Hungary
 

Overview
Country, central Europe.

Area: 35,919 sq mi (93,030 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 10,078,000. Capital: Budapest. The people are an amalgam of Magyars and various Slavic, Turkish, and Germanic peoples. Language: Hungarian (Magyar; official). Religion: Christianity (mostly Roman Catholic; also Protestant). Currency: forint. The Great Alfold (Great Hungarian Plain), with fertile agriculture land, occupies nearly half of the country. Hungary’s two most important rivers are the Danube and the Tisza. Lake Balaton, in the Transdanubian highlands, is the largest lake in central Europe. Forests cover nearly one-fifth of the land. Hungary is one of the more prosperous countries of eastern Europe and a major world producer of bauxite. A conversion from a socialist to a free-market economy was begun in the late 1980s. Hungary is a multiparty republic with one legislative house; the chief of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. The western part of the country was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 14 bc. The Magyars, a nomadic people, settled in the Great Alfold in the late 9th century. Stephen I, crowned in 1000, Christianized the country and organized it into a strong and independent state. Invasions by the Mongols in the 13th century and by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century devastated the country, and by 1568 the territory of modern Hungary was divided into three parts: Royal Hungary had fallen to the Habsburgs; Transylvania had gained autonomy in 1566 under the Ottoman Turks; and the central plain remained under Ottoman control until the late 17th century, when the Austrian Habsburgs took over. Hungary declared its independence from Austria in 1849, and in 1867 the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was established. Its defeat in World War I (1914–18) resulted in the dismemberment of Hungary, leaving it only those areas in which Magyars predominated. In an attempt to regain some of this lost territory, Hungary cooperated with the Germans against the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–45). After the war a pro-Soviet provisional government was established, and in 1949 the Hungarian People’s Republic was formed. Opposition to this Stalinist regime broke out in 1956 but was suppressed (see Hungarian Revolution). Nevertheless, from 1956 to 1988 communist Hungary grew to become the most tolerant of the Soviet-bloc nations of Europe. It gained its independence in 1989 and soon attracted the largest amount of direct foreign investment in eastern and central Europe. It joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.

Profile
Official name Magyar Köztársaság (Republic of Hungary)
Form of government unitary multiparty republic with one legislative house (National Assembly [386])
Chief of state President
Head of government Prime Minister
Capital Budapest
Official language Hungarian
Official religion none
Monetary unit forint (Ft)
Population estimate (2008) 10,032,000
Total area (sq mi) 35,919
Total area (sq km) 93,030

Main

landlocked country of central Europe. Officially it is the Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság), but to natives it is known as Magyarorszag, Land of the Magyars.

At the end of World War I, defeated Hungary lost 71 percent of its territory as a result of the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Since then, grappling with the loss of more than two-thirds of their territory and people, Hungarians have looked to a past that was greater than the present as their collective psyche suffered from the so-called “Trianon Syndrome.” The syndrome was widespread prior to 1945; it was suppressed during Soviet domination (1945–90); and it reemerged during independence in 1990, when it took on a different form. The modern country appears to be split into two irreconcilable factions: those who are still concerned about Trianon and those who would like to forget it. This split is evident in most aspects of Hungarian political, social, and cultural life.

Hungarians are unique among the nations of Europe in that they speak a language that is not related to any other major European language. Linguistically surrounded by alien nations, Hungarians felt isolated through much of their history. This may be the reason why after Christianization they became attached to Latin, which became the language of culture, scholarship, and state administration—and even the language of the Hungarian nobility until 1844.

Cast adrift in a Slavic-Germanic sea, Hungarians are proud to have been the only people to establish a long-lasting state in the Carpathian Basin. Only after six centuries of independent statehood (896–1526) did Hungary become part of two other political entities: the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. But even then Hungarians retained much of their separate political identity and near-independence, which in 1867 made them a partner in Austria-Hungary (1867–1918). This was much more than the other nations of the Carpathian Basin were able to achieve before 1918.

By accepting Catholicism in ad 1000, the Hungarians joined the Christianized nations of the West, but they still remained on the borderlands of that civilization. This made them eager to prove themselves and also defensive about lagging behind Western developments elsewhere. Their geographical position often forced them to fight various Eastern invaders, and, as a result, they viewed themselves as defenders of Western Christianity. In that role, they felt that the West owed them something, and when, in times of crisis, special treatment was not forthcoming (e.g., Trianon in 1920), they judged the West as ungrateful.

Today Hungary is wholly Budapest-centred. The capital dominates the country both by the size of its population—which dwarfs those of Hungary’s other cities—and by the concentration within its borders of most of the country’s scientific, scholarly, and artistic institutions. Budapest is situated on both banks of the Danube (Hungarian: Duna) River, a few miles downstream from the Danube Bend. It is a magnificent city, even compared with the great pantheon of European capitals, and it has been an anchor of Hungarian culture since its inception.

In spite of many national tragedies during the last four centuries, Hungarians remain confident and are proud of their achievements in the sciences, scholarship, and the arts. During the 20th century, many talented Hungarians emigrated, particularly to the United States. Among them were leading scientists who played a defining role in the emergence of American atomic discovery and the computer age. The abundance of these scientists, mathematicians, economists, anthropologists, musicians, and artists—among them a dozen Nobel laureates—prompted Laura Fermi, writer and wife of Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi, to speculate about “the mystery of the Hungary talent.”

Land
Landlocked and lying approximately between latitudes 45° and 49° N and longitudes 16° and 23° E, Hungary shares a border to the north with Slovakia, to the northeast with Ukraine, to the east with Romania, to the south with Serbia (specifically, the Vojvodina region) and Croatia, to the southwest with Slovenia, and to the west with Austria.

Relief
Dominating the relief are the great lowland expanses that make up the core of Hungary. The Little Alföld (Little Hungarian Plain, or Kisalföld) lies in the northwest, fringed to the west by the easternmost extension of the sub-Alps along the border with Austria and bounded to the north by the Danube. The Little Alföld is separated from the Great Alföld (Great Hungarian Plain, or Nagy Magyar Alföld) by a low mountain system extending across the country from southwest to northeast for a distance of 250 miles (400 km). This system, which forms the backbone of the country, is made up of Transdanubia (Dunántúl) and the Northern Mountains, separated by the Visegrád Gorge of the Danube. Transdanubia is dominated by the Bakony Mountains, with dolomite and limestone plateaus at elevations between 1,300 and 2,300 feet (400 and 700 metres) above sea level. Volcanic peaks comprise the Mátra Mountains in the north, reaching an elevation of 3,327 feet (1,014 metres) at Mount Kékes, Hungary’s highest peak. Regions of hills reaching elevations of 800 to 1,000 feet (250 to 300 metres) lie on either side of the mountain backbone, while to the south and west of Lake Balaton is an upland region of more-subdued loess-covered topography.

The Great Alföld covers most of central and southeastern Hungary. Like its northwestern counterpart, it is a basinlike structure filled with fluvial and windblown deposits. Four types of surface may be distinguished: floodplains, composed of river alluvium; alluvial fans, wedge-shaped features deposited at the breaks of slopes where rivers emerge from the mountain rim; alluvial fans overlain by sand dunes; and plains buried under loess, deposits of windblown material derived from the continental interior. These lowlands range in elevation from about 260 to 660 feet (80 to 200 metres) above sea level, with the lowest point at 256 feet (78 metres), on the southern edge of Szeged, along the Tisza River. In the northeast, bordering Slovakia, is Aggtelek National Park; characterized by karst terrain and featuring hundreds of caves, the area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in the late 20th century.

Drainage and soils
Hungary lies within the drainage basin of the Danube, which is the longest river in the country. The Danube and two of its tributaries, the Rába and Dráva rivers, are of Alpine origin, while the Tisza River and its tributaries, which drain much of eastern Hungary, rise in the Carpathian Mountains to the east. The Danube floods twice a year, first in early spring and again in early summer. During these phases, discharge is up to 10 times greater than river levels recorded during the low-water periods of autumn and winter. The Tisza forms a floodplain as it flows through Hungary; large meanders and oxbow lakes mark former channels. At Szolnok, peak discharges 50 times greater than average have been recorded. Devastating floods have occurred on the Danube, the Tisza, and their tributaries. About 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of levees have been built to protect against floods. The relatively dry climate of the central and eastern areas of the Great Alföld has necessitated the construction of large-scale irrigation systems, mostly along the Tisza River.

There are few lakes in Hungary, and most are small. Lake Balaton, however, is the largest freshwater lake in central Europe, covering 231 square miles (598 square km). Neusiedler Lake—called Lake Fertő in Hungary—lies on the Austrian border and was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2001. Lake Velence lies southeast of Budapest.

Gray-brown podzolic (leached) and brown forest soils predominate in the forest zones, while rich black earth, or chernozem, soil has developed under the forest steppe. Sand dunes and dispersed alkali soils are also characteristic.

Climate
Because of its situation within the Carpathian Basin, Hungary has a moderately dry continental climate. The mean annual temperature is about 50 °F (10 °C). Average temperatures range from 25 to 32 °F (−4 to 0 °C) in January to 64 to 73 °F (18 to 23 °C) in July. Recorded temperature extremes are 109 °F (43 °C) in summer and −29 °F (−34 °C) in winter. In the lowlands, precipitation generally ranges from 20 to 24 inches (500 to 600 mm), rising to 24 to 31 inches (600 to 800 mm) at higher elevations. The central and eastern areas of the Great Alföld are the driest parts of the country, and the southwestern uplands are the wettest. As much as two-thirds of annual precipitation falls during the growing season.

Plant and animal life
Human activities over the ages have largely destroyed the natural vegetation of Hungary. Just about half of the land is regularly cultivated, and about one-sixth is used for nonagricultural purposes. The remainder comprises meadows and rough pasture as well as forest and woodland. No part of the country is of sufficient elevation to support natural coniferous forest. Beech is the climax community at the highest elevations; oak woodland alternating with scrubby grassland are the climax communities at lower elevations in the upland regions.

Deer and wild pigs are abundant in the forests at higher elevations, while rodents, hares, partridge, and pheasant inhabit the lowlands. The once-numerous varieties of marsh waterfowl survive only in nature reserves. There are diverse species of freshwater fish, including pike, bream, and pike perch. Significant water and air pollution occurs in some of the industrial regions of the country.

People
Ethnic groups and languages
From its inception in the 10th century, Hungary was a multiethnic country. Major territorial changes made it ethnically homogeneous after World War I, however, and more than nine-tenths of the population is now ethnically Hungarian and speaks Hungarian (Magyar) as the mother tongue. The Hungarian language is classified as a member of the Ugric branch of the Uralic languages; as such, it is most closely related to the Ob-Ugric languages, Khanty and Mansi, which are spoken east of the Ural Mountains. It is also related, though more distantly, to Finnish and Estonian, each of which is (like Hungarian) a national language; to the Sami languages of far northern Scandinavia; and, more distantly still, to the Samoyedic languages of Siberia. Ethnic Hungarians are a mix of the Finno-Ugric Magyars and various assimilated Turkic, Slavic, and Germanic peoples. A small percentage of the population is made up of ethnic minority groups. The largest of these is the Roma (Gypsies). Other ethnic minorities include Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Romanians, Serbs, Poles, Slovenians, Rusyns, Greeks, and Armenians.

Religion
Hungary claims no official religion and guarantees religious freedom. More than half the people are Roman Catholic, most of them living in the western and northern parts of the country. About one-fifth of the population are Calvinist (concentrated in eastern Hungary). Lutherans constitute the next most significant minority faith, and relatively smaller groups belong to various other Christian denominations (Greek or Byzantine Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Unitarians). The Jewish community, which constituted 5 percent of the population before World War II, was decimated by the Holocaust and is now much smaller.

During the communist era, from 1949, Hungary was officially an atheistic state. The Roman Catholic Church struggled with the communist government after it enacted laws diminishing church property and schools. As a result of resistance to these changes, the church was granted broader rights via a 1964 agreement with the Vatican, and in 1972 the Hungarian constitution proclaimed the free exercise of worship and the separation of church and state. Since the fall of communism in 1990, more than 200 religious groups have been officially registered in the country. Nominal membership in a religious denomination, however, does not necessarily mean active participation or even active spiritual belief.

Settlement patterns
Traditional regions
The Great Alföld is the largest region of the country. It is divided into two parts: Kiskunság, the area lying between the Danube and Tisza rivers, and Transtisza (Tiszántúl), the region east of the Tisza. Kiskunság consists primarily of a mosaic of small landscape elements—sand dunes, loess plains, and floodplains. Kecskemét is the market centre for the region, which is also noted for its isolated farmsteads, known as tanyák. Several interesting groups live there, including the people of Kalocsa and the Matyó, who occupy the northern part of the plain around Mezőkövesd and are noted for folk arts that include handmade embroidery and the making of multicoloured apparel.

In the generally homogeneous flat plain of the Transtisza region, only the Nyírség area in the northeast presents any form of topographical contrast. Closely connected with the Nyírség are the Hajdúság and the Hortobágy regions, and all three areas look to Debrecen, the largest city of the plain. The steppe life of earlier times survives in the Hortobágy, where the original Hungarian cattle, horse, and sheep breeds have been preserved as part of the national heritage. The national park there was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999.

The Little Alföld, the second major natural region, is situated in the northwest and is traversed by the Danube and Rába rivers and their tributaries. It is more favourably endowed with natural resources than is the Great Alföld; both agriculture and industry are more advanced there. Győr, known for its Baroque architecture, is the region’s major city.

The third major region, Transdanubia, embraces all of the country west of the Danube exclusive of the Little Alföld. It is a rolling upland broken by the Bakony and Mecsek ridges. Lake Balaton is a leading resort area. To the south of the lake are the hills of Somogy, Tolna, and Baranya megyék (counties), where Pécs, a mining and industrial city, is the economic and cultural centre. Also found in Transdanubia are the Bakony Mountains, whose isolation, densely forested ridges, small closed basins, and medieval fortresses and monasteries have protected the local inhabitants over the course of many stormy centuries. Although modern industrial towns drawing on the bauxite, manganese, and brown coal resources of the area have sprung up, the cultural centre of Transdanubia is the historic city of Veszprém. In the southern part of the region, north and west of Lake Balaton, are health resorts and centres of wine production, notably Keszthely, Hévíz, Badacsony, and Balatonfüred.

The Northern Mountains, the fourth major geographic region of the country, contains two important industrial areas, the Nógrád and Borsod basins. Agriculture is also important, especially viticulture; notable are the Tokaj (Tokay) and Eger vineyards. Indeed, the region that produces Tokay wines was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2002. Tourism in the Northern Mountains is well-developed, and numerous spas and recreation centres are located there. Miskolc is the main economic centre for the region.

Urban settlement
Nearly two-thirds of the population is urban, but, outside of the major cities, the bulk of towns in Hungary have populations of less than 40,000. Until the late 20th century, these were functionally vastly overgrown villages rather than towns. About one-third of the urban population lives within the Budapest metropolitan area.

Urban Hungary is dominated by Budapest, which is several times the size of any of the other major cities. It has the largest industrial workforce in the country. The major provincial centres are Debrecen, Miskolc, Szeged, Pécs, and Győr, each of which has an economic, cultural, and administrative hinterland that reaches deep into the surrounding countryside along with an expanding industrial capacity. Below the provincial centres in the hierarchy are the traditional market towns, such as Kecskemét, Székesfehérvár, Nyíregyháza, Szombathely, and Szolnok, often with new suburbs extending from their medieval or Baroque town centres.

Also worthy of note are the predominantly industrial towns located close to the mineral resources of the Northern Mountains, which, from small beginnings in the late 19th century, have developed into major industrial centres. They include Tatabánya, Salgótarján, and Ózd. In addition, a number of industrial towns were created in the late 20th century on greenfield sites as part of deliberate planning policy. These include the metallurgical centre of Dunaújváros on the Danube and the chemical centre of Kazincbarcika in northeastern Hungary.

Rural settlement
The distribution of rural population varies widely from one part of the country to another. For historical reasons connected with resettlement following the Turkish occupation in the 16th century, the villages of the Great Alföld are small in number but large in size. By comparison, rural settlement in Transdanubia and in the Northern Mountains takes the form of many small nucleated and linear villages. The tanyák tend to be concentrated in the Great Alföld. The village of Hollókő, now preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site, exemplifies the rural settlement typical of Hungary prior to the agricultural changes of the 20th century.

Demographic trends
Because of major changes in Hungary’s borders following World War I, the country’s population decreased significantly. Although there were further losses during World War II, Hungary’s population recovered slowly, peaking in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Since then, however, Hungary has experienced a negative natural increase rate (meaning the number of deaths has outpaced the number of births). These demographic trends were influenced by the urbanization and modernization process. As modernization spread from urban areas (where people generally have fewer children) into the countryside, so did the declining birth rate. Many Hungarians framed economic decisions as choices between kocsi or kicsi (“a car or a baby”), and it was often the car that was chosen over the baby.

Life expectancy for women increased consistently from the 1930s, and that for men also increased until the 1970s, when the trend reversed, but both are below those of Hungary’s central European neighbours.

Many ethnic Hungarians live in the neighbouring countries of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria. As a consequence of a net overseas emigration of 1.3 million people before World War I and a continuous, though much smaller, emigration related to major political upheavals in 1918–19, the 1930s, 1944–45, and 1956, large Hungarian communities also live in North America and western Europe. After the collapse of communism and the splintering of Yugoslavia, roughly 100,000 refugees migrated to Hungary from Romania and the former Yugoslav federation. Half of them were ethnic Hungarians.

Economy
Overview
Historically, prior to World War II, Hungary was mostly agrarian. Beginning in 1948, a forced industrialization policy based on the Soviet pattern changed the economic character of the country. A centrally planned economy was introduced, and millions of new jobs were created in industry (notably for women) and, later, in services. This was accomplished largely through a policy of forced accumulation; keeping wages low and the prices of consumer goods (as opposed to staples) high made it possible for more people to be employed, and, because consumer goods were beyond their means, most Hungarians put more of their earnings in savings, which became available for use by the government. In the process, the proportion of the population employed in agriculture declined from more than half to about one-eighth by the 1990s, while the industrial workforce grew to nearly one-third of the economically active population by the late 1980s. Since that time, it has been the service sector that has increased significantly.

