[...]

"Golden years of peace"

For centuries before the First World War, the Kingdom of Hungary was part of the Habsburg Empire. The 1867 Ausgleich or Compromise placed a constitutional arrangement which went back to 1526 on a new basis. The territorial integrity of the realm was reestablished and the Hungarian state enjoyed greater independence. The imperial context particularily favoured economic growth. In 1910 fifty-one million inhabitants lived on 676,000 sq. kms in almost complete autarky. Seventy to 80 per cent of Hungarian foreign trade was with the more industrialised "Cisleithania" within the Empire. The proportion that went to the world outside the k. und k. customs area barely reached 25 per cent. GDP grew by an annual 2.4 per cent between 1867 and 1913. In Europe, higher rates of growth were only produced by Denmark (3.2 per cent), Sweden (3 per cent) and the German Reich (2.9 per cent).1 Achievements of the time that are still in use include the railway network and numerous secondary schools, colleges and universities. It was also in the twenty odd years before 1914 that the centres of Budapest and most of the larger provincial towns obtained the features that still delight so many.

But this fast economic growth and spectacular cultural progress went with serious social and political tensions, such as the land or peasant question caused by the undesirable preponderance of latifundia and middling estates and the limitations set on trade in real estate. Four to five million peasants with minimal landholdings, or altogether landless, could not make a living as agricultural labourers or off their own farms. Some were absorbed by fast-growing industry, for the majority, however, emigration was the only option. Between 1871 and 1913, 1.3 million tried their luck in the United States, of whom around two thirds never returned home. That political changes could not keep up with the dynamism of economic and social change was a further source of trouble. In 1910 the Electoral Act of 1874 was still in force. The suffrage was confined to around a quarter of adult males, that is 6 per cent of the total population. In addition, it was an open ballot. At that time in the countries of Western European average of 20–30 per cent of the entire population voted under a secret ballot. It was the Social Democrats in the first place, alongside the newly constituted peasant parties and bourgeois democratic intellectuals, who demanded more democracy within conseravative-liberal parliamentarianism, primarily a wider and secret suffrage. Fewer were personally touched by the Jewish question, nevertheless it had aspects which referred to society as a whole, making it a serious issue around 1900. What was responsible was the disproportion between the 5 per cent of Jews in the population as a whole and the position Jews occupied as owners and managers in finance, industry and commerce, that is in the modern sectors of the economy, as well as their 40–50 per cent presence in some of the professions. At the same time, the traditional ruling classes held on to the key positions in political life. This peculiar post-1867 division of labour was interpreted by the déclassés-and those who feared such a fate-as an aggressive expansion by Jewry which was damaging to the national interest. To this conflict of interests was added a differing cast of mind as manifested in culture. Those who emphasized their Christianity tended to be traditionalists, even romantics, as their attitude to the past did not lack pathos. As against this, the Jewish bourgeoisie showed itself more rational and more open to secular values. The result was a political anti-Semitism that grew stronger in the years leading up to the war.

The problems of the peasantry, the absence of democracy in the political system, the Jewish question and anti-Semitism were all serious, but they could be handled within the scope of the Hungarian state. The exacerbation of the national question, however, existentially threatened the very notion of the Kingdom of Hungary. Not counting Croatia, which enjoyed a large measure of territorial and political autonomy, 55 per cent of the population of Hungary had a native language other than Hungarian in 1880 and 46 per cent by 1910. The 1868 Nationality Act accorded every citizen equal rights, regardless of race, language or religion. Non-Hungarians were additionally assured a number of the elements of cultural autonomy. Thus they were given the right to establish and maintain schools. All demands to be recognized as a political nation, as a staats-tragende nation of equal rights, and for territorial autonomy, were, however, systematically rejected.

[...]

The quarter of a century between 1920 and 1945 is known as the Horthy era. The eponymous Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy was the last commander of the k. und k. navy. The first post-Trianon National Assembly elected him as temporary head of state, that is as Regent, on March 1, 1920. Since the international situation excluded a Habsburg restoration-which a number of influential men had placed their hopes in-this temporary state of affairs, that is that of a kingdom without a king-continued until the great bouleversement of 1945.

