Borders and Crossings
by Peter Unwin

The author was en poste at the British Embassy in Budapest in 1958-1961 and served as ambassador 1983-1986. He returned recently to revisit and recall the Hungary he then knew, with its memories of 1956: "I looked in western Hungary and, more particularly, in the quiet corner of Austria in which most of the refugees arrived. It is the Seewinkel, the flat stretch of fields and marshes that juts into Hungary on the eastern side of the Neusiedlersee, infinitely remote from Vienna only forty miles away. I went to Andau, where hundreds of refugees inched across a broken bridge across the canal that follows the border. It is a nondescript little town which has forgotten that once upon a time people wrote books about what happened there. But a back road which leads the six miles to the bridge has been christened "Freedom's Way". Artists from all over Europe have punctuated it at regular intervals with bits of modern sculpture made from trees and boulders and choses trouvées, which are worthy if unconvincing tributes to freedom and human rights for all. At the end of it, I found the bridge - or rather a reconstruction of the bridge, in brand-new timber. Beside it was a viewing tower, for those who wanted to peer into Hungary. In front of it was a little notice marking the border five yards short of the bridge, and threatening criminal prosecution for those who crossed it."
His memoir contrasts the dark days of the post-1956 repression with the Hungarian ability to focus on the values held to be essential.

Poems
by Orsolya Karafiáth

We publish two poems of our selection from her 1999 published first volume of verse, in a translation by David Hill, a young English poet now resident in Budapest.

Mother
by George Klein

The Hungarian-born tumorbiologist and author, long settled in Sweden and a member of the Nobel Academy, provides a memoir which encompasses his relationship with his mother, the middle-class Jewish-Hungarian identity of the inter-war years and the perils his family faced in the last months of the Second World War.

The Millennium

In this section two articles are devoted to Hungarians' assesments of their own history, one by a historian of the Enlightenment, the second by the co-curator of a major exhibition mounted in 2000 on art devoted to signifying these assessments.

The Need for Pride
by László Kontler

Hungary has two major national days: "In answer to the question what the greatest Hungarian national holiday is-and, by implication, the most decisive item in the national heritage, the standard by which they wish to be measured-well over fifty per cent of Hungarians today would mention August 20 (March 15 coming second with twenty-odd per cent, somewhat ahead of October 23, the anniversary of the October 1956 Revolution and, still, April 4, the day Soviet troops expelled the last German soldier from the country). I have not yet mentioned August 20: it is the day on which, in 1083, the mortal remains of Stephen I were removed from the stone casket in which they had rested for forty-five years, and placed into a silver chest as part of the canonization ceremony of the king who founded the Hungarian state and converted its people to Christianity. August 20 is the Feast of Saint Stephen, and by implication the foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary (even though Stephen's coronation took place either on Christmas Day in 1000 or on New Year's Day in 1001). Incidentally, it is also the 'holiday of the new bread', the first baked from the current year's harvest. I might also add that as Hungary's Communist constitution was issued on the same day in 1949, by way of an ironic transubstantiation the saint king's day was for decades celebrated as 'Constitution Day'."
Holder of the Chair of History at the Central European University, the author sets the two days into the context of Hungarian history, the Hungarian identity and the meanings these two days have accumulated.

Through Our Looking Glass
by Árpád Mikó

"... the Hungarian National Gallery commemorated the millennial year with an exhibition suitable for the occasion. Its theme was the relation of the arts and Hungary's past, specifically her national history. Not an easy option was chosen (perhaps expected on such occasions), and no pleasant tour through scenes of Hungarian history, as if in a slide show, was on offer. Such presentations abound these days, we instead started out from the insight that each age created its own image of history, or more precisely, that each age reshaped its past according to its own image." So begins this account by Árpád Mikó, Curator of the Old Hungarian Section of the Hungarian National Gallery, of the exhibition he co-curated with Katalin Sinkó. This illustrated article, which we publish here in full, describes the rationale and principles behind a decidedly "non-canonical image of national history".