Although Soviet-type economic modernization generated rapid growth, it was based on an early 20th-century structural pattern and on outdated technology. The heavy industries of iron, steel, and engineering were given the highest priority, while modern infrastructure, services, and communication were neglected. New technologies and high-tech industries were underdeveloped and further hampered by Western restrictions (the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) on the export of modern technology to the Soviet bloc.

In response to stagnating rates of economic growth, the government introduced the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) in 1968. The NEM implemented market-style reforms to rationalize the behaviour of Hungary’s state-owned enterprises, and it also allowed for the emergence of privately owned businesses. By the end of the 1980s, one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly three-fifths of services and more than three-fourths of construction—was being generated by private business. The Hungarian economy, however, failed to meet the challenge of the world economic crisis after 1973. The dramatic price increases for oil and modern technology created a large external trade deficit, which led to increasing foreign indebtedness. Growth slowed down and inflation rose, leading to a period of stagflation.

After 1989 Hungary’s nascent market and parliamentary systems inherited a crisis-ridden economy with an enormous external debt and noncompetitive export sectors. Hungary turned to the world market and restructured its foreign trade, but market competition, together with a sudden and radical opening of the country and the abolition of state subsidies, led to further economic decline. Agriculture was drastically affected and declined by half. A large portion of the iron, steel, and engineering sectors, especially in northeastern Hungary, collapsed. Industrial output and GDP decreased by 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Unemployment, previously nonexistent, rose to 14 percent in the early 1990s but declined after 1994.

By the mid-1990s the economy was again growing, but only moderately. Inflation peaked in 1991 and remained high, at more than 20 percent annually, before dropping to under 10 percent by the early 21st century. As a consequence of unavoidable austerity measures that included the elimination of many welfare institutions, most of the population lost its previous security. In the first several years after the fall of communism, the number of people living below the subsistence level doubled, but it stabilized by the early 21st century. Observers also noted the emergence of a sector of long-term poor, a majority of whom were Roma.

Despite these obstacles, adjustment to the world economy was evident by the turn of the 21st century. Hungary’s liberal foreign investment regime attracted more than half of the entire foreign direct investment in central and eastern Europe in the first half of the 1990s. Modernization of telecommunications also began, and new industries (e.g., automobile manufacturing) emerged. Significantly, nearly one million small-scale, mostly family-owned enterprises were established by the early 21st century. State ownership of businesses declined to roughly one-fifth. Another important contributor to economic growth has been a flourishing tourist industry.

Agriculture
Agriculture’s role in the Hungarian economy declined steadily in the generations following World War II, dropping from half of the GDP in the immediate postwar period to only 4 percent of the GDP by 2005. Nevertheless, agriculture remains important, and Hungary is virtually self-sufficient in food production. The Hungarian climate is favourable for agriculture, and half of the country’s land is arable; about one-fifth is covered by woods. About one-tenth of the country’s total area is under permanent cultivation. Agriculture accounted for nearly one-fourth of Hungarian exports before the economic transition of the 1990s, during which animal stocks decreased by one-third and agricultural output and exports declined by half.

After the initial period of collectivization (1948–61), Hungarian cooperatives incorporated private farming. Private plots constituted roughly one-eighth of a cooperative’s land and produced about one-third of the country’s agricultural output. One-fifth of Hungarian farmland belonged to state farms. Since 1990 the land has been reprivatized. Some among the elderly agricultural population have remained in reorganized collective farms; however, private farms are the norm.

Cereals, primarily wheat and corn (maize), are the country’s most important crops. Other major crops are sugar beets, potatoes, sunflower seeds, and fruits (notably apples, grapes, and plums). Viticulture, found in the Northern Mountains region, is also significant. Cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are raised in Hungary, but, in response to the government’s efforts to combat overproduction of animal products, substantial reductions in livestock occurred in the 1990s.

Resources and power
The most important natural endowments of Hungary, particularly in its western and central areas, are its fertile soil and abundant water resources—notably Lake Balaton, a major asset for tourism. Fossil fuel resources are relatively modest. High-quality anthracite (hard coal) is extracted only at Komló, and lignite (brown coal) is mined in the Northern Mountains (notably at Ózd) and in Transdanubia (at Tatabánya). Coal once satisfied half of Hungary’s energy requirements; it now represents less than one-third of energy production.

Oil and natural gas were discovered in the late 1930s in Transdanubia and during the decades following World War II at several localities in the Great Alföld, especially near Szeged. Their share of energy production increased from one-third to one-half between 1970 and 2000; however, Hungary is able to meet only a fraction of its oil requirements with domestic resources.

The country’s only significant mineral resources are bauxite—of which Hungary has some of the richest deposits in Europe—manganese, in the Bakony Mountains, and the undeveloped copper and zinc resources at Recsk. Extraction of various metal-bearing ores increased significantly in postwar Hungary, but iron ore is no longer mined. Other minerals that are found include mercury, lead, uranium, perlite, molybdenum, diatomite, kaolin, bentonite, zeolite, and dolomite.

Manufacturing
As a result of the policy of forced industrialization under the communist government, industry experienced an exceptionally high growth rate until the late 1980s, by which time it constituted about two-fifths of GDP. Mining and metallurgy, as well as the chemical and engineering industries, grew in leaps and bounds as the preferred sectors of Hungary’s planned economy. Indeed, half of industrial output was produced by these three sectors. Lacking modern technology and infrastructure, however, Hungarian industry was not prepared to compete in the global economy after the collapse of state socialism. During the first half of the 1990s, industrial employment dropped to one-fourth of the economically active population. Total output declined by nearly one-third, with output in the mining, metallurgy, and engineering industries decreasing by half. During the 1990s, engineering output dropped from nearly one-third to roughly one-fifth of the total.

As industry and the Hungarian economy in general underwent restructuring and modernization during the early 1990s (including the implementation of privatization and the improvement of the quality of goods and services), some industries adapted more successfully to new conditions. Among the industries that regressed least and showed the first signs of growth were the food, tobacco, and wood and paper industries. Of Hungary’s traditionally strong sectors, the chemical industry showed the greatest resilience, demonstrating growth again by the mid-1990s after experiencing a large drop in production early in the decade.

Partly through foreign investment, the machine industry (another important component of the economy) also showed signs of improvement by the mid-1990s. A number of newer industries, including the production and repair of telecommunications equipment and the automobile industry, also showed significant growth.

Between 1950 and 1990, electric power consumption in Hungary increased 10-fold, and by the 1990s more than one-third of industrial output was produced by the energy sector. In the early 21st century, three-fifths of energy consumption was derived from thermal plants burning hydrocarbons (a majority of which were imported). There are several thousand miles of oil and natural gas pipelines. Nuclear power accounted for nearly two-fifths of Hungary’s energy production, with plans for further expansion. A small percentage of power generation consisted of hydroelectricity and geothermal alternatives.

Finance
Under the Soviet-style, single-tier banking system, the National Bank both issued money and monopolized the financing of the entire Hungarian economy. Beginning in 1987, Hungary moved toward a market-oriented, two-tier system in which the National Bank remained the bank of issue but in which commercial banks were established. Foreign investment was permitted, and “consortium” (partly foreign-owned) banks were formed. In 1990 a stock exchange was established.

In the 1990s, in the postcommunist period, the reform process continued with the founding of private banks, the sale of shares in state-owned banks (though most banks remained state-owned), and the enactment of a law that guaranteed the independence of the National Bank. The currency (forint) also became entirely convertible for business. By the turn of the 21st century, with a dramatic increase in foreign investment and in the number of commercial banks, the Hungarian banking system had been almost completely privatized. In 1986 the state-operated insurance system was split into two separate companies, and by the following decade more than a dozen insurance companies were in operation.

Trade
Hungary was a charter member of the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; 1949–91). Under its aegis, trade was conducted between the countries of the Soviet bloc on the basis of specialized production, fixed prices, and barter. The Soviet Union was Hungary’s most important trading partner, but, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as Hungary became increasingly involved in the global market, less than half of the country’s trade remained with Comecon. Unprepared for the competitiveness of global market forces, Hungary accrued a large trade deficit that was covered by foreign loans. In the process the country became heavily indebted and had to use much of its export earnings for repayment.

Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s three-fourths of Hungary’s trade was with market economies. Germany became Hungary’s most important trading partner, followed by Austria, France, Italy, and the United States. Meanwhile, the proportion of Hungary’s imports from the component countries of the former Soviet Union fell from a peak of more than one-fifth in the early 1990s to less than one-tenth at the turn of the 21st century, by which point Hungarian exports to those countries had become negligible. In 1996 Hungary joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and in 2004 it became a full member of the European Union (EU).

In the early 21st century, machinery and transport equipment were both Hungary’s leading import (comprising three-fifths of the total imports) and its leading export (comprising one-half of all exports). In particular, the country’s principal trade goods were telecommunications equipment, electrical machinery, power-generating machinery, road vehicles, and office machines and computers.

Services
Throughout the last decade of the 20th century, the service sector’s portion of Hungary’s GDP rose at an annual average rate of about 0.5 percent. By the early 2000s, services accounted for almost two-thirds of GDP and of the workforce. Tourism played a big role in this development as Hungary became an increasingly popular destination for travelers, especially those from Austria, Croatia, Germany, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, most of whom arrived by car. There is also significant tourism via low-cost air carriers from western Europe, as well as from the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Labour and taxation
The Soviet-style Central Council of Hungarian Trade Unions was reorganized in 1988 as the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions. It remains the largest trade union in Hungary, with some 40 organizations under its umbrella at the start of the 21st century. It is joined by the Association of Hungarian Free Trade Unions, Democratic Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Forum for the Cooperation of Trade Unions, and Autonomous Trade Union Confederation.

Transportation and telecommunications
Railways have long been the centre of Hungary’s transportation system. By World War I the country had a modern network that was among the densest in Europe, and it continued to expand regularly until the late 1970s, with electrification beginning in the previous decade. When industrial production declined during the transition to a market economy, rail transport of goods dropped sharply, accompanied by significant cutbacks in government subsidies that contributed to the deterioration of the railway infrastructure. By the end of the 20th century, however, the EU had begun funding rail network improvements, as well as roadway projects.

In the postcommunist era, road haulage has made up an increasing percentage of the overall transport of goods. Buses were once the main form of travel for passenger transportation, but the number of privately owned automobiles grew rapidly after the early 1980s. This growth skyrocketed following the end of the communist regime. Between 1989 and 1996, an additional 1.5 million cars were added to Hungarian roads, the majority of them Western-made. During this same period, the portion of Eastern-made cars declined rapidly.

Road construction and upgrading increased significantly in the early 21st century, with the building of expressways (motorways) radiating out from Budapest toward Vienna, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Ukraine.

The Danube River, the country’s only important transportation waterway, was historically used for international shipping, via the free port of Csepel. However, as a result of the destruction of bridges in the former Yugoslavia during the intervention by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, much of the shipping came to a sudden halt. The Hungarian merchant fleet nearly vanished, reduced from about 200 vessels in 1994 to only 1 in 1999.

International air travel passes through airports at Budapest (opened in 1986 and expanded in 1999) and Siófox (opened in 1989). Regional passenger air traffic services Budapest, Nyíregyháza, Debrecen, Szeged, Pécs, Szombathely, and Győr. Malév Hungarian Airlines, the national carrier, was founded in 1946.

At the start of the 21st century, more than half the population of Hungary were cellular telephone users. Televisions and radios were plentiful, and use of personal computers and the Internet was growing.

Government and society
Overview
The modern political system in Hungary contained elements of autocracy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the period between 1867 and 1948 it had a functioning parliament with a multiparty system and a relatively independent judiciary. After the communist takeover in 1948, a Soviet-style political system was introduced, with a leading role for the Communist Party, to which the legislative and executive branches of the government and the legal system were subordinated. In that year, all rival political parties were abolished, and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party and thus form the Hungarian Workers’ Party. After the Revolution of 1956 it was reorganized as the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which survived until the fall of communism in 1989.

Constitutional framework
In 1989 dramatic political reforms accompanied the economic transformation taking place. After giving up its institutionalized leading role, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party abolished itself (with the exception of a small splinter group that continues under its old name) and reshaped itself into the Hungarian Socialist Party. In October 1989 a radical revision of the 1949 constitution, which included some 100 changes, introduced a multiparty parliamentary system of representative democracy, with free elections. The legislative and executive branches of the government were separated, and an independent judicial system was created. The revision established a Constitutional Court, elected by Parliament, which reviews the constitutionality of legislation and may annul laws. It also provides for an ombudsman for the protection of constitutional civil rights and ombudsmens’ groups for the protection of national and ethnic minority rights.

Supreme legislative power is granted to the unicameral National Assembly, which elects the president of the republic, the Council of Ministers, the president of the Supreme Court, and the chief prosecutor. The main organ of state administration is the Council of Ministers, which is headed by the prime minister. The president, who may serve two five-year terms, is commander in chief of the armed forces but otherwise has limited authority. The right of the people to propose referendums is guaranteed.

Local government
Hungary is divided administratively into 19 megyék (counties) and into cities, towns, and villages. Budapest has a special status as the capital city (főváros), headed by a lord mayor (főpolgármester) and divided into 22 districts, each headed by its own mayor (polgármester). Local representative governments are responsible for protection of the environment, local public transport and utilities, public security, and various economic, social, and cultural activities. Public administration offices, whose heads are appointed by the minister of the interior, supervise the legality of the operations of local governments.

Justice
Justice is administered by the Supreme Court, which provides conceptual guidance for the judicial activity of the Court of the Capital City and the county courts and for the local courts. A chief prosecutor is responsible for protecting the rights of citizens and prosecuting acts violating constitutional order and endangering security. The constitutionality of the laws is overseen by the new Constitutional Court, which began operation in 1990. A constitutional amendment in 1997 called for the addition of regional appellate courts, which came into force in the early 21st century.

Political process
Parliamentary elections based on universal suffrage for citizens age 18 and over are held every four years. Under the mixed system of direct and proportional representation, candidates may be elected as part of national and regional party lists or in an individual constituency. In the latter case, candidates must gain an absolute majority in the first round of the elections or runoff elections must be held. Candidates on territorial lists cannot be elected if their party fails to receive at least 5 percent of the national aggregate of votes for the territorial lists.

About 200 political parties were established following the revision of the constitution in 1989, but only six of them became long-term participants in the country’s new political life after the first free elections (1990): the Hungarian Democratic Forum, Alliance of Free Democrats, Independent Smallholders’ Party, Christian Democratic People’s Party, Federation of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége; Fidesz), and Hungarian Socialist Party—the latter being the party of reformed ex-communists. The same six parties were returned to Parliament in 1994, and for the following decade most of them remained represented in the legislature. The hard-core communists reemerged in 1992 as the Workers’ Party, while the right-wing Hungarian Justice and Life Party was created in 1993, when it split from the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Fidesz appended Hungarian Civic Party (later changed to Hungarian Civic Alliance) to its name, and between 1998 and 2002 it became the dominant party and formed the government. The Christian Democrats organized the Centre Party alliance in 2002 but failed to make it into the Parliament.

Security
The Hungarian armed forces consist of ground forces, air and air-defense forces, a small navy that patrols the Danube, the border guard, and police. Military service was compulsory for males over the age of 18 until 2004, when Hungary established a voluntary force. (The term of duty varies according to the branch of service but is typically less than one year.) The armed forces are not permitted to cross the state frontiers without the prior consent of Parliament. In the decade between 1989 and 1999, the armed forces declined from 155,000 members to just under 60,000, but, at the same time, they also underwent a process of modernization to prepare Hungary to join the Western military alliance NATO. Membership was finally achieved in March 1999, eight years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, of which Hungary was a member.

Health and welfare
Following World War II, health care improved dramatically under state socialism, with significant increases in the number of physicians and hospital beds in Hungary. By the 1970s, free health care was guaranteed to every citizen. Higher-quality private health care, permitted but limited before the transition period, grew in importance from the early 1990s.

A broad range of social services was provided by the communist government, including child support, extensive maternity leave, and an old-age pension system for which men became eligible at age 60 and women at age 55. This costly welfare system was a heavy burden on the country’s finances. At the end of the communist era, Hungary ranked 20th among European countries in terms of per capita GDP, but it was 12th in social spending. Social insurance expenditure, which constituted 4 percent of GDP in 1950, had risen to one-fifth of the GDP by 1990. The Hungarian system had become one of the most expensive in the world, yet there was considerable resistance to efforts to scale it back.

When health insurance was reformed in 1992, it retained its all-encompassing nature and was also made mandatory. At the same time, however, this reform required both employers and employees to contribute to the system’s upkeep, as well as to pension plans. The government’s move in 2003 to privatize almost half of its health care institutions was rejected in the following year by popular referendum. The private financing of health care slowly increased with the introduction of co-payments for some prescription medications, office visits, and hospital stays.

Housing
Housing shortages were constant in Hungary for decades after World War II, despite the million housing units built by the state in urban centres from 1956 to 1985. In the immediate postwar period, Hungary maintained an average of three persons per room, a rate that eventually dropped to one per room by the mid-1990s. Moreover, by the late 1980s, electricity was available for nearly the entire population (it had been in fewer than half of Hungarian homes in 1949, when apartment houses were nationalized), and running water was available for more than three-fourths of homes. The construction of private homes, which had increased in the 1960s and ’70s, constituted more than four-fifths of all construction by the mid-1990s, as housing became part of the market economy.

In the 1990s, as the cost of home ownership and rents soared, the housing market became increasingly polarized. The lower class continued to live in shabby, prefabricated, and often deteriorated apartments, while the upper class occupied expensive apartments or villas that approximated Western standards both in their construction and in their internal outfitting. High-quality housing was bought not only by Hungary’s nouveaux riches but also by many Westerners, among them a significant number of permanent or seasonal repatriates.

Education
General considerations
Ever since the start of obligatory universal education initiated by the Law of 1868, Hungary followed the German system of education on all levels. This included four, then six, and finally eight years of elementary schooling and—for a select few, after the first four years of this basic education—eight years of rigorous gymnasium (gimnázium) studies that prepared the students for entrance to universities. These universities were also organized along the German model, with basic degrees after four or five years, followed for those in the humanities and sciences by the doctorate based on a modest dissertation. Those wishing to become a member of the professorate also had to go through the process of “habilitation” (habilitáció), which required the defense of a more significant dissertation based on primary research.