The economic and cultural performance of the Horthy period did not come up to the standards set before 1914. It would, however, be wrong to speak of decline or even stagnation.

The economy recovered from the deep post-1920 recession extraordinarily quickly, in a little over five years. According to the Swiss economic historian, Paul Bairoch, per capita GNP already approached the 1913 figure in 1925 and significantly exceeded it in 1929. (In 1913 per capita GNP for the post-Trianon area was 69 per cent of the average for Europe, in 1929 it was 74 per cent). The rate of growth declined in the early thirties-largely as a consequence of the Great Depression. Per capita national income in 1938 only exceeded that of 1929 by 6 per cent, thus achieving only 67 per cent of the European average. This was again followed by considerable acceleration, which was braked only in the second half of the war.3 All things considered, one may say that, in spite of the difficult start, Hungary maintained that intermediate position it held between the Balkans and Bohemia-Moravia which had come about in the course of the centuries. There was no leap forward, but neither was there a fall back. Progress corresponded to the average rate.

Agriculture remained dominant, albeit its contribution to national income declined from 44 per cent in 1913 to 40 per cent in 1928/9. This largely corresponded to the Spanish and Italian situation, and significantly differed from that in Western and Northern Europe, where the share of agriculture barely exceeded 25 per cent even before the war. Besides modest industrial development in keeping with the natural resources of the country (food processing, light industry and the chemical industry) transport was modernized. Trucks and buses put in an appearance besides the railways and, of course, motor cars and motorcycles. There were, however, few of them when compared to the European average. At the end of the thirties, there were two cars per thousand inhabitants, at a time when the corresponding figure for Czechoslovakia was five, twenty to thirty in Northern Europe, and over forty in the most developed countries of Western Europe-Greece and Hungary's southern neighbours however did not rise above one. Nor was there much urban development. Few public buildings of note were erected in either Budapest or major provincial towns.

Right to the end a large proportion of investments were devoted to education. In the second half of the twenties, once the country had its economy in order, 9–10 per cent of the annual budget went to the Ministry of Education. This was more than double the 1900 to 1913 share which moved between 2 and 5 per cent. In terms of cash, it corresponded to 80 per cent of the expenditure of that pre-war period. As regards proportions, there was no reduction in the thirties either, on the contrary, a modest growth was discernible. Thanks to significant spending, elite education continued at a high standard and there were developments in elementary education. The lost universities of Kolozsvár (Cluj) and Pozsony (Bratislava) were replaced by new universities at Szeged and Pécs. It was at that time that the University of Debrecen, founded before the war, was given its present appearance. Albert Szent-Györgyi, the only Hungarian Nobel Laureate who was a Hungarian citizen resident in Hungary at the time of his award in 1937, discovered Vitamins C and P in the newly built laboratories of the University of Szeged. Literacy grew, a considerable achievement. In 1910, 67 per cent; in 1920, 85 per cent, and in 1930, 93 per cent of those above six were literate, favourable figures indeed for Eastern Europe where both international and national statistics showed 45 per cent illiteracy for Yugoslavia, 42 per cent for Romania, 39 per cent for Bulgaria and 23 per cent for Poland. On the other hand there can be no doubt that the range of learning acquired in generally four (and rarely six) years of basic education was pretty narrow. 1940 legislation therefore provided for the gradual introduction of an eight-year primary school.