Brought up to Be Different
A Roma journalist in interview with Ágnes Diósi

Ágnes Diósi has written several books on the life of the Roma. Here she interviews Elza Lakatos, a successful journalist, who describes her upbringing in a close-knit Roma family, her pursuit of education and career while attempting to retain the values and identity of her personal background.

Switching Languages
by István Kemény

A pioneer in sociological research into the Roma in Hungary (his works circulated in samizdat or were only published abroad), the author reviews the available demographic information on the Roma gathered since 1893, patterns of settlement and trends in education. He examines the trend towards linguistic assimilation and the educational difficulties Roma children currently face in a market-orientated labour force.

Generation 2000
by György Kertész

Tamás Kolosi: A terhes babapiskóta (The pregnant rusk) Budapest, Oziris, 2000, 301 pp.

A close look at the thrusting new generation which is now well launched into its professional life. But is it as different as its predeccessors? A leading business journalist reviews a fascinating new book.

One of Many
by Gábor Kiszely

We extract from an acclaimed (and best-selling) book published last year on the ÁVH, the dreaded Communist Political Police. In this extract, the historian uses the archives to describe the ÁVH modus operandi in a 1952 case involving a petty criminal, László Bálint, who was strait-jacketed into a Titoist conspiracy trial, and whose torture later resulted in charges being laid against some of the officers involved. It provides a chilling insight into a world compellingly described in Koestler's Darkness at Noon.

David Irving and the 1956 Revolution
by András Mink

The English historian published a book in 1981 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. Entitling his book Uprising! , following Trotsky's definition, Irving took "an avid interest in the Jewish element among those who played a role in Hungarian history after the war and during 1956". Irving approached the London Hungarian embassy in 1973 in connection with a book that would "challenge the fashionable western interpretation." András Mink traces these contacts through the archives, following the convoluted official reactions to his approaches.

Tangles with History
by Tim Wilkinson

László Márton: Árnyas főutca. Shady High Street) Budapest, Jelenkor 147 pp; Endre Kukorelly: Rom, a Szovjetónió története. (Ruin, a History of the Soviet Onion) Jelenkor, 122 pp; Lajos Parti Nagy: Hősöm tere. (My Heroes Square) Magvető, 184 pp; Péter Esterházy: Harmonia Caelestis. Budapest, Magvető, 712 pp.

The editor and translator here surveys four novels by four different authors born in the fifties, identifying in them discourses opened up by the subversion of the official socialist-realist stereotypes. He hails Esterházy's Harmonia Caelestis (see Some Highlights 159 on our site for a review) as "the great Hungarian novel everyone has been waiting for."

Johnny Grain of Corn, the Hungarian Hero
by István Rácz

Sándor Petőfi: John The Valiant - János vitéz. A bilingual edition. Translated by John Ridland, illustrated by Peter Meller. Corvina, 1999, 177 pages

István Rácz, who teaches British Studies at Debrecen University, is highly impressed by a new translation of one of Sándor Petőfi's best-loved poems, which shows "nearly all the virtues Petőfi is known for: the moving expression of love, the representation of innocent eroticism, his power in relating heroism in battles and, not least, brilliantly comic passages replete with humour, sarcasm and irony. It is a children's classic in Hungary, which is re-read and re-discovered by adults (as children's classics usually are)."

Brave New Cinema
by Erzsébet Bori

Kornél Mundruczó: Nincsen nekem vágyam semmi (This I Wish and Nothing More)* András Fésős: Balra a nap nyugszik (Seaside, Dusk) Frigyes Gödrös: Glamour

Our cinema critic welcomes the fact that three recent directorial debuts took place in this last year and that "distributors plucked up their courage: this autumn, three full-length first films were playing in Budapest cinemas. Kornél Mundruczó (This I Wish And Nothing More) was 24, a second-year student director, when he was given his chance; András Fésős (Seaside, Dusk) is just under 30; while Frigyes Gödrös (Glamour) - something of an outsider, coming from the world of amateur film-making - proves at the age 60 that it's never too late to begin ..."