All this changed after the communist takeover of Hungary following World War II. In 1948 schools were nationalized, and the elitist German style of education was replaced by a Soviet-style mass education, consisting of eight years of general school (általános iskola) and four years of secondary education (középiskola). The latter consisted of college-preparatory high schools that approximated the upper four years of the gimnázium as well as of the more numerous and diverse vocational schools (technikumok) that prepared students for technical colleges or universities but in most instances simply led directly to mid-level jobs. This system of education survived until the 1990s, when the fall of communism resulted in a partial return to the traditional educational system. While much of the Soviet-inspired 8 + 4 system is still intact, it now competes with the 6 + 6 and the 4 + 8 systems, wherein the six- or eight-year gimnázium tries to replicate the intellectually more exclusive pre-Marxist Hungarian educational system.

During the 1990s the uniformity of the communist educational system was further shattered by the introduction of private secondary education. Nationalized religious schools were returned to churches and religious institutions, and various new private secular schools were created. Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the number of secondary schools increased from 561 to 887, even though the student-age population had declined from 1.3 million to just under 1 million.

Mass industrialization obliged women to take outside jobs, resulting in the creation of an extensive system of preschools and kindergartens. Attendance was not mandatory, but, given that in many homes both parents worked, most children attended. Up to the mid-1990s, education was free from the kindergarten through the university level and also obligatory from age 6 to 16. At that time a modest tuition was introduced at the state universities and a much steeper one at the increasing number of private schools and institutions of higher learning.

Higher education
Preparation for higher education became virtually universal by the early 1980s, and by the end of that decade about one-fifth of those between ages 18 and 24 were enrolled in one of Hungary’s numerous institutions of higher learning, many of them founded or reorganized after World War II. This growth continued even after the communist regime had ended; in 1990 there were only 70,000 full-time and 100,000 part-time college and university students, but by the first decade of the 21st century the number of full- and part-time students had risen to almost 400,000.

There was a major reorganization of Hungarian higher education in 2000. Prior to then, traditional major institutions of higher learning were Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest, Lajos Kossuth University of Debrecen, Janus Pannonius University of Pécs, Attila József University of Szeged, the Technical University of Budapest, and the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. There were also dozens of specialized schools and colleges throughout the country. In 2000 most of these specialized colleges were combined with older universities or with each other to form new “integrated universities.” The result was the birth of the renewed Universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged; the reorganized Universities of Miskolc and Veszprém; and the newly created St. Stephen University of Gödöllő, University of West Hungary of Sopron, and University of Győr. The main exception to this integration process was in the city of Budapest, where Loránd Eötvös University, Semmelweis Medical University, Technical University, and the University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration (renamed Corvinus University in 2005) remained stand-alone universities.

In the period after the fall of communism, several private and religious universities were established, including the Central European University of Budapest, founded by the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros as an English-language postgraduate institution where the students are introduced to Sir Karl Popper’s idea of an “open society.” The best-known religious institutions include Péter Pázmány Catholic University and Gáspár Karoli Reformed University. In addition, some of the specialized colleges of music, fine arts, theatre, and military arts were elevated to university status.

The postcommunist period also saw the restructuring of the university diplomas. Regular degrees remained, but the university doctorate and the Soviet-inspired “candidate” (kandidátus)—a research degree offered by the Academy of Sciences—were abolished and replaced by an American-style doctorate. At the same time, the “habilitation” was reintroduced as a prerequisite for university professorships. The science doctorate (tudományok doktora), offered by the Academy of Sciences since 1950 and known as the “great doctorate” (nagydoktorátus), remained in force. But, whereas previously it was awarded on the basis of a comprehensive dissertation, it is now given in recognition of major life accomplishments by a very select group of scholars and scientists.


 

Cultural life
Cultural milieu
The cultural milieu of Hungary is a result of the diverse mix of genuine Hungarian peasant culture and the cosmopolitan culture of an influential German and Jewish urban population. Both the coffeehouse (as meeting place for intellectuals) and the music of the Roma (Gypsies) also have had an impact. Cultural life traditionally has been highly political since national culture became the sine qua non of belated nation building from the early 19th century. Theatre, opera, and literature in particular played crucial roles in developing national consciousness. Poets and writers, especially in crisis situations, became national heroes and prophets. Governments also attempted to influence cultural life through subsidy and regulation. During the state socialist era, culture was strictly controlled; party interference was influenced by ideological principles, and mass culture was promoted.

Through much of the 20th century, Hungarian cultural life was characterized by a dichotomy between rural and urban culture and subsequently between “populist” and “urbanist” culture—even though both of the latter were represented by urban-based intellectuals. These intellectuals were divided by their social origins (village versus city) and also by their disagreements about the type of culture that can best serve as the fountainhead of modern Hungarian culture. The populists were suspicious of the urbanists, many of whom were of non-Hungarian origins (mostly German and Jewish), and regarded the village as the depository of true Hungarian culture. The urbanists, on the other hand, viewed the populists as “country bumpkins” with little appreciation of real culture and looked to western European cultural centres as sources for their own version of modern Hungarian culture.

Daily life and social customs
Genuine traditional Hungarian culture survived for a long period in an untouched countryside characterized by rootedness. Peasant dress, food, and entertainment, including folk songs and folk dances—the rituals of weddings and Easter and Christmas holidays—continued until the mid-20th century. The drastic (and in the countryside brutal) modernization of the second half of the 20th century nearly destroyed these customs. They were preserved, however, as folk art and tourist entertainment.

Everyday life changed dramatically, as did the family structure. Families became smaller, and ties with extended families diminished. The culture also became less traditional. Clothing styles began to follow the international pattern, and traditional peasant dress was replaced by blue jeans. Folk songs are still occasionally heard, but in daily life they have been replaced by rock and pop music. Urban culture, especially in the capital city, is highly cosmopolitan and encompasses the tradition of coffeehouse culture. Watching television is a popular pastime, and Hungarians average nearly four hours of TV viewing per day.

Hungary’s most traditional cultural element is its cuisine. Hungarian food is very rich, and red meat is frequently used as an ingredient. Goulash (gulyás), bean soup with smoked meat, and beef stew are national dishes. The most distinctive element of Hungarian cuisine is paprika, a spice made from the pods of chili peppers (Capsicum annuum). Paprika is not native to Hungary—having been imported either from Spain, India by way of the Turks, or the Americas—but it is a fixture on most dining tables in Hungary and an important export. Among Hungary’s spicy dishes are halászlé, a fish soup, and lecsó, made with hot paprika, tomato, and sausage. Homemade spirits, including various fruit brandies (pálinka), are popular. Before World War II, Hungary was a wine-drinking country, but beer has become increasingly prevalent. Although Hungarians were not quick to accept foreign cuisines, they appeared in Budapest in the 1990s, a sign both of the growing influence of the outside world and of the presence of increasing numbers of foreigners who have settled in Hungary.

In addition to their observance of the two main religious holidays—Christmas, celebrated as a traditional family festivity, and Easter, characterized by village merrymaking—Hungarians celebrate several national holidays, including March 15 (Revolution of 1848) and August 20 (St. Stephen’s Day). After the communist takeover, these traditional national holidays were replaced by April 4 (Liberation Day), May 1 (May Day), and the transformed August 20 (Constitution Day). After 1990 these communist-inspired holidays were replaced once more by the original national holidays, augmented by October 23, which commemorates the Revolution of 1956. All of these holidays are occasions both for solemn remembrance and for popular festivities, including folk dancing, choral singing, and the display of traditional folk arts. The Hungarian national anthem is based on the 1823 poem Hymnusz (Anthem) by Ferenc Kölcsey; it was set to music by Ferenc Erkel and officially adopted in 1844.

The arts
Traditional folk arts either have disappeared or have become mostly commercialized, and political attempts in the 1930s, ’50s, and ’70s to preserve them basically failed. National high culture emerged at the turn of the 19th century, with literature taking a central role.

The first Hungarian-language newspaper, Magyar Hírmondó (“Hungarian Courier”), appeared in 1780, followed by Magyar Merkurius (“Hungarian Mercury”) in 1788, Bétsi Magyar Merkurius (“Viennese Hungarian Mercury”) in 1793, and Hazai Tudósítások (“National Informer”) in 1806. (The first non-Hungarian-language newspaper published in the country may have been the Mercurius Hungaricus [1705–10]. It was created to provide readers outside Hungary with news of the uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi II against the Habsburg rulers.)

Ferenc Kazinczy, an advocate of Enlightenment ideas, founded a movement of language reform and promoted literature through his high standard of literary criticism. In his view, literature was a nation-sustaining or even nation-creating force. This newly born literary language was cultivated by most of the contemporary authors, including Mihály Csokonai Vitéz in his rococo poetry and the brothers Károly Kisfaludy and Sándor Kisfaludy in their early Romantic poetry and plays. Modern Hungarian drama was born in the middle of the 19th century, with József Katona’s tragedy Bánk bán (1820) and Imre Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (1861; The Tragedy of Man). Among other important 19th- and early-20th-century literary and cultural figures were the poets Mihály Vörösmarty, Sándor Petőfi, János Arany, and Endre Ady; the novelists József Eötvös, Mór Jókai, Kálmán Mikszáth, and Gyula Krúdy; the historians Mihály Horváth, Sándor Szilágyi, and Henrik Marczali; and the sociologist Oszkár Jászi.

During the interwar years, the traditions of these literary pioneers were continued by such poets and novelists as Zsigmond Móricz, Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi, Lajos Kassák, Frigyes Karinthy, János Kodolányi, Gyula Juhász, Dezső Szabó, Attila József, and Miklós Radnóti and such historians and literary historians as Sándor Domanovszky, Gyula Szekfű, Bálint Hóman, János Horváth, and Antal Szerb. The 1930s were witness to the emergence of the populist-urbanist controversy and the publication of a series of major sociographies about the realities of Hungarian peasant life. They were written by authors such as Gyula Illyés, Géza Féja, Ferenc Erdei, Péter Veres, József Erdélyi, Imre Kovács, and a number of others, who hailed from the countryside and sympathized with the plight of Hungary’s rural underclass.

Following World War II, the nationalist and populist tendencies of Hungarian literature and culture were expurgated and replaced by politically inspired manifestations of Socialist Realism. And this applied equally to literature as to writings in the social sciences such as history. The best of the poets, writers, historians, and social philosophers were silenced, and the rest were forced to toe the party line. In the postwar decades the literary contributions of such urbanists as Tibor Déry, Sándor Petőfi, István Vas, and István Örkény and such populists or near-populists as Gyula Illyés, László Németh, and László Nagy—some of whom had begun their careers already during the interwar years—were particularly significant, as was the work of the social philosopher István Bibó. The most notable among the writers who emerged after 1956 were András Sütő, Sándor Kányádi, György Konrád, Péter Nádas, Péter Esterházy, and Imre Kertész (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002). The first two of these were Transylvanians who wrote great literature based on traditional literary models, while the latter four were Budapest urbanites who pursued the diverse paths of avant-garde literature.

Most of the important achievements in Hungarian visual arts and music emerged about the turn of the 20th century. The avant-garde painters Tivadar Csontváry-Kosztka and László Moholy-Nagy elevated Hungarian painting from traditional Romanticism and French-inspired Impressionism to greater international significance through pathbreaking stylistic innovations. Hungarian music achieved worldwide renown with the composer Béla Bartók, an exponent of modern Hungarian music that was rooted in archaic folk traditions. Bartók was a central figure of early 20th-century culture who influenced future generations of composers both at home and abroad. Bartók’s activities and compositions were paralleled by those of Zoltán Kodály and Ernő Dohnányi. Kodály’s contributions went beyond the composition of music to the restructuring of Hungarian music education. His system of music education, the “Kodály method,” is now taught throughout the world. The activities of these serious composers were paralleled by the work of such beloved composers of light music and operettas as Jenő Huszka, Pongrác Kacsóh, Franz (Ferenc) Lehár, and Emeric (Imre) Kálmán.

In addition to composing, many Hungarian musicians have gained international renown as performers. These include the conductors Fritz Reiner, George Szell (György Széll), Eugene (Jenő) Ormándy, Antal Doráti, and Sir Georg Solti, as well as the pianists Franz (Ferenc) Liszt, Annie Fischer, Zoltán Kocsis, and András Schiff.

Since the 1960s, Hungarian motion pictures have attracted significant international interest. In particular, the parabolic films of Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó helped establish the reputation of Hungarian cinema. Nevertheless, most of the films shown in theatres in Hungary today are of American origin.

Cultural institutions
Following World War II, high culture that previously had been confined to the upper classes was promoted among the masses. A highly subsidized publishing industry fostered reading: the number of books published increased 10-fold between 1938 and 1988. Reading became a regular habit for about one-third of the population, and a huge network of more than 15,000 public libraries was established. The main national collections are the National Széchényi Library, the Ervin Szabó Library, the libraries of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Parliament, and the Central Library of Loránd Eötvös University (all in Budapest), plus the libraries of the universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged.

Among the most notable of the thousands of museums and cultural centres are the Hungarian National Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Applied Arts (all in Budapest), plus the Christian Museum in Esztergom, the Déri Museum of Debrecen, the Janus Pannonius Museum of Pécs, the Ferenc Móra Museum of Szeged, and the collection of the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma. Government subsidizing of culture virtually ended with the introduction of a market system in the 1990s. The capital city is also regarded for its architectural legacy from various periods, which led to its being designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Teaching and scholarship are both emphasized in Hungary’s institutions of higher learning, although, following the Soviet model, scholarly research was de-emphasized in the decades after World War II. During those years, much of the research and the resulting publications moved from the colleges and universities to the several dozen research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (established in 1825), as well as to the institutes of various ministries. The academy was at the apex of Hungarian scientific and scholarly life for over four decades following its reorganization in 1949. Beginning in the early 1990s, however, it fell under persistent attack from the new political leadership, which hoped to cleanse it of its allegedly Marxist scientists and scholars, and funding and staffing dropped precipitously. This decline in numbers and funding continued even under the Socialist-Liberal regimes before and after the turn of the century.

Hungary has an international reputation for scholarship, with one of the world’s highest per capita rates of Nobel laureates. Because of a lack of funding, however, most of these prizewinners have worked in Germany or the United States. Outstanding Hungarian-born scientists include Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilárd, Edward Teller, Zoltán Bay, John G. Kemény, and Nobelists Eugene Wigner and Albert Szent-Györgyi. Other Nobel laureates are George de Hevesy, Georg von Békésy, John C. Harsányi, John C. Polányi, and George Oláh.

Some of the top Hungarian social scientists include the social philosophers Karl Mannheim and Michael Polányi, the economist Karl Polányi, and the philosopher and literary critic György Lukács. Hungarian-born mathematicians of international renown include John von Neumann, George Pólya, Gábor Szegő, Pál Turán, and Paul Erdös. Hungarian scholars also have excelled in the disciplines of linguistics, historiography, and literary history.

Sports and recreation
Hungary’s most popular vacation destinations include Lake Balaton and Lake Velence in Transdanubia, the Danube Bend, and the arty Szentendre Island above Budapest, as well as the Pilis, Mátra, and Bükk mountains in the north of Hungary. Lake Balaton attracts tourists from all over central and eastern Europe. A major attraction for the inhabitants of Budapest is Margit (Margaret) Island, an urban oasis of gardens and swimming pools on the Danube River.

Hungary has a tradition of success in international sporting competition. It has won a number of world championships and Olympic medals, even before the overpoliticization of sports in Soviet-bloc countries. Football (soccer) is especially popular, and Hungarian athletes also have enjoyed success in fencing, swimming, table tennis, track and field (athletics), rowing, and weightlifting. More recently, tennis and golf have gained in popularity, especially among the upper middle class.

Media and publishing
Under communist rule, the Hungarian press—about 30 daily newspapers and 1,500 periodicals—was strictly controlled, yet after the 1960s it became the least restricted within the Soviet bloc. In 1988 press censorship was relaxed and then within the next two years completely eliminated. In the first half of the 1990s, the number of newspapers increased, but their overall circulation declined. As an example, the print run of the country’s most popular daily, the Népszabadság (“People’s Freedom”), declined from 700,000 to about 200,000 at the turn of the 21st century. There was a similar decline in the leading liberal paper, Magyar Nemzet (“Hungarian Nation”). The leading weeklies include the Szabad Föld (“Free Earth”), Magyar Nők Lapja (“Hungarian Women’s Journal”), and Képes Úság (“Illustrated News”).

Similar developments took place in book publishing. The change of regime resulted in the birth of several hundred private publishers, but the ending of state subsidies undermined the health of most of the established ones. In the immediate postcommunist period, the number of published books increased by about one-sixth, but the number of copies per book declined by more than two-fifths. Similarly, about half of the public libraries located in smaller settlements were closed down by 1995, and this was accompanied by the reduction of the size of the regular reading public by about one-fourth. Some critics complained that the flood of new books had mass-market appeal but lacked literary or scholarly quality.

After World War II, radio ownership and listening became common. Television appeared only in the late 1950s, but it soon spread throughout the country. By the early 1980s, almost every household had a television. During the communist period there were only two radio stations and two state-run TV channels. In the decade following, however, the number of radio and TV stations—including cable and satellite TV—increased quickly and significantly. There was a precipitous decline in visits to movie houses and theatres. This was accompanied by the rapid spread of programming on recordable media (videotapes, DVDs, CDs), personal computers, and Internet connectivity. Thus, by the 21st century, electronic media occupied a central place in the leisure activities of Hungarians.

George Barany
Ivan T. Berend
Steven Béla Várdy

History

Origins of the Magyars
It is generally believed that Hungary came into existence when the Magyars, a Finno-Ugric people, began occupying the middle basin of the Danube River in the late 9th century. According to the “double conquest” theory of archaeologist Gyula László, however, Hungary’s creation can be dated to 670, with the arrival of an earlier wave of conquerors, the Late Avars, whom László classified as the Early Magyars. In either case, in antiquity parts of Hungary’s territory had formed the ancient Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dacia. When Rome lost control of Pannonia at the end of the 4th century (Christian tombs from this period in what is now Pécs were designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2000), it was occupied first by Germanic tribes, then by Slavs. The subsequent history of Dacia is unrecorded. The central plains had formed the bases for nomadic immigrant peoples from the steppes north of the Black Sea—Huns, Bulgars, Avars—some of whom extended their domination farther afield. The Avars, who dominated the basin in the 6th through 8th centuries, were crushed about 800 by Charlemagne. According to the double conquest theory, many of the Late Avars/Early Magyars survived the 9th century to merge with the Magyars who were arriving in the area under the leadership of Árpád.