Much as in the decades before the war, cultural life at this period flourished. Growing literacy and shorter working hours-industry introduced an eight-hour day and 48 hour weeks in 1937-which meant more readers. In 1913, 2,378 titles were published in Hungary, 2,318 in 1921, 3,403 in 1930 and more than five thousand in 1941. The proportionate growth in newspaper readership was just as great. 2,000 dailies and other periodicals appeared in Hungary in 1938, as against 1,882 in 1910 in a country three times as big. The cinema enjoyed considerable popularity. Between 1920 and 1938, the number of movie theatres doubled. Cinema-going turned into the favourite urban pastime. In the 1930s people spent around as much money on admission tickets as on all other products of the print-ing industry, that is on books and newspapers combined. The wireless was the other new device serving the propagation of news and information, and entertainment. Regular broadcasting started in Hungary on December 1, 1925, four years after the pioneering Pittsburgh broadcast. There were 16,000 registered sets, ten years later, in 1934, 340,000, and 419,000 in 1938. As in just about everything, Hungary beat her eastern and southern neighbours in the sets per thousand- inhabitants race, however coming in well behind the countries of Western Europe, including even Austria and Czechoslovakia. In the mid-thirties there were 136 sets per 1,000 inhabitants in Germany, 99 in France, 68 in Czechoslovakia, 43 in Hungary, 25 in Poland, 12 in Romania, 11 in Yugoslavia and 3 in Bulgaria.

Reading, going to the cinema and listening to the radio, holiday travel, sports and other pastimes were principally urban pursuits which went with modernization. They were primarily characteristic of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeosie. The lifestyle of the peasantry, who still made up half the population, could still be said to be traditional. Summer holidays or holiday travel were unknown to them. Some of their youngsters occasionally wondered about talking and moving pictures projected onto a white wall, they may have listened to crackling messages and music coming from afar, but it was all exotic for them, it was not part of their daily life. A ride on a train or a bus was still something extraordinary, it was still more usual to travel on foot or by horse or bullock-drawn vehicles even over long distances. The changes in lifestyle already common in urban surroundings only effected a breakthrough in villages and homesteads decades later.

The difference between town and country was also manifest in the exercise of political rights. The post-war revolutionary spirit led to the introduction of almost universal suffrage and the secret ballot in the autumn of 1919. Conservative vested interests considerably limited this in 1922 as they regained their power. The suffrage was reduced from 40 per cent of the population to 29 per cent, and the open ballot was restored in rural areas. There was need of this, since without limiting the political will of the pauperised and land-hungry poor peasantry, the conservative social order restored in 1920 would have been under continuous threat. A modest land reform was carried out in 1920, but there were still more than a million and a half peasant households disposing of no land at all, or of less than one hold (cca 1/2 ha). They amounted to 24 per cent of the total population in 1910, and 21 per cent in 1930. In 1930/31, when annual per capita income in the country was 534 pengős, that of poor peasants-day labourers or field servants-barely, if at all reached 200 pengős. Income differences were such that members of the middle classes-close to 20 per cent of the poulation-made twice the average, and the 50,000 to 60,000 landowners and capitalists (0.6 per cent), thirty-three times as much. It added to the deprivation of the poor peasantry that-as against the growing social benefits of compulsory sickness and accident insurance and pensions after 1928 enjoyed by clerks, officials and industrial workers since early in the century-nothing at all was done for them up to the end of the thirties, when old-age insurance was made compulsory for them too. In 1938, per capita social expenditure in industry was 27 pengő, but only 0.36 pengő for agricultural labourers.

Other anomalies included the caste-character of the social structure to which Gyula Szekfü had drawn attention, as well as the low rate of social mobility.

The sons and daughters of landowners, industrialists and intellectuals made up 65 per cent of university students in the mid-thirties, exceeding even the pre-war 57–58 per cent. In the 1930–31 academic year, of the sons and daughters of large and middling landowners between the ages of 18 and 23, one in six attended an institution of higher learning, the corresponding figure for industrial clerical staff was one in 18, for smallholders one in 121, for industrial workers around every 425th and for landless peasants one in 1320. Because of the high rate of autoreproduction of the upper and middle-classes, a number of administrative measures were taken in the thirties to improve the higher education chances of poor but talented village children. The numerus clausus applied to Jewish students since 1920 was maintained throughout with minor modifications, indeed, it was aggravated from 1938 on by a number of discriminations which also applied to adult Jews. The anti-Semitism of the mid-thirties could essentially be explained by rivalry and a clash of interests within the middle-classes, but there was pressure from Germany as well. In the mid-thirties Germany was Hungary's most important foreign trade partner and-next to Italy-principal foreign policy ally.

