Éva Várhegyi

Bon Appétit!

I for one prefer newspapers for breakfast, would leave non-fiction books for lunch, and have literature at a more relaxed time, for supper. Eszter Rádai's interviews with six post-transition ministers of finance can, however, be read on any occasion, if we concentrate perhaps on different features according to the time of the day and our appetite.
If read for breakfast, I suggest focussing on the questions as, thanks to a competent interviewer, the questions alone provide a comprehensive economico-political digest of Hungary in the eighties and nineties. Though the interviewees filled their ministerial positions in the three governments of the two parliamentary terms between 1990 and 1998, two of them also represent the eighties, which means we get a hint of what was cooking in the last years of the Communist regime. Conditions were apparently chaotic, since Lajos Bokros, then a researcher at one of the Ministry of Finance's institutes, a party member, could for long publish under a pseudonym in the then samizdat, Beszéloý under the pen-name Rikárdó Dávid, maintain friendly relations with radical intellectuals, and discuss his subversive writings in the bugged homes of opposition figures. A few pages later there is an opportunity to glance at the other side of this near-idyllic state, where the ambitious minister of finance (Péter Medgyessy) agrees to behave like a well-disciplined commissar and dissolve the institute which gave a home to such double-dealers.
Eszter Rádai has a sound memory, so she easily finds a match for this story in the brave new world as well. She reminds us (and the person involved) that even two years after the transition, an alert minister could be induced to take part in a political game, this time to blackmail the public media and humiliate the generally respected president of the state-owned television station. The embarrassing stories recalled force us again to acknowledge sadly that arguments like "I couldn't possibly resign, I had a mission to accomplish" will always find the appropriate person to utter them, regardless of regime. And this despite the fact that the persons interviewed are intelligent and talented figures, whom we are ready to believe they believe themselves to be the best man for the job.

But the volume can be recommended not only for its uncomfortable questions and awkward answers. At least as exciting are the images that come to be formed of the governments involved-a dish for lunch, I presume. Eszter Rádai cunningly directs the conversation into areas where the inside story frequently comes out. She has the skill to wring the kind of information from her victims, by appealing to their vanity or self-importance, which they wouldn't have given up themselves. She's nothing like those reporters we call microphone stands.
From the ministers we get titbits about the none too human resource policies of József Antall and Gyula Horn, power struggles among cabinet members (the informants themselves very much included), the clash of noble and ignoble considerations; in a word, a number of "human" interactions which the naďve subject would think can belong only to the private sphere. Of course, readers who have lived through the past ten years cannot be very naďve. They will know that even if the most talented and well-intentioned of the candidates come into power (and they're not always the ones to get there), their actions will not necessarily be directed by rationality and a care for the common good. And if they have even the vaguest ideas about economics, these readers will know that not even under the rule of the best-informed minister of finance did things always work out the way they were supposed to, that a large number of forced compromises or what were thought to be so, were made so that at least a portion of the archfinancier's ideas could be tested in practice.
And this is true even if we acknowledge that things could have worked out more disadvantageously. We must admit that without the economic policy of the late eighties, hallmarked by Medgyessy, Kupa and Békesi, it would have been more difficult for the Hungarian economy to adapt to the new post-changeover conditions. It was then that a considerable liberalization of the economy started, which brought the country nearer to a market economy, and furthered its global integration. The 1988 reform of the revenue system; the first steps to liberalize prices; the abolishment of foreign-trade restrictions; and allowing banks to deal freely in foreign currency were milestones in the process.

These interviews with those six ministers who worked in the first two parliamentary periods outline the rugged road to the present course of development. But even if we admit that all six of them have contributed something to a position that started to turn favourable by 1997/98, we shouldn't shut our eyes to their errors. Iván Szabó was not the only one to make mistakes, if his were the gravest, his monetary policy upsetting the balance, almost sending the economy into crisis. If Békesi had a keen eye for diagnosis, he lacked the power to act. The courage and assurance of Bokros was needed to break the cycle of error and set the economy on a new course. It's probably not his fault that he lost the support of his prime minister so soon, yet his lack of communication skills was also responsible for the resentment of a great many people. Medgyessy, more successful as a communicator, probably could have launched more reforms, as he had inherited a consolidated economy.
Eszter Rádai is no shrinking violet. Like a tenacious bulldog, she finds and grips the weakest point in character: principles given up all too easily, decisions made too late or shunned; she even charges two of them with incompetence. The interviewees are not shrinking violets either (or else they would never have become politicians), and explain the inexplicable, try time and again to convince everyone (themselves included) that they always did their utmost, and always with perfect timing; the two gentlemen charged with incompetence undertake to clarify why it is an excellent idea for financial policy not to be laid out by dyed-in-the-wool finance professionals.
For dinner I recommend the portraits and personality profiles, as well as the monologues, which together form dialogues, thanks to the editor. How does a minister of finance talk about himself and his colleagues? How does he evaluate his rivals? Who does he disparage, and who does he praise? Who does he mention as a model, helper or friend, who are his antagonists or enemies? These interviews, which originally appeared in the erstwhile samizdat journal, Beszéloý, now collected in a volume, enter into a conversation with one another: you felt compelled to turn to pages backwards all the time, to see what the other said about-the same thing. Beszéloý is a fitting label for the volume, (a pun, meaning both "speaker" and "visiting hours in prison") it seems to describe the situation as a chance given to the ex-ministers to articulate their feelings after years of-benevolent-silence.