Charlemagne’s successors organized the western half of the area in a chain of Slavic vassal “dukedoms.” One of these, Croatia, which extended as far north as the Sava River, made itself fully independent in 869. Another, Moravia, extended as far east as the Gran, or Garam (Hron), River and openly defied its Carolingian overlord. (Later research has suggested that this 9th-century Moravia may have been located on the southern Morava River in present-day northern Serbia.) The Byzantine Empire and Bulgaria exercised loose authority over the south and east of the Carpathian Basin.

The kingdom to 1526

The Árpáds
In 892 the Carolingian emperor, Arnulf, attempting to assert his authority over the Moravian duke Svatopluk, called in the help of the Magyars, whose early homes had been on the upper waters of the Volga and Kama rivers. They were driven, at an uncertain date and by unrecorded causes, southward onto the steppes, where they adopted the life of peripatetic herders. In the 9th century they were based on the lower Don, ranging over the steppes to the west of that river. They then comprised a federation of hordes, or tribes, each under a hereditary chieftain and each composed of a varying number of clans, the members of which shared a real or imagined blood kinship. All clan members were free, but the community included slaves taken in battle or in raids. There were seven Magyar tribes, but other elements were part of the federation, including three tribes of Turkic Khazars (the Kavars). Either because of this fact or perhaps because of a memory of earlier conditions, this federation was known to its neighbours as the On-Ogur (literally “Ten Arrows” or “Ten Tribes”). From the Slavic pronunciation of this term, the name Hungarian is derived, with the initial H added because they were thought by some scholars to be descendants of the Huns.

In 889, attacks by a newly arrived Turkic people called the Pechenegs had driven the Magyars and their confederates to the western extremities of the steppes, where they were living when Arnulf’s invitation arrived. The band sent to Arnulf reported back that the plains across the Carpathian Mountains would form a suitable new homeland that could be easily conquered and defended from the rear. Having elected as their chief Árpád, the leader of their most powerful tribe, the Magyars crossed the Carpathians en masse, probably in the spring of 895, and easily subjugated the peoples of the sparsely inhabited central plain. Prior to the conquest, the Magyars lived under a dual kingship that included a sacred ruler with minimal powers called the kende and a de facto leader called the gyula. At the time of the conquest, Árpád occupied the latter position, and, following the death of the last kende in 904, he united the two positions into the office of a duke or prince.

The Magyars destroyed the Moravian state in 906 and in the next year occupied Pannonia, having defeated a German force sent against them. They were then firmly established in the whole centre of the basin, over which their tribes and their associates distributed themselves. Árpád took the central area west of the Danube for his own tribe, on his way to establishing a dynasty. The periphery was guarded by outposts, which were gradually pushed forward, chiefly to the north and the east.

The Christian kingdom
During the next half century, the Magyars were chiefly known in Europe for the forays they made across the continent, either as mercenaries in the service of warring princes or in search of booty for themselves—treasure or slaves for domestic use or sale. Terrifying to others, their mode of life was not always profitable. Indeed, their raiding forces suffered a number of severe reverses, culminating in a disastrous defeat at the hands of the German king Otto I in 955 at the Battle of Lechfeld, outside Augsburg (in present-day Germany). By that time the wild blood of the first invaders was thinning out, and new influences, in particular Christianity, had begun to circulate. Both the Eastern and Western churches strove to draw the peoples of east-central Europe into their orbits. The Magyars had established pacific, almost friendly relations with Bavaria. The decisive step was taken by Árpád’s great-grandson Géza, who succeeded to the hereditary office of fejedelem (duke) sometime before 972 and reestablished its authority over the tribal chiefs. In 973 he sent an embassy to the Holy Roman emperor Otto II at Quedlinburg (Germany), and in 974 he and his family were received into the Western church. In 995 his son, Stephen (István), married Gisella, a Bavarian princess.

Stephen I (reigned 997–1038) carried on his father’s work. With the help of heavily armed Bavarian knights, he crushed his rivals for the ducal office. Applying to Pope Sylvester II, Stephen received the insignia of royalty (including the still existent “Holy Crown of Hungary”) from the papacy and, according to tradition, was crowned king on Christmas Day, 1000. The event was of immeasurable importance, for not only did Hungary enter the spiritual community of the Western world but it did so without having to recognize the political suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire. This was possible because Sylvester, who extended papal protection to Hungary, held great sway with the emperor, Otto III, who had once been his pupil. Stephen then effected the conversion of his people to Christianity, establishing a network of 10 archiepiscopal and episcopal sees, which he reinforced with lavishly endowed monastic foundations.

Stephen crushed the surviving disputants of his authority—notably the Kavars—and, furthering his father’s work, organized his state on a system that was to remain for many centuries the basis of Hungary’s political and social structure. The tribes, as units, disappeared, but the fundamental social stratification was not altered. The descendants in the male line of the old conquerors and elements later equated with them remained a privileged class, answerable in judgment only to the king or his representative and entitled to appear in general assemblage. Their lands—which at this time, since the economy was mainly pastoral, were held by clans or subclans in semicommunal ownership—were inalienable, except for proved delinquency, and free of any obligation. The only duty required by the state of members of this class was that of military service on call. They were allowed to retain their slaves, although Stephen freed his own. All land not held by this class—then more than half the whole—belonged to the crown, which could indeed donate it at will. The nonservile inhabitants of these lands—e.g., descendants of the pre-Magyar population (among them the Late Avars/Early Magyars), manumitted slaves, and invited colonists—were subjects of the crown or of the local landholder.

The whole of this land was divided into counties (megyék), each under a royal official called an ispán (comes)—later főispán (supremus comes). This official represented the king’s authority, administered its unfree population, and collected the taxes that formed the national revenue. Each ispán maintained at his fortified headquarters (castrum or vár) an armed force of freemen. In Stephen’s day there were between 40 and 50 such counties.

The early kings
Once Stephen (canonized as St. Stephen in 1083) established his rule, his authority was rarely questioned. He fought few foreign wars and made his long reign a period of peaceful consolidation. But his death in 1038 was followed by many years of discord. His only son, Emeric (Imre), had predeceased him, and the nation rebelled against his designated successor, Peter (the son of Stephen’s sister and the doge of Venice), who was expelled in 1041. Peter returned in 1044 with the help of Emperor Henry III. Samuel Aba, the “national” king, who had taken Peter’s place, was murdered; however, Peter himself was killed in a pagan rebellion in 1046. He was followed on the throne by Andrew (Endre) I, of a collateral branch of the house of Árpád, who was killed in 1060 while fleeing from a battle lost to his brother, Béla I. After Béla’s death there was a further conflict between his sons, Géza and Ladislas (László), and Andrew’s son, Salamon.

Peace returned only when, after the short rule of Géza I (1074–77), the throne passed to Ladislas I, who occupied it until 1095. Even then the curse of dynastic jealousy proved to have been exorcised only temporarily. Ladislas’s successor, Coloman (Kálmán; 1095–1116), who was the elder son of Géza I, had his own brother, Álmos, and Álmos’s infant son, Béla, blinded to secure the throne for his own son Stephen II (1116–31). Béla II (1131–41), the blinded boy, whom his father’s friends had brought up in secrecy, and Béla’s eldest son, Géza II (1141–62), ruled thereafter unchallenged, but the succession of Géza’s son, Stephen III (1162–72), was disputed by two of his uncles, Ladislas II (1162–63) and Stephen IV (1163–65). Happily, the death of Stephen IV exhausted the supply of uncles, and Stephen III’s brother, Béla III (1173–96), had no domestic rivals to the throne. However, the short reign of Béla’s elder son, Emeric (1196–1204), was spent largely in disputes with his younger brother, Andrew II, who on Emeric’s death expelled his infant son, Ladislas III (who died the next year), before beginning his own long reign (1205–35).

Consolidation and expansion
These royal disputes caused Hungary much harm. Claimants to the throne often invoked foreign help, for which they paid in political degradation or loss of territory: both Peter and Salamon did homage to the Holy Roman emperor for their thrones; and Aba’s war against Peter’s protectors cost Hungary its previous territories west of the Leitha River, while the wars of the 12th century cost it areas in the south. The uncertainty delayed political consolidation, and even Christianity did not take root easily; there was a widespread pagan revolt in 1046 and another in 1061.

Yet the political unity of the country and the new faith somehow survived the earlier troubles, and both were firmly established by Ladislas I (1077–95; canonized in 1192 as St. Ladislas), one of Hungary’s greatest kings, and by Coloman, who, despite his nefarious power grab, was a competent and enlightened ruler.

Meanwhile, outside factors benefited Hungary. After Austria had grown big at the expense of the imperial authority, most of Hungary’s neighbours were states of approximately the same size and strength as itself, and the Hungarians lived with them on terms of mutual tolerance and even friendship. The steppes were quiet: the Cuman (Hungarian: Kun) people, after destroying the Pechenegs there, did not try to go farther, and, after two big raids had been successfully repelled by Ladislas I, they left Hungary in peace. This allowed Hungary to extend its effective frontiers to the Carpathian crest in the north and over Transylvania. Magyar advance guards pushed up the valleys of both areas and were reinforced in the Szepes area and in central Transylvania by imported colonies of Germans (usually called Saxons). In the meantime, colonies of Szeklers (Székely, Szekelyek), a people akin to the Magyars who had preceded them into the central plains, were settled behind Transylvania’s eastern passes. The county system was extended to both areas, although with modifications in Transylvania, where the Saxons and Szeklers constituted free communities and the whole was placed under a governor called a vajda (voievod or vaivode). In the south Ladislas I occupied (or reoccupied after an interval) the area between the Sava and Dráva rivers; Coloman assumed the crown of Croatia, which then included Bosnia and northern Dalmatia, although this remained a separate “Land of the Hungarian Crown,” over which a governor known as a ban acted as deputy for the king.

In the interior too, natural growth and continued immigration swelled the population, which by 1200 had risen to the then large figure of some two million. The rulers of this big, populous state were now important men. After Ladislas’s day, German claims to suzerainty over Hungary ceased. In the 12th century the country intervened in its neighbours’ affairs as often as they did in Hungary’s. Before becoming Hungary’s king, Béla III was an heir to the throne of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus. He married a French princess, Margaret Capet, and generated revenues roughly equal to the income of the king of France. He owned half the land of the kingdom outright and held monopolies of coinage, customs, and mining. While the income of the early kings had been mostly in kind, half of Béla’s income was cash, coming from royal monopolies and taxes paid by foreign settlers.

Social and political developments
Meanwhile, the pattern of Hungarian society had been changing. The population of the free class, or “nobles” as they were coming to be called, although frequently reinforced by new admissions to its ranks, probably hardly increased in absolute terms and certainly grew far less than the unfree population; from perhaps half the total population in 896, they had been reduced to about one-eighth by 1200. Further, as the economy became agricultural, the old clan lands dwindled until only pockets remained. Where the rest had been and in large parts of the old crown lands, which improvident donations had greatly reduced, the land was held in the form of individual estates. The owner of each of these estates was master of the unfree population on it; the nobles had, to a large extent, become a landed oligarchy. Some individual estates were very large, and their owners had come to constitute a “magnate” class, not yet institutionalized or legally differentiated from their poorer co-nobles but far above them in wealth and influence. Although slavery had practically disappeared, the non-nobles were still a “subject” class. Many of them, including the burghers of the towns (most of which were German foundations) and members of such communities as the Saxons and Szeklers, were protected by special charters and personally free, but even they stood politically outside the magic ring of the natio Hungarica—nominally the “Hungarian nation” but in practice just the Hungarian nobility.

As a result of Béla’s marriage to the sister of the French king, the Hungarian court became a centre of French knightly culture. Western dress and translations of French tales of chivalry appeared. A royal notary, known to future generations as “Anonymous,” wrote the history of the conquest of Hungary. The first known work in the Hungarian language, the Halotti beszéd (Funeral Oration), was part of the otherwise Latin-language Pray Codex written in the early 1190s. Béla also followed a Western model in introducing written documentation of government administrative authority. Moreover, monasteries served as public notaries from the end of the 12th century.

In addition to tents and wooden structures, stone buildings (mostly churches, abbeys, and palaces) appeared in the permanent settlements. The cathedral of Pécs, the Benedictine abbey of Pannonhalma (originally begun in 996; designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996), and the royal palace at Esztergom (where St. Stephen was born about 970) were the first examples of early Gothic architecture.

Throughout these developments the country had remained an absolutist patrimonial kingship. The king maintained a council of optimates (aristocrats), but his prerogatives were not restricted and his authority remained absolute. A strong king, such as Béla III, could always curb a recalcitrant magnate by simply confiscating his estate. Only the follies and extravagances of the feckless Andrew II evoked a revolt, culminating in 1222 in the issue of the Golden Bull (Bulla aurea or Aranybulla)—the Hungarian equivalent of England’s Magna Carta—to which every Hungarian king thereafter had to swear. Its purpose was twofold: to reaffirm the rights of the smaller nobles of the old and new classes of royal servants (servientes regis) against both the crown and the magnates and to defend those of the whole nation against the crown by restricting the powers of the latter in certain fields and legalizing refusal to obey its unlawful commands (the ius resistendi). Andrew had done much harm by dissipating the royal revenues through his extravagances and by issuing huge grants of land to his partisans. The royal estate gradually melted away as the ispáns and knights became the hereditary owners of the land. Leading aristocratic families—such as the Aba and Csák clans in the north, the Pók and Kán clans in the east and northeast, and the Subich and Köszegi clans in the west and southwest—became the nearly unchallenged rulers of large parts of the country.

The Mongol invasion: the last Árpád kings
Andrew’s successor, Béla IV (1235–70), began his reign with a series of measures designed to reestablish royal authority, but his work was soon interrupted by the frightful disaster of the Mongol invasion. In the spring of 1241 the Mongols quickly overran the country and, by the time they left it a year later, inflicted ghastly devastation. Only a few fortified places and the impenetrable swamps and forests escaped their ravages. The country lost about half its population, the incidence ranging from 60 percent in the Alföld (100 percent in parts of it) to 20 percent in Transdanubia; only parts of Transylvania and the northwest came off fairly lightly. Returned from Dalmatia, where he had taken refuge, Béla, whom his country not unjustly dubbed its second founder, reorganized the army, built a chain of fortresses, and called in new settlers to repopulate the country. He paid special attention to the towns. But he was forced to give some of the magnates practically a free hand on their own estates, and a few families rose to near-sovereign local status. Further, one group of immigrants, a body of Cumans who had fled into Hungary before the Mongols, proved so powerful and so turbulent that to ensure their loyalty Béla had to marry his son, Stephen V, to a Cuman princess. The king attempted to counterbalance the power of the magnates by creating his own army, partly from the Cumans. A newly created “conditional” nobility comprising ennobled soldiers and settlers who gained land for military service strengthened the ranks of the lesser nobility. The system of royal estates and judicial power was thereafter transformed in an assembly in which nobles represented their counties.

Stephen died two years after his father’s death, after which the country passed to the regency of his widow, the “Cuman woman,” whom the Hungarians detested. Her son, who grew up wild and undisciplined, was assassinated and left no legitimate heir, and claims to the throne were made through the female line of the Árpáds. A male heir, Andrew III, was found in Italy, and, although the young man’s claim to the throne was impugned, he proved a wise, capable king. With his death in 1301, however, the national dynasty became extinct.

A new Western-style feudal socioeconomic system had emerged in Hungary, but it had yet to take root. During the last third of the 13th century, Hungarian assimilation into Europe was threatened by the ongoing conflicts between various baronial factions. Moreover, Hungary was still the destination of migrating pagan tribes and the focus of barbarian attacks, and it continued to exhibit the features of a country on the borders of Christian feudal Europe.

Hungary under foreign kings
The extinction of the old native dynasty entitled the nation to choose its successor; but the principle of the blood tie was still generally regarded as determinant, and all the candidates for the throne—Wenceslas of Bohemia, Otto of Bavaria, and Charles Robert of the Angevin house of Naples—based their claims on descent from an Árpád in the female line. But all three claimants were foreigners; one of them and the father of another were actually seated on foreign thrones. From that time until its extinction, the kingship of Hungary was in fact invariably—with two exceptions, one of them disputed—held by a foreigner, nearly always by one occupying simultaneously at least one foreign throne. This could be to the advantage of Hungary when the king used the resources of those thrones in its service, but he could alternatively neglect and exploit Hungary in pursuit of his other interests and use his power to crush national freedoms and institutions. Securing the advantages of foreign rule while escaping its dangers was the abiding dilemma—seldom successfully resolved—of Hungarian history.

The Angevin kings
The problem of foreign kingship did not pose itself at first, as Charles Robert of Anjou (Charles I) had no foreign throne and grew up a true Hungarian. He was still a child when a group of Hungarian nobles crowned him in 1301; however, his claim to the throne was disputed, and the crown went first to Wenceslas of Bohemia, then to Otto of Bavaria, before Charles was recognized as king in 1308, ruling until 1342. He was a capable man who achieved peace after crushing the most rebellious of the regional lords or oligarchs (also known as “kinglets”) and winning over the rest. The international situation, with Germany distraught by the power struggle between empire and papacy, the Mongolian Tatars grown passive, and the power of Byzantium in full decay, was again favourable to the states of the “middle zone” of eastern Europe and the Balkans; it is no accident that Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and Serbia often look on the 14th century as their golden age. Because this situation favoured its neighbours as well as Hungary itself, Charles Robert’s attempts at expansion were only moderately successful. In the Balkans he made Bosnia his friend and client but lost Dalmatia to Venice and other territories to Serbia and the newly emerged voievody (province) of Walachia. But he drove Czech and Austrian marauders out of the land and on the whole preserved friendly relations with Austria, Bohemia, and Poland.

Charles’s son, Louis (Lajos) I (1342–82), the only Hungarian king on whom his country bestowed the appellation “Great,” built on his father’s foundations. Keeping peace with the West, he repaired his father’s losses in the south and surrounded his kingdom with a ring of dependencies over which Hungary presided as archiregnum (chief kingdom) in the Balkans, on the lower Danube, and in Galicia. These new dependencies included several banats (provinces governed by an appointed ban) inhabited by Slavs and the two Vlach provinces of Moldavia and Walachia. In 1370 Louis also ascended the throne of Poland, by virtue of an earlier family compact.