The revision of the 1920 peace treaty was the dominant foreign policy-indeed political-priority of the Horthy regime. Many of the most influential men in the Hungary of the time supported the "mindent vissza" (full restoration) slogan, that is an integral revision. The conservative Count István Bethlen, however, arguably the outstanding political figure of the age, in lectures given in England in 1933, demanded only the return of marches predominantly inhabited by Hungarians, suggesting that Transylvania proper become an independent state and that Slovakia, Subcarpathia and Croatia be given the right to decide freely on their own future. Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös who, albeit he stood to the right of Bethlen, was more modern in his outlook and approved a draft plan for revision in 1934 which demanded the return of around half the lost territories and which took into consideration ethnic principles, defence, and the need for raw materials. A revision that took account only of ethnodemographic considerations as present in British and American wartime peace drafts, found acceptance amongst the left in opposition only, that is the Social Democrats, the liberal democrats and the népi (folk) writers.

[...]

The post-1945 economic and political changes led to a social situation which, in the seventies, in no way resembled that of the Horthy age. The post-war calling to account and retribution, the land reform and the nationalizations as well as voluntary and enforced emigration meant that the two most important upper classes, the estate owners and the haute burgeoisie, lost all their social and political influence, indeed their very existence as a class ended in the late forties. The same reasons led to the disintegration of what in Hungarian is called the Christian middle-class. Two thirds of the Jewish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia perished in the Holocaust. They were replaced by the intellectuals who had belonged to the left-wing opposition between the wars and by emergency-trained worker and peasant "cadres." The liquidation of the property owning classes was completed by the collectivization of agriculture. In the seventies there were barely more than 60 to 80,000 smallholders, a figure that includes family members working on the family farm, no more than 1.2–1.6 per cent of the economically active. The number and proportion of self-employed artisans and petty traders was much the same. In other words, members of the public were successfully deprived of the means of production, and this decisively influenced attitudes and mentalities, especially of the young. The acquisitive instinct, very likely a basic human characteristic, did not disappear but that pride of ownership which had been so important before 1945, was in abeyance.

Another important feature was the fast and continuous decline in the numbers of those who looked to agriculture for a living, and in conjuction with this, the growing number of those employed in industry and later in the services sector. The first wave moved from agriculture to industry in the fifties. Between 1949 and 1960 the ratio of those earning their living on the land declined from 54 per cent to 38 per cent, and that of those whose source of income was industry grew from 24 per cent to 34 per cent. The process continued at the same rapid rate in the sixties. In 1970, only 24 per cent were employed in agriculture, the figure for industry was 44 per cent. In two decades Hungary had metamorphosed from an agrarian-industrial into an industrial country. From that time on the speed of the transformation was moderated and even reversed direction to some degree. The agricultural population continued to shrink, accounting for no more than 15 per cent of active earners in 1990, but the growth of the ratio of those in industrial employment ground to a halt, declining from 42 per cent in 1980 to 38 per cent in 1990. At the same time, the ratio of those employed in the services sphere, the tertiary sector leapt from 27 to 47 per cent of active earners between 1960 and 1990, moving ahead of both agriculture and industry. This restructuring, however, unlike the liquidation of the property owning classes, was not specific to the socialist system. Economic modernization sooner or later effected the social structure in much the same way everywhere in the world.

The liquidation of the property owning classes and the transformation of the employment structure largely homogenized the Hungarian people. By the end of the sixties, three large social groupings had taken shape: that of workers in industry, transport and trade, that of those employed in agriculture, be they members of cooperatives or agricultural labourers on state farms, and the third group of those in clerical employment and members of the professions. One could naturally discriminate between numerous subgroups within them. The principal criteria of these subgroups were acquired skills, that is educational standards, and hierarchical status.

All these changes occurred in conjuction with considerable social mobility.

At first it was predominantly intragenerational, later intergenerational, that is a characteristic acquired with schooling. It was typical of the scale of things that the ratio of mobile men jumped from 37 per cent in 1930 to 59 per cent in 1962–64 and 70 per cent in 1981, and that of mobile women from 48 per cent to 59 per cent and on to 73 per cent. As a result the parental composition of various sections of society changed radically. In the early 1960s, two thirds of managers and professionals had manual workers as fathers. Pre-war inequalities of opportunity were thus essentially moderated. Pre-war a man of professional parentage had close to a hundred times the better chance of becoming a professional man than someone of peasant parantage. By the seventies his chances were only twenty times better.

