the Paris Peace Treaty of 1919–1920.)

Nor does he agree with those who believe that the Kádár era after 1956 was essentially indistinct from the Rákosi era between 1949 and 1956. He describes Rákosi’s rule as one of absolute terror, which Imre Nagy and other reform Communists wishing to use milder and more practical methods were unable to moderate substantially. Although he states in a factual manner, and documents with figures, the achievements of the 1950s, such as rapid industrialization or the extension of public education to cater to the needs of working-class and village children, these cannot alter his judgement that what took place between 1949 and 1956 was not part of the organic development of Hungarian history.

The author is much more understanding in his evaluation of the Kádár regime. He, of course, clearly separates the years of retaliation after 1956 from the later years of consolidation: "The Kádár era can be divided into two main phases. The first phase, which lasted from Kádár’s installation in power until 1962 or 1963, was characterized by the brutal suppression of the revolutionaries, the restoration of the institutions of dictatorship, the consolidation of Kádár’s personal power, and finally, the regime’s international recognition [...] The second main phase, during which Kádárism (a term theoretically never developed to any degree, and interpreted more as a pragmatic concept rather than a closed construct of formal logic) achieved stability and its distinctive features became clear, lasted from the early 1960s to the end of the 1980s [...] its main features were the totalitarian nature of the dictatorship giving way to an authoritarian character, in other words, the repressive elements were softened: the sub-systems of society—the economy, education, science, culture, etc.—attained a measure of independence; and above else, the planned economy based on state ownership underwent rationalization, and the hegemony of one-party-state ideology came to an end. Further characteristics were the de-politization of everyday life and the attempt to meet consumer needs and to modernize." (p. 399.)

It is, once again, possible to view the two phases of Kádárism from different angles. After the mid-1960s, political and economic liberalization was accompanied by the gradual abandonment of socialist principles, the stated objectives of social progress: relative equality, equal opportunities in education, every family’s right to a decent home, social policies and "job democracy" were all abandoned. At the end only one "socialist achievement" was left intact: the right to work, quite often in return for a miserable income. Romsics regards the surrender of unrealistic objectives as no particular loss—the improvement in living standards was more closely related to the slow decay of the system. The last years of collapsing regimes are often the most pleasant: one should remember France of the 1780s, Vienna before the First World War—and the Budapest of the 1980s.

Some historians might find it disconcerting that the last chapter finishes at a date just weeks before the publication of the book. I do not believe that this chapter will prove to be as lasting as the rest, but it will satisfy the needs of those readers and students who live in the present and who look for answers to questions such as where we have come from and how we have got here. This book is for them.

There is much more that could be said in praise of the book—suffice it to say here that it comes complete with a fine collection of supplements, including a lenghty survey of the literature, a chronological overview and a witty selection of illustrations; the credit for the latter should go to Osiris, a publishing house piling success upon success within the few years of its existence. There is no question about the book’s favourable reception in Hungary; an English translation has just been published. (Hungary in the Twentieth Century. Budapest, Corvina, 516 pp.)