Both Angevin kings (dynastic name derived from Anjou) owed much to the wealth they derived from the gold mines of Transylvania and northern Hungary, some 35 to 40 percent of which went to the king, enabling him to maintain a splendid court. Spared for two generations from serious invasion or civil war, the rest of the country blossomed materially as never before. The population rose to three million, with a total of 49 royal free boroughs, more than 500 smaller towns, and some 26,000 villages. The economy was still mainly rural, but the crafts prospered, trade expanded, and the arts flourished.

The life of the court and the daily life of cities borrowed from western European societies. German settlers and burghers in the cities and the clergy became the main agents of Western culture. The Dominicans built 25 monasteries by the early 14th century and established a theological school in Buda (now part of Budapest). The Franciscans also established monasteries, as did the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and Paulines. Romanesque style dominated architecture in Hungary until the ascendancy of Gothic design in the late 13th century. Cities built impressive churches, such as the Church of Our Blessed Lady (now better known as the Matthias Church) in Buda. Further testimonies to the spread of western European culture were the palace of Visegrád, the royal castles of Zólyom and Diósgyőr, the miniatures of the Illuminated Chronicle (1360), and the St. George statue in Kolozsvár (1373), as well as the earliest codex predominantly in Hungarian (1370) and the finest example of early Hungarian poetry, Ómagyar Máriasiralom (about 1300; Old Hungarian Lament of the Virgin Mary). The first universities were established during the 14th century in Pécs and Óbuda, though they were short-lived. Yet, in spite of its advancement, Hungary remained a less-developed borderland of Europe.

The rule of the two Angevin kings was essentially despotic, although enlightened. They introduced elements of feudalism into the political and military system; each lord was responsible for maintaining his own armed contingent (banderium). The magnates were held firmly in check, and Louis reaffirmed the rights and privileges of the common nobles. Counties were developing from “royal” into “noble” institutions, each still under a royal official but administered with a wide measure of autonomy by elected representatives of the local nobility. Louis also standardized the tax obligations of the peasants at the figure of one-tenth of their produce (tithe) going to the church, another tenth (nona) going to the lord, and a house or gate tax (porta) going directly to the state.

Sigismund of Luxembourg
The benefits of Louis’s rule would have been far greater still had he not wasted much money and many lives on endeavours to secure the throne of Naples for his nephew. His foreign acquisitions served his personal glory more than they did the real interests of his country, the imposing edifice of which largely collapsed when he died. He left as heirs only two daughters. Louis had designated the elder, Maria, to succeed him on both his thrones, but the Poles refused to continue the union. They accepted the younger daughter, Hedvig (Polish: Jadwiga), as queen but married her to Jogaila (Polish: Władysław II Jagiełło) of Lithuania. The Hungarians crowned Maria, whose husband, Sigismund of Luxembourg, became her consort in 1387 and after her death eight years later ruled alone until his own death in 1437.

Under Sigismund, matters took a sharp turn for the worse, although he did much for the arts and commerce and, above all, for the towns. Also, like Andrew II, he promoted Hungarian political institutions by creating the need for them. The principle that the consent of representatives of the privileged classes, assembled in the Diet, was necessary for the grant of any subsidy or additional taxation—and even, later, for any legislation—dates from his reign, being made necessary by his extravagance and arbitrariness. His frequent and prolonged absences from the country increased the importance of the office of the palatine (comes palatinus, nádor), which goes back to the reign of Stephen I in the early 11th century. The palatine was appointed by the king with the approval of the nobility (natio Hungarica). During Sigismund’s long absences from Hungary, the palatine represented the king and also acted as intermediary between him and the people. But these were only palliatives against bitterly felt abuses. The nation hated Sigismund for the cruelty he showed at the outset of his reign to the supporters of a rival. Moreover, Hungarians resented the absenteeism of his later years, when he occupied himself chiefly with imperial and Bohemian affairs (he was elected German king in 1410/11 and Holy Roman emperor in 1433 and became titular king of Bohemia in 1419), neglecting—Hungarians felt—the numerous problems of their country. There was much discontent among the peasants, who were subjected to heavy exactions by the crown and by their masters, the unrest being aggravated by the spread of radical Hussite religious doctrines from Bohemia. Serious revolts occurred in northern Hungary and Transylvania. Above all, there was the growing danger from the Ottoman Turks, who, though they had already taken Bosnia from Louis, could not threaten Hungary proper while Serbia still stood. But in 1389 the power of Serbia was broken at the Battle of Kosovo, and the danger for Hungary became urgent. Sigismund organized a Crusade that was disastrously defeated at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Timur (Tamerlane) gave Europe a respite by his attack on the Turkish rear, but the advance was resumed in 1415. Walachia submitted in 1417; thereafter, Transylvania and southern Hungary suffered repeated raids.

János Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus
The Ottoman sultan Murad II was preparing a grand assault on Hungary when Sigismund died in 1437, leaving as his heir a daughter. She was married to Albert V of Austria, whom the country accepted as Sigismund’s successor (as Albert II), but only on condition that he not become Holy Roman emperor or reside abroad without permission of the estates. Albert set about organizing the country’s defenses but died in 1439, leaving his widow with an unborn child. To avoid an interregnum and a minority rule, perhaps with a queen, the country elected Władysław III of Poland as king. Within two years of Władysław’s death in battle against the Ottoman Turks in 1444, the estates nominally acknowledged Albert’s son, Ladislas V (called Ladislas Posthumus), as the king of Hungary. (He was crowned when only a few months old but was not really accepted as the country’s ruler until 1453.) Meanwhile, in 1446 the estates elected the great general John (János) Hunyadi as governor (1446–53) and then as captain-in-chief (1453–56) of the country. Hunyadi, who had been repelling the renewed Ottoman attacks, kept up the country’s defense under increasing difficulties, constantly thwarted by jealous magnates and harassed by the Czech condottiere Jan Jiškra (Giškra), while Frederick III (first of the house of Habsburg to become emperor) encroached on the western provinces.

Hunyadi died in 1456 after repelling the Turks in defense of Belgrade (Hungarian: Nándorfehérvár), then a Hungarian outpost. Ladislas’s maternal uncle, Ulrich II of Cilli, aware of the country’s devotion to Hunyadi, had the governor’s elder son beheaded and his younger son, Matthias Corvinus (Mátyás Hunyadi), imprisoned in Prague. Ladislas V himself died suddenly a year later. The country was tired of foreign rule and its agents, and on Jan. 24, 1458, a great concourse of nobles acclaimed Matthias king, as Matthias I. Extracted from Prague with some difficulty, he was brought to Buda and crowned amid nationwide rejoicing.

The only national king to reign over all of Hungary after the Árpáds, Matthias has been seen through something of a golden haze by historians. A true Renaissance prince, he was a fine natural soldier, a first-class administrator, an outstanding linguist, a learned astrologer, and an enlightened patron of the arts and learning. His collections of illuminated manuscripts, pictures, statues, and jewels were famous throughout Europe. Artists and scholars were welcomed at his court, which could vie in magnificence with any other on the continent. Sumptuous buildings sprang up in his capital and other centres.

Politically too, he represented the ideas of the Renaissance. He listened to his council, convoked the Diet regularly, and actually enlarged the autonomous powers of the counties. But at heart he was a despot; his real instruments of government were his secretaries, men picked by himself, usually young and often of humble origin. His rule was in the main an efficient and, on balance, a benevolent one. He simplified and improved the administration and, above all, the laws, enforcing justice with an even hand. The debit side of his rule was the increased taxation imposed by him for his administrative innovations, his collections (which cost his subjects vast sums), and, above all, the mercenary standing army, 30,000 strong (largely composed of Hussite mercenaries and known after its commander, “Black John” Haugwitz, as the Black Army), which he kept as part of the royal banderium for use against enemies, at home and abroad.

At first he had much need for such a force; although the Ottoman Turks were quiescent for a decade, there were discontented magnates, and the Czechs and the Austrians were unquiet neighbours. But, after Matthias had crushed, expelled, or bought off these enemies, had built a chain of fortresses along the southern frontier, and had even reestablished a nominal but, in practice, worthless suzerainty over Bosnia, Serbia, Wallachia (Walachia), and Moldavia, he let himself be drawn into an ever-widening circle of campaigns against Bohemia and Austria. In 1469 he made himself master of Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, with the title (borne simultaneously by George of Podebrady) of king of Bohemia, and in 1478 he forced Frederick III to cede him Lower Austria and Styria. He argued that his neighbours were untrustworthy and that he could not organize the great Crusade against the Turks without the resources of the imperial and Bohemian crowns. But his subjects were unconvinced, and in 1470 a party actually conspired to replace him with a Polish prince.

This enterprise collapsed, and Matthias entered on a complex transaction with the new emperor, Maximilian I, under which his illegitimate son John (he had no legitimate issue) was to marry Maximilian’s daughter in return for re-cession of the Austrian provinces and Maximilian’s recognition of John. But on May 6, 1490, while on his way to the meeting that should have sealed the bargain, Matthias died suddenly, and the whole enterprise collapsed.

Both Sigismund and Matthias attempted to balance baronial power by strengthening the cities, but they were only partly successful. In contrast with western Europe, urbanization remained moderate, with the development of walled cities lagging behind that of western European counterparts. The number of guilds was limited, and the structure of foreign trade reflected economic backwardness; nearly four-fifths of imports consisted of textiles and about one-eighth of metalware. Exports consisted almost entirely of cattle and wine. The most important aspect of urbanization was the rapid growth of agricultural towns (Hungarian: mezővárosok; Latin: oppidi). Instead of the approximately 50 families that made up the 20 to 30 portae (taxable units) of the typical village, these oversize peasant settlements had as many as 500 portae. Moreover, the number of these settlements increased from about 300 in the mid-15th century to about 800 in the early 16th century.

The Jagiellon kings: national decay
The magnates, who did not want another heavy-handed king, procured the accession of Vladislas II, king of Bohemia (Ulászló II in Hungarian history), precisely because of his notorious weakness: he was known as King Dobže, or Dobzse (meaning “Good” or, loosely, “OK”), from his habit of accepting with that word every paper laid before him. The emperor Maximilian contented himself with reoccupying his lost provinces and establishing a sort of paternal patronage over Hungary. This was consolidated in 1515 by an agreement under which Vladislas’s son, Louis, married Maximilian’s granddaughter Mary, while Louis’s sister, Anne, married Maximilian’s grandson Ferdinand, who was to succeed to Louis’s thrones if Louis died without an heir. The agreement was made without the consent of the Hungarian nobility and in violation of the resolution passed by the Diet in 1505 that it would never accept a foreigner as the king of Hungary. The candidate of the “national party” was János Zápolya (Szapolyai), voievod of Transylvania.

Meanwhile, the magnates permitted the Black Army to disintegrate (without replacing it) and allowed the country’s fortresses to fall into disrepair. Because they had not been paid, some of the Black Army’s fragments resorted to banditry and then had to be dispersed by one of Matthias’s generals, Pál Kinizsi, in 1494. Vladislas was the magnates’ helpless prisoner; he could make no decision without their consent, and his revenues were looted so ruthlessly that he was reduced to selling Matthias’s art and book collections. Nearly all of Matthias’s reforms were canceled, and the peasants were oppressed grievously. In 1514 there was a peasant uprising that, unlike those that had preceded it, spread nationwide. It was sparked by the call for a Crusade against the Ottomans by the papal legate of eastern Europe, Archbishop Tamás Bakócz. Some 20,000 men gathered near Buda in the spring and, led by a Szekler nobleman, György Dózsa, moved on the southern border. The rebellious, antilandlord sentiment of these “Crusaders” became apparent during their march across the Great Alföld, and Bakócz canceled the campaign. The peasant leaders not only refused to obey this order when it reached them in late May but also confronted and defeated the nobles’ army and went on a two-month rampage that came to be known as the Dózsa Rebellion. They burned nobles’ manor houses and captured several major towns and cities. By mid-July, however, the peasants had been defeated and Dózsa captured, tortured, and executed. The peasants were condemned to perpetual servitude, and their right to free migration was abolished. The Tripartitum legal code (1514), by jurist István Werbőczi, reinforced the power of the aristocracy against both the throne and the peasantry. Although this law was not immediately enforced, it served as the basis for the preservation of serfdom for centuries to come.

When Vladislas died in 1516, his nine-year-old son was proclaimed king as Louis II. The defenses of the kingdom worsened, and in 1521 the new Ottoman sultan, Süleyman I (the Magnificent), demanded tribute from Louis. When the demand was rejected, Süleyman took Belgrade. Suddenly alive to the Turkish danger, the magnates voted to reestablish a standing army, but nothing was done to raise it, because each rival faction tried to put the burden of its upkeep on the others. Appeals for help from abroad met with little response. In 1526 the sultan advanced into Hungary. A general call to arms was proclaimed, but the most important forces—those from Transylvania and Croatia—were late in obeying it. Louis, with a force of 24,000 to 26,000 men, moved down the Danube in August and attacked the Turks at the Battle of Mohács. The Hungarian army, heavily outnumbered, was almost annihilated. Louis himself drowned during his flight. Unable to believe that the pitiful array that had met him was Hungary’s national army, the sultan advanced with extreme caution. He occupied Buda on September 10 but returned across the Danube by the end of October, taking with him more than 100,000 captives.

The period of partition
Since the sultan had not meant to remain in Hungary, the disaster of Mohács might have been overcome had the king not perished or had there emerged a strong national leader who could have marshaled the country’s resources. As it was, however, there were two claimants to Hungary’s throne: John (János Zápolya), who had served as voievod of Transylvania, and Ferdinand of Habsburg (later Holy Roman emperor as Ferdinand I). Each had his supporters, and both of them were elected king by rival factions of the Hungarian nobility. This precipitated a civil war, which led to more chaos and weakened the country further. After each of the kings failed to drive out his rival, John appealed for help from Süleyman, who installed him in Buda but at the expense of making him his vassal. This act limited Ferdinand’s rule to the western third of the country.

By a secret agreement—the Treaty of Nagyvárad, mediated in 1538 by John’s adviser, György Martinuzzi (“Friar George”)—Ferdinand was to succeed John upon his death. The agreement was upset when, just before John died, his wife bore a son whom the national party recognized as king. The sultan then decided to act for himself. He recognized the infant as king, but only as his own vassal in Hungary’s eastern half, including Transylvania. In 1541 Süleyman occupied Buda and incorporated a great wedge of central and southern Hungary into his own dominions. Thus began Hungary’s trisection, which lasted for more than a century and a half. The country’s western and northern fringes developed into “Royal Hungary” under Habsburg rule; its eastern half grew into the principality of Transylvania under elected Hungarian princes, who were more or less vassals of the Ottoman sultan, while the central wedge, including the former royal capital of Buda, became “Turkish Hungary” and was integrated into the administrative system of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1547 Ferdinand concluded a truce with Süleyman and agreed to pay an annual tribute of 30,000 golden coins in return for recognition of his de facto rule over the territory then held by him. After this the sultan formally declared Transylvania an autonomous principality under his own suzerainty. In 1568 Ferdinand’s successor, Maximilian II, was forced to recognize this arrangement. He continued to pay the tribute and accepted the reduction of Royal Hungary to the western fringe of the country, the northwestern mountains, and Croatia. From that time on, the ruling princes of Transylvania followed a policy of semi-independence. They paid tribute to the sultan and occasionally even to the Habsburgs, but they also introduced mercantilist economic policies that generated prosperity. The most successful of these princes were István Báthory (later king of Poland as Stefan Batory) and Gábor Bethlen.

The “age of trisection” was the bleakest in all Hungarian history. Fighting and slave raiding, which went on even in times of nominal peace, reduced the whole south of the country to a wasteland occupied by only a few seminomadic Vlach herdsmen; villages disappeared and fields reverted to swamp and forest. Behind the new frontier, the population was partially preserved to supply the garrisons. The old landholders were replaced by Turkish officials and soldiers whose fiefs, under the timar system, were neither heritable nor even always long-term and who exploited the wretched cultivators to the maximum. Conditions were relatively tolerable only in those districts (haslar) managed directly by the Ottoman government. Most of these districts lay along the two banks of the Tisza River, and people flocked into the great mezővárosok, or oppidi (towns), that are still a feature of the area. There they enjoyed a measure of protection, but the countryside between these towns was abandoned except for scattered huts (tanyák) in which the men spent summers scratching a precarious living from the soil.

The Turks left Transylvania relatively unmolested. Martinuzzi devised a constitution based on earlier institutions, consisting, under the prince, of representatives of the three “historic nations”: the Hungarians, the Saxons, and the Hungarian-speaking Szeklers. Transylvania was also spared internecine religious strife when, at the Diet of Torda in 1568, the Roman Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian churches agreed to coexist on a basis of equal freedom and mutual toleration. The Greek Orthodox faith of the Vlachs (later called Romanians), who constituted the rest of the population, was not made part of this agreement, and it remained only a “tolerated religion.” Nor were the Vlachs recognized as one of the “historic nations” of Transylvania.

Royal Hungary and the rise of Transylvania
In the first years after his accession, Ferdinand still hoped to bring the whole kingdom under his rule. He respected its constitution and its institutions and convoked the Diet regularly. But his hopes faded, and, after his succession to the imperial crown in 1558, Royal Hungary became no more than a small outlying annex of his mighty dominions. As it was also an exposed one, without the resources to defend itself, Ferdinand and his successor, Maximilian II, organized a chain of fortresses that stood opposite a similar chain of fortifications organized by Ottomans on their side of the frontier. Many of the larger Habsburg fortresses were garrisoned mostly by German and other Western mercenaries and the smaller ones by Hungarian troops who, not being paid regularly, usually lived off the land. This chain of Habsburg fortresses was complemented by a defensive deployment, the Military Frontier, inhabited by Serb and Vlach refugees from the Balkans and administered from Vienna. The Hungarians complained that they were being ruled and exploited as a subject people by foreigners, while Vienna looked on them as truculent rebels. Matters grew worse when Maximilian was succeeded by the mentally unbalanced Rudolf II, whose advisers hated Hungary and its traditions; and a religious conflict supervened on the constitutional dispute, for in the preceding half century the Reformation had swept over Hungary.