Needless to say, the leap forward in the numbers of those in clerical or professional employment depended on a considerable extension of eductional facilities. A 1945 regulation introduced compulsory eight-form basic schooling. This not only put an end to illiteracy but in time essentially extended the knowledge of those between six and fourteen. The number of those attending secondary schools jumped from 70,000 just before and just after the war to 400,000 in 1965, becoming stabilised at 300,000 to 400,000 between 1970 and 1990. The number of those attending colleges and universities grew at an even faster rate. The 12,000 to 13,000 of the Horthy age had already doubled by the end of the forties, then growing steadily, reached 100,000 in 1975. There is no doubt, however, that the end of the pre-1945 élite character of secondary and tertiary education, opening the gates to the masses, went with a certain decline in standards.

Revolutionary social changes went with a far-reaching transformation of living conditions. It is true that the high ratio of investments implied universal poverty in the country before 1956, but after that date living standards improved considerably and continuously. Per capita real income almost quadrupled between 1950 and 1990. Per capita consumption peaked in 1987. Economic decline could no longer be made up for by raising new loans, and living standards suffered. Real incomes rose in conjunction with diminishing working hours.

A 44 hour working week was introduced at the end of the sixties, which was further reduced to 42 hours in 1981.

Most people spent the larger part of their growing income on consumer goods. Between 1950 and 1980, per capita consumption of both meat and sugar more than doubled, that of eggs almost quadrupled, that of fruit doubled and that of fats, milk and milkproducts went up by 50 per cent. Between 1960 and 1980 the Hungarian masses first achieved a living standard where starvation was no longer part of the vocabulary. In this sense "goulash Communism" as a description of the Kádár regime was fully justified. But there was more than a satisfaction of basic needs. Housing was modernized and most households were equipped with a wide range of appliances. Wirelesses and bicycles had become common in the fifties, washing machines, fridges, hoovers and television sets were purchased in the sixties and seventies. By the early eighties all these were in use in just about every household. But even at that time only about one family in thirty or thirty-five owned a motorcar-none were made in Hungary-and one in twenty a motorbike. In 1980 the Hungarian figure for cars per thousand inhabitants was 73 per cent of he international average, by 1986 this index had grown to 102 per cent.

The end of poverty was accompanied by the reduction in the huge income differences that prevailed before 1945. At the end of the seventies the deviation between the average income of different occupational categories was close to double. Managers earned around 100 per cent more, and skilled workers 30 per cent more than unskilled labourers. The handicapped situation of peasants and agricultural labourers within the manual labour category ceased, indeed, after 1968, they found themselves amongst the privileged in a number of respects. In 1963 the lights were switched on in the last Hungarian village to be connected to the grid, and linked to cooperative membership, various forms of social insurance were extended to cover the peasantry. In the sixties and seventies, new houses-most of which boasted bathrooms-were built by the thousand in rural areas. A few reservation-like folkwear islands survived but with their exception smart city ready made clothes replaced traditional peasant costume throughout the country. It was in these years that village folk became more or less regular consumers of the press, books, the radio and the cinema. The difference between the highest income earning decile, which included prominent intellectuals, members of the nomenklatura, artists, skilled workers and members of agricultural cooperatives, and the lowest decile, mostly unskilled workers, here primarily Gypsies, shrunk from 5.8 fold in 1962 to 3.8 fold in 1982. At the same time, such differences between the top and bottom income deciles were six, ten and even twelve fold in developed capitalist countries, and greater still in developing countries. The relative levelling of incomes lasted till the early eighties. The reforms in economic policy then initiated a widening of the gap. By 1990 that between the top and bottom decile was sixfold.