Religious antagonism played an important part when war between the Holy Roman Empire and the Turks broke out again in 1591. In the Fifteen Years’ War, imperial troops entered Transylvania, and their commander, George Basta, behaved there (and in northern Hungary) with such insane cruelty toward the Hungarian Protestants that a Transylvanian general, István Bocskay, formerly a Habsburg supporter, revolted. His army of wild freebooters (hajdúk) drove out Basta, and in June 1606 Bocskay settled with Rudolf the Peace of Vienna, which left him prince of an enlarged Transylvania and also guaranteed the rights of the Protestants of Royal Hungary. Bocskay then mediated the Peace of Zsitvatorok (November 1606) between the emperor and the sultan, which kept the territorial status quo but relieved the emperor of his tribute to the sultan.

These two treaties ushered in a new era. The balance of power began to shift from the Ottomans toward the Habsburgs. The princes of Transylvania took advantage of this, and the principality entered a half century of prosperity. A scramble for power followed Bocskay’s death (1606), but in 1613 the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman government) imposed the election of Gábor Bethlen (1613–29), who proved the most competent of all the Hungarian princes of Transylvania. At home Bethlen’s rule was thoroughly despotic; through his monopoly of foreign trade and his development of the principality’s internal resources, he almost doubled his revenues, devoting the proceeds partly to the upkeep of a sumptuous court and partly to the maintenance of a standing army. Keeping peace with the Porte, he often intervened against the emperor in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) and safeguarded the rights of the Protestants in Royal Hungary. Under the Treaty of Nikolsburg (Dec. 31, 1621), Bethlen gave up the royal title along with the Holy Crown of Hungary. (He had been elected king by the Hungarian estates in the lands under his control in 1620 but declined to accept the crown, even though the Porte approved his election. Being a Protestant, he did not wish to antagonize the Catholic Hungarian magnates.) At the same time, Bethlen retained the title of prince of Transylvania and Hungary. He also gained a big extension of the principality and a duchy in Silesia, besides further guarantees for the Protestants of Royal Hungary.

When Bethlen died suddenly in 1629, his subjects abolished most of his internal reforms, but his successor, György Rákóczi I, maintained the international position of Transylvania, which figured as a sovereign state in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years’ War. Transylvanian support for the Protestants in Royal Hungary, as well as the divisions prevailing among their own members, prevented the Habsburgs from enforcing the Counter-Reformation in Hungary as early and as fully as they did in Austria and Bohemia. Nevertheless, the genius of the cardinal-primate Péter Pázmány won over for Roman Catholicism the majority of the local magnates, who came to form a party attached to the Habsburg cause, which was the more influential because they now formed a separate “table” of the Diet. The nation was thus divided not only between Transylvania and Royal Hungary but also between the Roman Catholic magnates and their subjects on the one hand and the largely Protestant landowning lower nobility on the other. In religious matters, the Hungarian Catholic magnates and nobles were no more tolerant toward their Protestant fellow countrymen than were the emperor’s own German and Czech advisers, although they were not willing to acquiesce in the political centralization championed by the latter.

War and liberation
The Turkish occupation of central Hungary remained a volatile issue, for every Hungarian resented the Habsburgs’ policy of leaving the Turks unmolested while pursuing ambitious objectives in the west. This powder keg erupted in 1657 when Prince György Rákóczi II of Transylvania, who had succeeded his father in 1648, allowed the prospect of obtaining the crown of Poland to seduce him into sending across the Carpathians an expeditionary force, which was annihilated by Tatars. The Ottoman grand vizier Köprülü Mehmed Paşa, the architect of the Porte’s renaissance, led a force against Transylvania, detached it from the western adjuncts that had been its strength, and installed a new puppet prince. Emperor Leopold sent a force against the Turks; although the Austrian general Raimondo Montecuccoli defeated the Turks at St. Gotthard (Szentgotthárd) on Aug. 1, 1664, the subsequent Peace of Vasvár still recognized all the sultan’s gains.

Now even the highest magnates of Royal Hungary plotted to expel the Habsburgs with Turkish and French help, but the Wesselényi Conspiracy was betrayed, and Vienna took its revenge. Nobles were executed or lost their estates, and Protestant pastors were sentenced to be galley slaves. In 1673 the constitution was suspended and Hungary placed under a directorate. A young nobleman, Imre Thököly, earlier had fled to Transylvania, where he was elected leader of the kuruc (a term used by the anti-Habsburg forces, probably meaning Crusader) army. He led a revolt that forced Leopold in 1681 to restore the constitution and revoke many of his harshest measures. Thököly’s success encouraged the Porte to launch a major campaign against the empire. The sultan sent into Hungary a vast army that in 1683 reached the walls of Vienna itself.

But the tide ebbed as swiftly as it had advanced. Vienna was relieved (partially with Polish help), the Turks were routed, and the imperial general Prince Eugene of Savoy led a series of campaigns in which all of western and central Hungary, including Buda, was cleared of Ottoman control by 1686. Transylvania was liberated in the years following. By the Treaty of Carlowitz (January 1699), the sultan relinquished all of Hungary except the corner between the Maros and Tisza rivers. (This area was ceded in 1718 but kept until 1779 under Austrian administration as the Banat of Temesvár.) The Military Frontier, progressively extended, was kept under a similar regime, and Transylvania was organized as a separate principality.

 

Habsburg rule, 1699–1918

Habsburg rule to 1867

The emperor, not Hungary, was the victor, for the retreating Turks and the advancing armies of the so-called liberators ravaged the country. In 1687 Leopold reconfirmed the constitution subject to Hungary’s acceptance of his dynasty in the male line and to the abolition of the ius resistendi (right to resist) conceded under the Golden Bull of 1222, but the government that followed was in fact another cruel Vienna-centred dictatorship. In 1703 this provoked another rebellion, led by Francis (Ferenc) Rákóczi II (Thököly’s stepson). After eight years of indecisive and fruitless fighting between the kuruc and the Habsburg armies, peace was established by the Treaty of Szatmár (April 1711). On paper, this did little more than confirm what had been agreed in 1687, but the new king, Charles III (Emperor Charles VI), genuinely wanted peace with Hungary, and the worst abuses were now ended.

Charles III and Maria Theresa
Charles’s chief concern was to secure the acceptance in Hungary of the Pragmatic Sanction, the imperial decree by which his daughter Maria Theresa was to inherit his dominions. After the Diet accepted the Pragmatic Sanction in 1723, Charles convoked the body only once more and Maria Theresa, after her coronation in 1740, only twice—each time to ask for money. Her rule, like her father’s, was essentially autocratic. She was severe toward the Protestants, and she allowed her advisers to exclude Hungary from the subsidized industrialization that was bringing wealth to other parts of her dominion. Internal tariff barriers were introduced between the hereditary provinces and Hungary. Imports to Hungary from outside the empire were hindered by high tariffs, but customs for “imports” from Austria and Bohemia were very low. Hungary’s exports were all but banned to non-Habsburg lands, and only those agricultural and raw materials that were required in the western part of the monarchy received preferential treatment. Hungary became more dependent on, and subordinate to, Austria than before. Agriculture received some incentives, but the road to industrialization was blocked. Lacking modern credit, entrepreneurial attitude, and strong urban markets, Hungary, unlike Austria and Bohemia, was prevented from entering the preindustrial age.

Maria Theresa’s rule was not unduly harsh, even toward the Protestants. Toward the magnates, on whom she lavished many favours, it was positively benign, and she respected the most cherished liberty of the lesser nobles: their exemption from taxation. Exhausted by so many wars and rebellions, the country asked for nothing more, contenting itself with the blessing that her rule brought it an uninterrupted peace that enabled the population to grow once again and the material ravages to be repaired. But a lethargy descended on the country. Political life sank to the parish-pump level, and the towns stagnated. The peasants, into whose conditions the queen introduced some improvements (notably the Urbarial Patent in 1767, which attempted to standardize peasant holdings and obligations), followed their masters in aspiring to nothing more than as much material comfort as could be obtained with a minimum of effort. The national language itself was becoming little more than a peasant dialect, since the language of public administration and the Diet was Latin and of business life was German; like the language, the national spirit seemed near moribund.

Joseph II and Leopold II
The nation was shocked out of its lethargy by the accession of Maria Theresa’s son Joseph II on her death in 1780. Evading the obligation of a king on coronation to swear allegiance to the constitution, by not submitting himself to coronation at all (he had the Holy Crown conveyed to Vienna), Joseph drew Hungary into the Habsburg realm. The counties were transformed into local branches of the state service, taking all their orders from above. German was made the language of government and all education above the elementary level. (A secularized school system had been introduced in 1777.) The land was surveyed in preparation for taxing all estates equally. The position of the peasants was improved, which pleased them but not their lords. When Joseph fell mortally sick, the country was on the brink of open revolt. On his deathbed he retracted his administrative reforms, but his successor, Leopold II (1790–92), was obliged to restore the ancient constitution and to swear to treat Hungary as a wholly independent kingdom, to be ruled only in accordance with its own laws and customs.

Francis I: the reform generation
When Leopold died with tragic suddenness in 1792, his young son, Francis, delivered a coronation oath that went through the motions of conforming, but soon afterward he returned to the old ways. The Diet was convoked simply to supply money and, after 1811, did not convene for 14 years. Social reaction accompanied this political absolutism, and the stranglehold on economic development was not relaxed.

For many years the Diet, composed either of magnates who identified their interests with those of the court or of landowners who had prospered during the Napoleonic Wars, was as nonprogressive as Francis himself. In wider circles the spirit of the age had given birth to a great cultural revival that was now bringing forth its first literary fruits. The new national pride that it at once embodied and enhanced was demanding fulfillment of Leopold’s promises and an end to the veiled but oppressive dictatorship of Vienna. A great reform movement was set in motion by István, Count Széchenyi, the primary advocate of Hungary’s social, economic, and political modernization, who boldly proclaimed that the ancient privileges of the nobility were no bastion but a prison. He argued that the servile state of the peasants was humanly degrading and a source of weakness for the nation and also that the system of forced field labour, as well as the nobles’ exemption from taxation, was economically harmful even to its supposed beneficiaries. Financial stringency had forced Francis to reconvoke the Diet in 1825 and to convoke it regularly thereafter.

Doctrines like these were taken up by a whole “reform generation,” the most prominent figures of which—besides Széchenyi himself—were the legal expert Ferenc Deák, who subsequently became the primary architect of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867; József, Baron Eötvös, leader of a small group of moderates that opposed breaking with the ruling dynasty; and, above all, the more radical Lajos Kossuth, who largely changed the current of the reform movement by his insistence that social and economic reform could be fully realized only after the achievement of political independence. After Francis had been followed on the throne in 1835 by the luckless Ferdinand—in practice by the government of the two principal ministers, Klemens, prince von Metternich, and Anton, count von Kolowrat—Vienna was driven increasingly into a defensive position. It was forced to make repeated concessions, especially with respect to the replacement of Latin and German by Magyar as the language of the Diet, administration, and education—a demand pressed with especial insistence by many of the reformers.

The nationalities
The substitution of Magyar for Latin and German raised a new and painful issue. The population of Hungary, even excluding Croatia, had never been purely Magyar, but the pre-Magyar inhabitants of the plains and the newcomers to them (outside the towns) had quickly become Magyarized; and, while this was not true of the peripheral areas, their populations were relatively sparse. By the end of the 15th century, the Slovaks and Ruthenes of the north, the Germans of the free boroughs, Szepes (Zips), and Transylvania, and the Vlachs, or Romanians, of the country’s eastern region numbered hardly more than 20 to 25 percent of the total. The Magyar majority included almost the entire politically active noble class, the non-Magyar recruits to which assimilated most readily. The surviving non-Magyar peasants had neither the wish nor the ability to question the Magyar character of the state, which for its part was uninterested in what languages were spoken by the politically disregarded, unfree populace.

Between 1500 and 1800, however, the ethnic composition of the country changed. The most purely Magyar areas were heavily depopulated during the Turkish wars. These losses were accompanied by mass immigrations of Serbs, Croats, and Romanians from the Balkans and later by the introduction by the Austrian government of large numbers of German and other Western colonists. By 1720 the Magyars numbered only some 35 percent of the total population. By 1780 the figure had risen to nearly 40 percent, but the periphery, although it contained islands of Magyar population, was still largely non-Magyar. Moreover, as a result of this ethnic colonization, the population of Hungary grew to nearly 10 million by the end of the 18th century, almost trebling the country’s population of some 3.5 million in 1720.

In this environment the ideas of the French Revolution and of nationalism, one of its major consequences, took hold. Hungarians and most of the other ethnic groups discovered their own national identities. From the late 18th century, poetry, drama, fiction, and literary criticism combined to elevate the Hungarian vernacular to the standard of a literary language, partly in response to the forced Germanization by the Habsburgs but even more as part of an international trend that was particularly strong in central Europe. Institutions such as the National Library, the National Theatre, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences—all organized during this period—were also part of the linguistic-cultural movement that soon took the form of self-conscious chauvinism and then became an organized political movement.

Revolution, reaction, and “compromise”
The Hungarian reformers’ opportunity came in the spring of 1848. Inspired by the Revolution of 1848 in Paris, a popular upheaval caused the breakdown of central authority in Vienna. On March 15—a date celebrated in Hungary ever since—a bloodless revolution led by young intellectuals, including the poet Sándor Petőfi, abolished censorship in Pest (later part of Budapest) and formulated a series of demands. Seizing the moment, Kossuth prodded the Diet to rush through a body of laws. The March Laws (also known as the April Laws) enacted important internal reforms, such as the generalizing of taxes, the abolition of villein status and the transfer of villein holdings to their cultivators, and the reorganization of the lower table of Parliament on a representative basis. They also provided for the restoration of the territorial integrity of the lands of the Hungarian crown (subject, in the case of Transylvania, to the agreement of its Diet) and the appointment of a “responsible independent Hungarian Ministry,” which was headed by a progressive magnate, Lajos, Count Batthyány, and included Kossuth, Széchenyi, Deák, and Eötvös. But the new government had enemies: the conservatives resented the land reform, and the centralists (i.e., those who advocated a Vienna-dominated empire) regarded the independent ministry as dangerous to the integrity of the monarchy. They found allies among the disaffected nationalities, notably the Serbs and Romanians, and in the Croats, whose ban, Josip Jelačić, refused to recognize the authority of Buda and Pest.

Tension between Vienna and Buda-Pest mounted steadily, and in September, when the rest of the monarchy had been reduced, Jelačić, on Vienna’s orders, invaded Hungary. Batthyány and other ministers resigned, leaving Kossuth in charge. An improvised national army drove Jelačić out of the country, but in December Ferdinand (whose coronation oath bound him to observe the March Laws) was made to abdicate in favour of his young nephew, Francis (Franz) Joseph. The invasion was now renewed. A panmonarchic constitution abolished the March Laws, in reply to which a rump Diet, inspired by Kossuth, proclaimed the full independence of Hungary and the deposition of the Habsburg dynasty (April 14, 1849). The Hungarian forces, led by a young soldier of genius, Artúr Görgey, held their own until the Austrian court appealed for help to the Russian tsar, who sent an army across the Carpathians. Bitter fighting went on for some weeks more, led by György Klapka and other generals, but the odds were too heavy. On August 12, Kossuth fled the country, transferring his authority to Görgey, who the next day surrendered at Világos to the Russian commander.

Savage reprisals followed, and the country was again subjected to an absolutist and extortionate rule exercised from Vienna through a foreign bureaucracy. This “Bach regime” (named for Alexander Bach, Austrian minister of the interior) was maintained, unrelaxed in principle although with some alterations in practice, until Austria’s defeat in Italy in 1859 forced Francis Joseph to begin his retreat from absolutism. The followers of the exiled Kossuth were irreconcilable, but many inside Hungary rallied behind Deák. He held that the March Laws were legally valid and that Hungary’s right to complete internal independence was inalienable but that under the Pragmatic Sanction, which he accepted, foreign affairs and defense were subjects common to the two halves of the monarchy and that a mechanism could be devised for handling these affairs constitutionally. A Diet convoked in 1861 was dissolved after a few weeks because the gap between the Hungarians’ views and those of Francis Joseph and his centralist ministry in Vienna was still too wide to be bridged. Absolutism was reimposed, but the pressure of international and internal economic difficulties gradually drove Francis Joseph to further concessions. In July 1865 he dismissed his centralist ministry; in December a new Diet was convoked and the negotiations reopened. Interrupted by the outbreak of the Seven Weeks’ War, they were resumed after Austria’s defeat by Prussia in 1866 had further convinced both parties of the necessity of agreement.

The Dual Monarchy, 1867–1918
A new Transylvanian Diet had already approved reunion with Hungary. Austria-Hungary was formed in February 1867 through a constitutional agreement known as the Compromise (German: Ausgleich; Hungarian: Kiegyezés). Francis Joseph admitted the validity of the March Laws on the condition that conduct of common (i.e., overlapping) affairs would be revised. He appointed a responsible Hungarian ministry under Gyula (Julius), Count Andrássy, who—strangely enough—had been involved in the Revolution of 1848 and afterwards was hanged in effigy. A committee of the Diet then elaborated a law that, while laying down Hungary’s full internal independence, provided for common ministries for foreign affairs and defense, each under a joint minister. A third common minister was in charge of the finance for these portfolios. The respective quotas to be paid for these services by each half of the monarchy were reconsidered every 10 years, as were commercial and customs agreements. At first the two countries formed a customs union. On June 8, 1867, Francis Joseph was crowned king of Hungary, and on July 28 he gave his assent to the law.

Francis Joseph had stipulated that the settlement should include a revised Hungaro-Croatian agreement and provisions guaranteeing adequate rights for the non-Magyars of Hungary. The Croatian settlement, known as the Nagodba (1868), left Croatia, including Slavonia, as part of the Hungarian crown, under a ban appointed on the proposal of the Hungarian prime minister. Croatia was to enjoy full internal autonomy, but certain matters were designated as common to Croatia and Hungary. When these were under discussion, Croatian deputies attended the central Parliament, in which they could speak in Croatian, the sole language of internal official usage in Croatia.

The Nationalities Law (1868) guaranteed that all citizens of Hungary, whatever their nationality, constituted politically “a single nation, the indivisible, unitary Hungarian nation,” and there could be no differentiation between them except in respect of the official usage of the current languages and then only insofar as necessitated by practical considerations. The language of the central administrative and judicial services and of the country’s only university was Hungarian, but there were to be adequate provisions for the use of non-Hungarian languages on lower levels. The consolidation was completed by the incorporation of the Military Frontier (in stages lasting several years) and of Transylvania, the latter process involving the abolition of the old “Three Nations,” except that the Saxon “university” (territorial autonomy) was allowed to survive as a purely cultural institution.

Hungary under dualism
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 restored territorial integrity to Hungary and gave it more real internal independence than it had enjoyed since 1526; the monarch’s powers in internal affairs were strictly limited. In the conduct of foreign affairs or defense, however, Hungary still formed only part of the monarchy, and its interests in these fields had to be coordinated with those of its other components. But Hungary had a large voice in the monarchy’s policy in these fields and enjoyed the great advantage—which weighed heavily with soberer men, including Deák, when negotiating the Compromise—that the resources of the great power of which it formed a part stood behind the country. To some, however, the price still seemed too high, and the parliamentary life of Hungary from 1867 to 1918 was dominated by the conflict between the supporters and the opponents of the Compromise. The latter ranged from complete separatists to those who accepted the Compromise in theory but wanted details of it altered.

The supporters of the Compromise, then known as the Deák Party, held office first but soon got into such financial and personal difficulties that complete chaos threatened. It was averted when in 1875 Kálmán Tisza, the leader of the moderate nationalist Left Centre, merged his party with the remnants of the Deákists on a program that amounted to putting his party’s main demands into cold storage until the political and financial situation was stabilized. This new Liberal Party then held office for nearly 30 years. During these years the Compromise stood intact, but there was mounting friction with Vienna over the army, which the Hungarians regarded, with some reason, as imbued with a spirit hostile to themselves; over the economic provisions of the Compromise; and over the question of Hungarian participation in control of the National Bank. An army question in 1889 marked something of a turning point, after which relations between the supporters of the Compromise, behind whom stood the crown, and its nationalist opponents were permanently strained.

The tension reached a climax in 1903, when the obstruction of the “national opposition” made parliamentary government practically impossible. The prime minister, István, Count Tisza (Kálmán Tisza’s son), dissolved Parliament. Elections in January 1905 gave a coalition of national parties a parliamentary majority, but Francis Joseph refused to entrust the government to them on the basis of their program, which included national concessions over the army. A period of nonparliamentary government followed until April 1906, when the coalition leaders, under threat of an extension of the suffrage if they proved recalcitrant, gave the king a secret undertaking that, if appointed, they would not press the essentials of their program. On this basis he appointed a coalition government, but under a Liberal, Sándor Wekerle. With their hands thus tied, the coalition made a wretched showing. Tisza reorganized the Liberal Party as the Party of National Work, and in the elections of 1910 this party secured a large majority. After Károly, Count Khuen-Héderváry (1910–12), and László Lukács (1912–13), Tisza himself again became prime minister, and Francis Joseph ceased to press his demand for effective franchise reform, to which Tisza was inexorably opposed—more for national than for social reasons. (He was afraid that in case of universal manhood suffrage the national minorities would join hands with the political radicals and end Magyar control over the state.)

Social and economic developments
Hungary underwent much change after 1867. The achievements of the Deákist and Liberal governments included the assimilation of the former outlying areas of Transylvania and the Military Frontier, a reform of the relations between the central government and the counties, and a general reorganization of the administration. The judicial system was modernized. Relations between the state and the churches were, after a long struggle, restated in 1894–95 on terms satisfactory to the liberal philosophy of the day. This completed the full emancipation of Hungary’s large Jewish population, who had already gone through the basic emancipation process in 1868, based on a law prepared by Baron Eötvös. In 1868 Eötvös also carried through an admirable elementary education act, and much headway was made in raising the educational and cultural level of the country. After long difficulties the national finances were put in order and the public debt reduced.

There was considerable economic progress in many fields. Agriculture remained the mainstay of the economy. The medium and small landowners had been hard-hit by the land reform of 1848, but the survivors were helped by the high agricultural prices and the secure Austrian market. Afterward, the general European agricultural depression plunged even the big landowners into difficulties, but these diminished near the end of the century when prices rose again, while the quality and quantity of production improved. Many branches of industry failed to survive the customs union with Austria, but agriculture prospered, and later, as domestic capital accumulated, a process of industrialization, helped by state legislation, set in and expanded rapidly after 1890. As late as 1910, agriculture was still the most important branch of the economy, and more than two-thirds of the population still derived its livelihood from the soil, while about one-sixth did so from industry and mining.

Urbanization proceeded apace. The growth of Budapest—formed in 1872–73 through the merger of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda—was meteoric. Its population during the age of dualism rose from 270,000 to nearly 1,000,000. Not counting Zagreb in Croatia, five other cities in the Hungarian realm (Szeged, Szabadka [Subotica], Debrecen, Pozsony, and Temesvár) had populations between 75,000 and 120,000, and a dozen more cities totaled about 50,000 inhabitants. The urban population for the country as a whole doubled from 2,000,000 to about 4,000,000. Communications were largely modernized, particularly through a Budapest-centred complex railroad system.

For all this, Hungary was still a relatively poor country. The continued extremely rapid growth of the population—from about 15 million in 1869 to more than 20 million in 1910 (with the population of Croatia gaining along the same lines)—had far outstripped that of the means of production. The growth of industry was still too slow to absorb the surplus rural population, and, in spite of a high emigration rate, which in the years before World War I averaged 100,000 annually, acute rural congestion had developed. While 35 percent of the land was held in 4,000 large estates, there were about two million small, or dwarf, holdings, and a further 1.7 million persons (wage earners) were totally landless. A large proportion of these rural workers were forced to live in conditions of extreme misery and near starvation. The living standards and conditions of the industrial workers, especially the unskilled, were also very low.

Emigration was viewed by many as a welcome safety valve, but some Magyars regretted that it had significantly reduced their presence in the multinational Kingdom of Hungary. As best as can be ascertained from the often conflicting Hungarian and American statistics, in the period between 1880 and 1914, about 1,800,000 Hungarian citizens emigrated to the United States. Of the U.S.-bound migrants, more than one-third (650,000–700,000) were Magyars, while the rest included Rusyns, Slovaks, Germans, Romanians, Croats, and other South Slavs. Significantly smaller numbers emigrated to western Europe and elsewhere.

The political structure was not modern. The unreformed franchise excluded the masses from political influence, and even the vocational organization that they were able to achieve was primitive. The industrial and financial development had been largely the work of Jews (who also played a large part in the professions) or of Magyarized Germans. Its own quasi-alien character and its small numbers prevented the Hungarian middle class from developing into a positive factor in the political life, which continued to be dominated by a landowning class whose social and political ideas failed to move with the times.

The “nationalities problem” remained intractable. After 1868 Hungarian political philosophy insisted more strongly than ever that the Hungarian state must be Magyar in spirit, in its institutions, and, as far as possible, in its language. Suggestions to the contrary, or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met with derision or abuse. In spite of the law, the use of minority languages was banished almost entirely from administration and even justice. While the autonomy of the church schools was hardly attacked until the 20th century, most denominations saw to it that all secondary education in their schools, with trivial exceptions, was in Hungarian. The Magyar language was also overrepresented in the primary schools, as it was in practically all instruction in the state schools founded from 1870 onward. For example—discounting Croatia, which had its own educational system—in 1912 there were 13,453 Hungarian-language elementary schools, compared with 2,233 schools that instructed in Romanian, 447 in German, 377 in Slovak, 270 in Serbian, 59 in Ruthenian, 12 in Italian, and 10 in various other languages.

By the end of the century, the state apparatus was entirely Hungarian in language, as were business and social life above the lowest levels. The proportion of the population with Hungarian as its mother tongue rose from 46.6 percent in 1880 to 51.4 percent in 1900. The Magyarization of the towns had proceeded at an astounding rate. Nearly all middle-class Jews and Germans and many middle-class Slovaks and Ruthenes had been Magyarized.

Most of the Magyarization, however, had been in the centre of Hungary and among the middle classes, and much of it was the direct result of urbanization and industrialization. It had hardly touched the rural populations of the periphery, and the linguistic frontiers had hardly shifted from the line on which they had been stabilized in the 18th century. In these areas, moreover, a hard core of national feeling had survived. This had weakened during the first decades after the Compromise but was reviving again at the beginning of the 20th century. This was especially so among the Romanians and was being encouraged from across the frontiers of Romania and Serbia and (in the case of the Slovaks) from Bohemia. Hungaro-Croatian relations too deteriorated, after a period of quiescence, when the Serbian government began propagating a theory of South Slav (Yugoslav) unity designed to detach the Croats from the monarchy.

Many of these developments threatened the very basis of the Compromise, and to this another uncertainty was added. Francis Joseph could be trusted to support and accept the policies of any Hungarian government that on its side maintained the Compromise loyally; but he was an old man, and his heir presumptive, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was notoriously hostile to the Hungarian regime. In touch with many of its opponents, the archduke was credited with designs of overthrowing the Compromise to the benefit not of its traditional opponents, the Hungarian Independents, but of its enemies in the opposite camps, especially the nationalities.


 

World War I

The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, removed this danger and plunged Austria-Hungary into World War I. For the first two years of the war, Tisza upheld the internal system and held the country to its international course and, when Francis Joseph died, persuaded the new king, Charles IV (Austrian Emperor Charles I), to accept coronation (December 1916), thus binding himself to uphold the integrity and the constitution of Hungary. Charles, however, insisted on electoral reform, and Tisza resigned (May 1917).

While short-lived minority governments struggled with increasing difficulties, a threefold agitation grew: of Hungarian nationalists, against a war into which, they maintained, Hungary had been drawn in the interest of Germany and Austria; of the political left, growing daily more radical under the stimuli of privation and the Russian Revolution of 1917; and of the nationalities, encouraged by the favour that their kinsfolk were finding with the Triple Entente. The country began to listen to Mihály, Count Károlyi, leader of a faction of the Independence Party, who proclaimed that a program of independence from Austria, repudiation of the alliance with Germany, and peace with the Entente, combined with social and internal political reform and concessions to the nationalities, would safeguard Hungary against all dangers at once. Hungary’s submergence in the long, devastating war included the mobilization of 3,800,000 men, the death of 661,000, and the exhaustion of the Hungarian economy. Agricultural output declined by half during the last years of the war, and the currency lost more than half of its value. In the autumn of 1918, Hungary was on the brink of economic collapse.

Revolution, counterrevolution, and the regency, 1918–45
On Oct. 31, 1918, when the defeat of the monarchy was imminent, Charles appointed Károlyi prime minister at the head of an improvised administration based on a left-wing National Council. After the monarchy had signed an armistice on November 3 and Charles had “renounced participation” in public affairs on the 13th, the National Council dissolved Parliament on the 16th and proclaimed Hungary an independent republic, with Károlyi as provisional president. The separation from Austria was popular, but all Károlyi’s supposed friends disappointed him, and all his premises proved mistaken. Serb, Czech, and Romanian troops installed themselves in two-thirds of the helpless country, and, in the confusion, orderly social reform was impossible. The government steadily moved leftward, and on March 21, 1919, Károlyi’s government was replaced by a Soviet republic controlled by Béla Kun, who had promised Hungary Russian support against the Romanians. The help never arrived, and Kun’s doctrinaire Bolshevism, resting on the “Red Terror,” antagonized almost the entire population. On August 1 the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell, and Kun and his associates fled Budapest; three days later Romanian troops entered the city.

Shadow counterrevolutionary governments had already formed themselves in Szeged (then occupied by French troops) and Vienna and pressed the Allies to entrust them with the new government. The Allies insisted on the formation of a provisional regime including democratic elements that would be required to hold elections on a wide, secret suffrage. The Romanians were, with difficulty, induced to retire across the Tisza River, and a government, under the presidency of Károly Huszár, was formed in November 1919. Elections (for a single house) were held in January 1920.

The new Parliament declared null and void all measures enacted by the Károlyi and Kun regimes as well as the legislation embodying the Compromise of 1867. The institution of the monarchy was thus restored, but its permanent reinstatement was predicated on the resolution of the differences between the nation and the dynasty, an issue that divided Hungarians. In the interim, Admiral Miklós Horthy, who had organized the counterrevolutionary armed forces, was elected regent as provisional head of state (March 1, 1920). The Huszár government then resigned, and on March 15 a coalition government, composed of the two main parties in the Parliament (the Christian National Union and the Smallholders), took office under Sándor Simonyi-Semadam.

The regency, 1920–45

The Treaty of Trianon

The Allies had long had their peace terms for Hungary ready but had been unwilling to present them to an earlier regime. It was, thus, the Simonyi-Semadam government that was forced to sign the Treaty of Trianon (June 4, 1920). The Allies not only assumed without question that the country’s non-Hungarian populations wished to leave Hungary but also allowed the successor states, especially Czechoslovakia and Romania, to annex large areas of ethnic Hungarian population.

The final result was to leave Hungary with only 35,893 of the 125,641 square miles (92,962 of the 325,408 square km) that had constituted the lands of the Hungarian crown. Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia took large fragments, while others went to Austria and even Poland and Italy. Of the population of 20,866,447 (1910 census), Hungary was left with 7,615,117. Romania received 5,257,467; Yugoslavia, 4,131,249; Czechoslovakia, 3,517,568; and Austria, 291,618. Of the 10,050,575 persons for whom Hungarian was the mother tongue, no fewer than 3,219,579 were allotted to the successor states: 1,704,851 to Romania, 1,063,020 to Czechoslovakia, 547,735 to Yugoslavia, and 26,183 to Austria. While the homes of some of these—e.g., the Szeklers—had been in the remotest corners of historic Hungary, many were living immediately across the new frontiers.

In addition, the treaty required Hungary to pay in reparations an unspecified sum, which was to be “the first charge upon all its assets and revenues,” and limited its armed forces to 35,000, to be used exclusively for the maintenance of internal order and frontier defense.

Postwar confusion and reconstruction
Conditions in Hungary in 1920 were exceedingly difficult in every respect. The prolonged war, the Bolshevik regime (before which mobile capital had fled headlong), and the rapacious Romanian occupation had exhausted its resources, and the economy had been further disrupted by the new frontiers, which cut factories off from both their accustomed supply sources and their markets. Industrial unemployment had reached unprecedented heights, and the surviving national resources were being strained to support nearly 400,000 refugees from the successor states.

Both industrial and agrarian workers were embittered by the failure of their revolutionary hopes. Even more dangerous were the armies of the “new poor,” not only the homeless refugees but also a large part of the middle classes in general, reduced to penury by the galloping inflation. They formed a radical army, one of the right that ascribed their misery precisely to the revolutions, on which they put the blame for all Hungary’s misfortunes. Feelings ran particularly high against the Jews, who had played a disproportionately large part in both revolutions, especially Kun’s, but the resentment extended also to the Social Democrats and even to Liberal democracy.

“White terrorists” wreaked indiscriminate vengeance on persons whom they associated with the revolutions. Huszár’s government itself had turned so sharply on the Social Democrats and the trade unions that the former withdrew their representatives from the government and boycotted the elections, in protest against the widespread killings, arrests, and internments. (Modern calculations have put the number of those executed to somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000.) Communists, radical democrats, Jewish intellectuals, and assorted academics emigrated in large numbers, among them such renowned personalities as scientists Theodore von Kármán and Leo Szilárd, social philosophers Michael Polányi and Karl Mannheim, economist Karl Polányi, sociologist Oszkár Jászi, philosopher György Lukács, film directors Sir Alexander Korda and László Vajda, and artists László Moholy-Nagy and Béni Ferenczy.

The government of Pál, Count Teleki, who succeeded Simonyi-Semadam in July 1920, blunted the edge of the agrarian unrest with a modest reform—promised, indeed, only as a first installment—that took 1.7 million acres (7.5 percent of the total area of the country) from the biggest estates for distribution in smallholdings. But it had hardly touched any other social problem when in March 1921 the legitimist question was raised in acute form by King Charles’s sudden return to Hungary. He was ordered to withdraw by the Allies with the willing compliance of the right-wing radicals, toward whom Horthy was then leaning. The government, several of whose members were legitimists, resigned, and the succession was assumed by the conservative István, Count Bethlen, who had been waiting behind the scenes. Bethlen devised a formula that, while not legally excluding the king’s return (under Entente pressure, Parliament had voted a law dethroning the Habsburgs, but even Hungary’s own antilegitimists never took it as morally binding), excluded it in practice. In return for this, the Smallholders’ Party agreed with the antilegitimists among the Christian nationalists to form a new Party of Unity under Bethlen’s leadership.

In March 1922 Bethlen persuaded Parliament to accept as still legally in force the franchise enacted in 1918, which reduced the number of voters and reintroduced open voting in rural districts. As a result of this law, 2.4 million of Hungary’s 8 million citizens (about 29 percent of the population) had the right to vote. This proportion compared favourably with those of France, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia but less favourably with those of Austria, England, and the Scandinavian countries. Conducted under this law, the elections in May 1922 gave the Party of Unity a large majority.

Meanwhile, a second attempt by King Charles (in October 1921) to recover his throne failed, and the legitimist question lost its acuteness with Charles’s death in 1922. In December 1921 Bethlen concluded a secret pact with the Social Democrats, under which the latter promised to abstain from political agitation and to support the government’s foreign policy in return for the end of persecution, the release of political prisoners, and the restoration of the sequestrated trade union funds. The peasant leaders were persuaded to accept the indefinite postponement of further land reform. The “White Terror” was liquidated quietly but effectively, chiefly by finding government employment for the right-wing radical leaders.

Bethlen’s domestic program was made possible by his cautious international policy. Almost all Hungarians were passionately convinced of the injustice of the Treaty of Trianon, the redress of which was the all-dominant motive of Hungary’s foreign policy throughout the interwar period and the key to the hostile relations between Hungary and those states that had chiefly profited by it. Bethlen was as revisionist at heart as any of his countrymen, but he was convinced that Hungary could not act effectively in this field until it had acquired friends abroad and had achieved political and economic consolidation at home. This depended on financial reconstruction. To achieve this, he applied for Hungary’s admission to the League of Nations, which was granted (not without difficulty) in September 1922. In March 1924, in return for an agreement to carry out loyally the obligations of the treaty, he obtained a League loan, which had almost magical effects. Inflation stopped immediately. The League loan was followed by a flood of private lending, and the expatriated domestic capital returned. With this help, Hungary enjoyed some years of prosperity, during which agriculture revived and industrialization made progress.