Early in the eighties, those earning their living on the land spent close to 4 per cent of their income on culture. The corresponding figure for industrial workers was 7 per cent, and around 10 per cent for managers and professional people. The number of titles-books and pamphlets-published more than doubled between 1950 and 1985, rising above ten thousand. The number of copies published increased proportionately, from 61 million to 116 million. At the same time the number of newspapers and periodicals grew from around 330 to 1600, their annual copies from 475 million to 1.4 billion. In 1981 87 per cent of all those above the age of ten declared themselves to be regular or occasional newspaper readers and 76 per cent claimed to read periodicals regularly. Between the wars, 15–20 per cent at the most could have described themselves in that fashion. The cinema and radio which had become universal pastimes in the fifties and sixties, were, from the mid-sixties, steadily upstaged by television. Regular television broadcasts started relatively late in Hungary (in 1958) but progress was fast. In 1980 there were already 258 sets per thousand inhabitants, 11th place among 23 countries, around the middle of the European pecking order. Holiday travel became another organic part of the Hungarian lifestyle, in addition to reading and televison viewing. Taking a holiday in summer was part of it. Half a million in 1960 and 1.5 million in 1985 enjoyed a free or heavily sub- sidized holiday lasting a week or two. Growth in foreign travel was exponential. A mere 300,000 went abroad in 1960, 5.2 million in 1980.

The total social change-homogenization, levelling, high mobility-expressed itself in appearances too. Titles, ranks and dignities customary before 1945 were abolished by the National Assembly in 1947. Up to 1949 everyone was some sort of társ, literally fellow or associate. In the army bajtárs–associate in trouble, the Australian "cobber" or "mate" are perhaps English equivalents; at work szaktárs, companion in trade or occupation, i.e. colleague, all the more so since szaktárs newspeak replaced the older kolléga, in the Social Democratic and Communist Parties elvtárs–associate in principles, the Hungarian equivalent of tovarish or Genosse, hence of comrade. After 1949, the only one of these which survived in offical contacts was the obligatory elvtárs–comrade. All comrades were equal in principle but, as in Animal Farm, some comrades were more equal than others. Unofficially of course, starting with the seventies, the more Western and bourgeois Sir, Madam and Miss were increasingly used.

Hungarians paid a huge price for relative prosperity. Self-exploitation was potentiated to a degree where it damaged health, and people aqcuiesced in a general deprivation of rights. The basic characteristics of the dictatorial regime-single party rule by the Communist Party, absence of democratic elections and political pluralism-were continuously effective between 1948 and 1990. There was, however, a considerable difference as regards the measure of repression and the general political climate between the pre-1956 and the post-1956 period, albeit the latter did not start in 1956 but some years later. Rákosi had said Who is not with us is against us, which Kádár amended into Who is not against us is with us. Perhaps the greatest differences between the two periods were the end of a system of terror which kept everybody in a state of continuous fear and anxiety, and the de-politicization of private life. In comparison with Rákosi's times and the norms which prevailed in systems of the Soviet type, Hungarians lived in the context of rules which may not have been precisely codified but were nevertheless relatively predictable. Provided you refrained from open criticism of the Party line, that is from political opposition, there was little interference in the way you arranged your own affairs.

[...]

Inherited problems, transitional difficulties and changed international market conditions all helped to deepen the economic crisis after 1990. 1993 domestic GDP was 18 per cent below the 1989 figure. A slow improvement followed, but the 1989 level was not reached by 1999. Between 1990 and 1997, economic crisis expressed itself in an annual inflation rate fluctuating between 35 and 18 per cent, and around 10 per cent unemployment. A free fall in incomes ensued. The net (after tax) real income of wage and salary earners declined by 26 per cent between 1989 and 1997, that of the over 3 million pensioners and social benefits receivers by 31 per cent. The level of incomes and consumption in the mid-nineties was comparable to that of the mid-seventies. What is more, this decline was accompanied by an ongoing growth in income differentials. The top decile earned almost eight times as much in 1993–1994 than the bottom decile, and that gap has been growing steadily since. The highest income earners include the successful new businessmen, top and middle management, the intellectual and professional elite, and the most highly qualified skilled workers. The poorest are unskilled workers, some of the pensioners and the unemployed. The losers in the changes are then generally those who earlier too were at the bottom of the social ladder. The difference is that the gap between them and those above them has widened.

In the cultural sphere too the change of system started in 1989. The first sign was the end of compulsory Russian in school and of the monopoly of the 8+4 system introduced in 1945. Today 4, 6 and 8-form elementary and secondary schools exist in Hungary. A number of these were returned to church ownership or operation, but compulsory religions education was not restored. The Marxist approach was eliminated in subjects of an ideological nature. The 1995 National Basic Curriculum stresses the importance of "a value system that matured in European bourgeois progress" and of "values manifested in scientific and technical progress," placing the "values of democracy" first.7 Several hundred publishers mushroomed in a new situation free of every kind of censorship, and the number of titles published grew, but the number of copies printed (books, newspapers and periodicals) declined by 40 to 50 per cent. Lower incomes, and market forces present in the cultural sphere as well-which produced price rises-reduced the numbers of consumers of culture.

In the context of such difficulties of transition the foreign policy successes of the past ten years proved particularly noticeable. In keeping with an agreement between the Soviet Union and Hungary entered into in March 1990, the last Soviet military unit left Hungary on June 19th 1991, Comecon came to an end on June 28th 1991 and the Warsaw Treaty Organization on July 1st. The dissolution of these two organizations and the exodus of Soviet troops meant that Hungary had regained her independence. The barriers had come down that had been obstacles in the way of joining Euro-Atlantic organizations. It soon became clear, however, that these Western organizations-dashing Hungarian hopes-had a prolonged accession process in mind. Moscow saw the NATO extension eastwards as a threat to Russian security and tried to delay things. All the same, on March 12th 1999 Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland achieved full NATO membership. EU accession was delayed by a number of member states with contrary interests. It is now expected in the early years of the new millenium. When that happens Hungary will once again join the community it first entered a thousand years ago by converting to Christianity. That is where Hungarians always felt to be in spirit and thought, even when ill-fate held them in the vice of alien economic, social and political forms.

A renascent Hungarian foreign policy placed greater stress on the patronage of Hungarian ethnic minorities abroad. Who can deny that in the midst of truly major historical changes, it occured to many on both sides of the frontier that not only Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, but Trianon too might be declared null and void or at least amended. It is also true that mavericks in politics articulated such hopes. So far, however, every Hungarian government has repudiated such revisionist intentions. What was done instead was to conclude basic treaties, with the Ukraine in 1993, Slovakia in 1995, and Romania in 1996 which, in exchange for a renewed guarantee of the Trianon frontiers on the part of Hungary, assured greater rights to the Hungarian ethnic minorities.

The foreign policy successes of the past ten years and generally the democratic aspects of politics and the liveliness of culture are a source of satisfaction for Hungarians today. At the same time unexpected difficulties have disheartened a great many and indeed led to disillusion with the political changes as such. A 1994–1995 sociological survey showed that 51–54 per cent of those questioned judged the new system to be worse than what it replaced. Only 30 per cent said that it was an improvement. Furthermore many lost their faith in the future. They looked back in regret and longing to the Kádár age. Zsuzsa Ferge's research between 1991 and 1994, employing a seven point marking scale, showed the new system at 3.09 and the fifties 2.79. Similar results were obtained recently, in the summer of 1999, by the Median Public Opinion and Market Research Intitute. Close to half of those questioned still consider the seventies to have been the most successful decade in 20th century Hungarian history and the nineties second from bottom. Only the ten years between 1940 and 1950 did worse. The same sort of historical image can be deduced from the popularity of 20th century politicians. 41 per cent of those questioned declared János Kádár to be the politician they liked best, and only 22 to 21 per cent the national liberal József Antall and the socialist Gyula Horn, the first two post-change prime ministers. Miklós Horthy (7 per cent) did even worse. He was only beaten on the unpopularity list by the most disliked Mátyás Rákosi (52 per cent) and by Ferenc Szálasi (34 per cent), the 1944–1945 fascist leader.8 All this confirms the hypo-thesis that the majority, at least in this part of Europe, judges social security and welfare to be more important than competition in the economy and democratic rights. May the 21st century bring them these too.