Abroad, Bethlen’s only other important move was the conclusion in 1927 of a treaty of friendship with Italy. At home his regime, which was conservative but not tyrannical, rested on what came to be called Hungary’s conservative-liberal forces, to the exclusion of extremism from left or right.

Financial crisis: the rise of right radicalism
Bethlen’s command of Parliament was complete and unshaken by the disastrous fall in world wheat prices in 1929. In June 1931 he had just held elections that returned his party with its usual large majority when a world financial crisis supervened on the economic one to shatter the foundations of his structure. Foreign creditors called in their money, and Hungary, its trade balance annihilated by the collapse of the wheat market, could not meet their demands and had to apply for help from the League of Nations, which imposed a regime of rigid orthodox deflation. Industrial unemployment soared again, the agricultural population was rendered almost literally penniless, and the government services had to carry through large-scale dismissals and salary reductions in the interests of a balanced budget. Consequently, in the early 1930s, many persons with university degrees were scurrying around for jobs as bellhops and street cleaners.

In August Bethlen resigned. His successor, Gyula, Count Károlyi, was unable to cope with the situation. Political agitation mounted, and on Oct. 1, 1932, Horthy appointed as prime minister the leader of the right-wing radicals, Gyula Gömbös.

At home Gömbös found the financial forces, international and domestic, as invincible as had his predecessors. Previously a violent anti-Semite, he had to recant his views on this point and was unable to carry through any other points of his fascist program, particularly as Horthy at first refused to allow him to hold elections. Neither was he able to realize his foreign political ideal of an “Axis” composed of Hungary, Italy, and Germany, since his two proposed partners were then at loggerheads over Austria. Gömbös, one of whose first acts had been to dash to Rome and breathe new life into Hungary’s friendship with Italy, now found himself drawn into the “Rome Triangle” (Italy, Austria, and Hungary) that was directed precisely against Germany. Finally, Adolf Hitler upset another of Gömbös’s calculations by telling him that, while Germany would help Hungary against Czechoslovakia, it would not do so against Romania or Yugoslavia.

Nevertheless, by the time of Gömbös’s premature death in October 1936, he had managed to achieve at least some of his goals. Shortly before Gömbös died, Horthy had at last allowed him to hold elections, which had brought into Parliament a strong right-wing radical contingent from which it could never thereafter free itself. Abroad, when Benito Mussolini became subordinate to Hitler, Hungary found itself in a sort of Axis camp after all, membership of which might help it at least to accomplish partial revision of the Treaty of Trianon. On the other hand, if Germany chose to apply economic or political pressure, Hungary would be defenseless but for such shadow help as Italy could offer.

This threat already loomed large, and thenceforward it became inextricably involved with Hungary’s own internal politics, by reason of the ideological character of the Nazi regime and in particular its anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism at that stage was running high in Hungary itself, and those infected by it—not just the right-wing radicals of various brands but other members of the middle classes as well—welcomed Germany’s support for their own ideas while making light of its dangers. They even argued, not without reason, that the danger lay in affronting Germany, which could easily crush unarmed little Hungary but would not wish to attack a friend and ideological partner. Many of them (as well as most army officers) further believed that, should Hitler’s policies lead to war, Germany would emerge the victor; Hungary’s salvation thus lay in joining forces with Germany.

On the other side, a curious shadow front emerged, composed of all elements antagonistic to Nazism—not only Hungary’s Jews but also the legitimists, the traditionalist conservative-liberals, and the Social Democrats. Many of these people were not convinced that Germany was invincible and held that, if war came, only disaster could follow for Hungary if it became too closely involved with Germany. Even they, however, were unwilling to draw the ultimate conclusion that Hungary should abandon all its revisionist claims and join hands with the Little Entente, which for its part indicated that it would accept nothing short of total renunciation. It was of the highest importance that by this time Horthy had shed his earlier right-wing radical leanings and sympathized with this shadow front.

To succeed Gömbös, Horthy appointed Kálmán Darányi, who was more of a conservative than a right-wing radical. His appointment was ill-received in Germany, which grew even more hostile the next year, when Darányi’s foreign minister, Kálmán Kánya, obtained the tacit consent of the Little Entente for Hungary to rearm, although Hungary was still sadly short of armaments, for which, again, Germany was its only source of supply. On a visit to Berlin, Darányi and Kánya smoothed over the difficulties; but, when Darányi tried to placate the extremists at home, Horthy replaced him (in May 1938) with Béla Imrédy, who introduced a largely token “Jewish Law” (May 29, 1938) but nevertheless pinned his hopes on the West.

When the crisis of the Munich Agreement broke in September 1938, Imrédy and Kánya, while presenting Hungary’s claims on Czechoslovakia, limited those claims to what they hoped would be acceptable to the Western powers, whose endorsement they made every effort to obtain. Ignored by the West, the Hungarian leaders had to turn to Germany and Italy after all, which, under the “First Vienna Award” of November 2, gave Hungary the fringe of southern Slovakia inhabited by ethnic Hungarians. Imrédy, disillusioned with the West, dismissed Kánya for the pro-Axis István, Count Csáky, and sought to recover Hitler’s favour by introducing a more far-reaching Jewish Law (May 2, 1939). Imrédy’s enemies secured his resignation in February 1939 by unearthing documents purporting to show a Jewish strain in his own ancestry. Pál, Count Teleki, who succeeded him, was sympathetic to the West, but Hungary’s recovery of Carpatho-Ruthenia (March 1939) with Hitler’s sanction and approval made it difficult for him to pursue a pro-Western policy.

War and renewed defeat
When Germany attacked Poland (Sept. 1, 1939), Hungary refused to allow German troops to cross Hungarian territory but permitted remnants of the Polish army, fleeing civilians, and Polish Jews to enter the country. In the first months of World War II, none of the belligerents wanted the war to extend to southeastern Europe, so Teleki and Horthy were able to keep Hungary at peace. After the Soviet Union had occupied Bessarabia in June 1940, the Hungarian leaders compelled a reluctant Germany (but a willing Italy) to cede to Hungary northern Transylvania under the “Second Vienna Award” (August 30). They then allowed German troops to cross Hungarian territory into southern Romania and in November signed the Tripartite Pact.

The next step was more fatal still. In his search for insurance, Teleki concluded with the like-minded government of Yugoslavia a treaty (Dec. 12, 1940) unluckily characterized as one of “Eternal Friendship.” On March 26, 1941, that Yugoslav government was overthrown by a pro-Western regime. Hitler prepared to invade Yugoslavia and called on Hungary to help. Caught in an unanticipated situation, Hungary refused to join in the attack but again allowed German troops to cross its territory. Great Britain threatened to declare war, and Teleki, blaming himself for the development of a situation that it had been his life’s aim to avoid, committed suicide on April 2. His successor, László Bárdossy, waited until Croatia had declared its independence (April 10) and then, arguing that Yugoslavia had already disintegrated, occupied the ex-Hungarian areas of Yugoslavia.

Although he was not a fascist, Bárdossy believed that the Axis powers would win the war and that Hungary’s salvation lay in placating them. Otherwise, so he believed, Romania (now pro-Axis) would persuade Hitler to reverse the Second Vienna Award. Accordingly, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union (June 22, 1939), Bárdossy sent a token force to assist in what everyone expected to be a brief operation. The strength of the Soviet resistance upset the calculation, and in January 1942 the Germans forced Hungary to mobilize practically all its available manpower and send it to the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, amid a flurry of declarations of war in December 1941 and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provoked the United States to formally enter the war, Britain (by this point allied with the Soviet Union) declared war on Hungary, which in turn declared war on the United States. Further, Britain recognized the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and withdrew recognition of the First Vienna Award, while the Soviet Union recognized Czechoslovakia’s 1937 frontiers.

Many Hungarians by then agreed with Bárdossy that Hungary’s only course was to fight on until the Axis won the war—the more so because all Hungarians except those of the extreme left regarded Bolshevism as the embodiment of evil. Horthy, however, while sharing this view, still believed in a Western victory and thought it possible for Hungary, while continuing the struggle in the East, to regain the favour of the West. In March 1942 he replaced Bárdossy with Miklós Kállay, who shared these hopes. For two years Kállay conducted a remarkable balancing act—protecting Hungary’s Jews and allowing the left (except for the communists) almost untrammeled freedom while putting out innumerable feelers to the Western Allies, to whom he actually promised to surrender unconditionally when their troops reached Hungary’s frontiers. Meanwhile, in January 1943 the Hungarian expeditionary force suffered a crushing defeat at Voronezh in western Russia that cost it much of its manpower and nearly all its equipment.

But the Western forces did not approach the Danube valley, and, as the Soviet army neared the Carpathians, Hitler, from whom few of Kállay’s activities were hidden, decided that he could not leave his vital communications at the mercy of an untrustworthy regime. In March 1944 he offered Horthy the choice between full cooperation under German supervision or undisguised German occupation with the treatment accorded to an enemy. On March 19, while Horthy was visiting Hitler in Klessheim, Ger., the Germans began the occupation of Hungary, leaving Horthy no choice but to appoint a collaborationist government under the openly Germanophile Döme Sztójay.

For a while the Germans did much as they wished—they suppressed parties and organizations of potential opponents and arrested their leaders. With the cooperation of Hungarian authorities, Jews were compelled to wear a yellow star, robbed of their property, and incarcerated in ghettos as in other Nazi-occupied areas. Except for the Jews in the capital and those in the forced-labour camps of the Hungarian army—whose turn would come later—Hungarian Jews were deported to the gas chambers of German extermination camps. In spite of the efforts of representatives of some neutral countries—such as Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, the papal nuncio, and diplomats from Switzerland, Portugal, and even Spain—which saved tens of thousands of lives, some 550,000 of Hungary’s 800,000 Jews (as defined by ‘‘racial’’ legislation) perished during the war. At the same time, with the help of sympathetic citizens who risked their own lives, about 250,000 Hungarian Jews survived.

In the summer of 1944, the pressure relaxed; and in August, after Romania’s surrender to the Allies, Horthy appointed a new government under the loyal general Géza Lakatos and again extended peace feelers. A “preliminary armistice” was concluded in Moscow, but, when on October 15 Horthy announced this on the radio, he was abducted by the Germans, who forced him to recant and to abdicate. The Germans put Ferenc Szálasi, the leader of the right-wing extremist Arrow Cross Party, in charge. By then, however, Soviet troops were far inside the country. The Germans and their Hungarian allies were driven back slowly, while numerous refugees fled with them. The last armed forces crossed the Austrian frontier in April 1945.

The occupying Red Army wreaked havoc in the country. Hundreds of thousands of rapes were committed. A similar number of civilians were abducted; accused of various political crimes—such as alleged Nazi affiliation, fighting against Soviet forces, spying for the West, or being involved in sabotage activities—they were convicted and deported for 10 to 25 years to the Soviet Gulag. Others were simply taken off the streets to perform a ‘‘little work” (malenky robot) and were sent, without trial, for three to five years to the slave labour camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union. Still others became prisoners of war who, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, were reclassified by the tens of thousands as “war criminals” and kept for years as forced labourers in the Gulag.

Hungary’s defeat was sealed in a new peace treaty, signed in Paris on Feb. 10, 1947, which restored the Trianon frontiers, with a rectification in favour of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. It imposed on Hungary a reparations bill of $300 million and limited its armed forces. The implementation of the treaty’s provisions was to be supervised by a Soviet occupation force, a large contingent of which remained in the country until June 1991.

Carlile Aylmer Macartney
Steven Béla Várdy

Hungary in the Soviet orbit

As in 1920, a new regime recognized the defeat of its predecessor. As early as December 1944, a makeshift Provisional National Assembly had accepted a government list and program presented to it by communist agents following in the wake of the Soviet armies. Beginning cautiously, the communists announced that the new Hungary was to rest on “all its democratic elements.” The government contained only two communists; its other members were representatives of four noncommunist left-wing parties—the Smallholders, the Social Democrats, the National Peasants, and the Progressive Bourgeoisie—and four men associated with the Horthy regime, including two generals who had been in Moscow in connection with the armistice talks. The program provided for the expropriation of the large estates and the nationalization of the banks and heavy industry; but it promised guarantees of democratic rights and liberties, respect for private property, and encouragement of private initiative in trade and small industry.

The communist regime

Political developments
The full political takeover proceeded systematically, although not according to any timetable, because the communists, misjudging feeling in the country, allowed the first elections (November 1945) to be relatively free. Only the parties of the coalition were allowed to contest them; but the adherents of the proscribed parties voted for the Smallholders, who received an absolute majority. The head of the Soviet mission, however, insisted that the coalition must be maintained; a Smallholder was allowed to be prime minister, but the Ministry of the Interior, with the control of the police, was given to the communists. Pressure and intimidation were then applied to the Smallholders to expel their more-courageous members as “fascists,” and in the next manipulated election (August 1947) the Smallholders polled only 15 percent of the votes cast. The communists had meanwhile forced the Social Democrats to form a “workers’ bloc” with them. Although the pressure was considerable, the bloc still polled only 45 percent of the votes (other parties were allowed to participate this time). The communists then forced the Social Democrats to join them in a single Workers’ Party, from which recalcitrants were expelled.

In the next election, in May 1949, voting was open, and the voters were presented with a single list, on which candidates identified as Smallholders and National Peasants were actually crypto-communists. In late summer a new constitution was enacted, which was a copy of the constitution of the Soviet Union. It was promulgated on August 20—Hungary’s traditional St. Stephen’s Day—specifically with the goal of transforming that national holiday connected with Hungary’s Christianization into the politically inspired Constitution Day. With this constitution, Hungary—a republic since Feb. 1, 1946—became a “people’s republic.” Although its president (Zoltán Tildy) and for a while its prime ministers (Ferenc Nagy, then Lajos Dinnyés) were Smallholders, all real power rested with the Hungarian Workers’ [communist] Party, controlled by its first secretary, Mátyás Rákosi.

Finally, the party’s “Muscovite” wing turned on its “national” wing. The leader of this latter group, László Rajk, was executed on questionable charges in October 1949, and his chief adherents were similarly executed or imprisoned. Meanwhile, hundreds were executed or imprisoned as war criminals, many of them for no offense other than loyalty to the Horthy regime. Many thousands more were interned. The State Security Department, replaced in 1948 by the State Security Authority, was omnipotent. The judiciary, civil service, and army were purged, and party orthodoxy became the criterion for positions in them. The trade unions were made into mere executants of party orders.

Those who were distrusted were collected, convicted, and sent to various internment camps, the most notorious of which was the camp at Recsk in north-central Hungary, which functioned in great secrecy between 1950 and 1953. In May–June 1951, about 12,700 upper- and upper-middle-class people were driven out of their apartments in Budapest and deported to small peasant villages on the Great Alföld or to scattered labour camps on the mud flats of Hortobágy in the vicinity of Debrecen.

After the dissolution of the parties, the chief ideological opposition to the communist regime came from the churches; but their estates were expropriated, making it impossible for them to maintain their schools, and in 1948 the entire educational system was nationalized. The Calvinist and Lutheran churches accepted financial arrangements imposed by the state. The head of the Roman Catholic Church, József Cardinal Mindszenty, who refused to follow their example, was arrested on transparent charges in December 1948 and condemned to life imprisonment. The monastic orders were dissolved. Thereafter, the Roman Catholic Church accepted financial terms similar to those offered to other churches, and eventually the bishops, with visible repugnance, took the oath of loyalty to the state.

Economic developments
The communists’ economic program, like their political program, could not be realized immediately, because in 1945 Hungary was in a state of economic chaos worse even than that of 1918. This time the country had been a theatre of war. Many cities were in ruins, and communications were wrecked; the retreating Germans had destroyed the bridges between Buda and Pest and had taken with them all they could of the country’s portable wealth. The Soviet armies lived off the land, and the Soviet Union took its share of reparations in kind, placing its own values on the objects seized. It also took over former German assets in Hungary, including Jewish property confiscated during the Nazi occupation.

A three-year plan introduced in August 1947 was devoted chiefly to the repair of immediate damage. This was declared completed, ahead of schedule, in December 1949. By then the communists were in full political control, and measures nationalizing banking, most industry, and most internal and all foreign trade had been enacted. Hungary joined other Soviet-bloc countries in founding Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) in 1949. The land outside the big estates was not touched at first, but in 1948 Rákosi announced a policy of collectivization of agriculture. Three forms were envisaged: state farms and two types of cooperative. Peasants were forced by various pressures into the cooperatives, the character of which approached ever more closely that of the state farms.

The three-year plan was succeeded by a five-year plan, the aim of which was to turn Hungary into a predominantly industrial country, with an emphasis on heavy industry. Huge sums were devoted to the construction of foundries and factories, many of them planned with little regard for Hungary’s real resources and less still for its needs. In fact, the plan was concerned with the needs of the Soviet Union, for which Hungary was to serve as a workshop. Hungary’s newly discovered deposits of uranium went straight out of the country. Industrial production rose steeply, but the standard of living did not; the production of consumer goods was throttled and that of agriculture stagnated.

The Revolution of 1956
Rákosi—who in 1952 came to preside over the government as well as the party—was, under Moscow’s direction, all-powerful until the death of Stalin in 1953, when a period of fluctuation began. In July 1953 Rákosi was deposed from the prime ministership in favour of Imre Nagy—a “Muscovite” but a Hungarian in his attitudes and not unpopular in the country. Nagy promised a new course—an end to the forced development of heavy industry, more consumer goods, no more forcing of peasants into the collectives, the release of political prisoners, and the closing of internment camps. He introduced some of these reforms, but Moscow hesitated to support him. In the spring of 1955, Nagy was dismissed from office and expelled from the party.

Rákosi was reinstated, and he put the country back on its previous course. He was dismissed again in July 1956, this time from all his offices and in disgrace. The new Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, had sacrificed Rákosi as a gesture to the Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito, whom Rákosi had offended personally and whom the Soviet leadership wished to placate. The new leader, Ernő Gerő, Rákosi’s deputy, was almost as detested as Rákosi himself. Gerő promptly announced that there would be no concessions on matters of principle to Nagy and his group.

The relaxation of pressure under Nagy (though transitory), Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality—delivered at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956—and the Polish challenge to the Soviet Union in the spring and summer of 1956 emboldened Hungarians. On October 23, students in Budapest staged a great procession, which was to end with the presentation of a petition asking for redress of the nation’s grievances. People flocked into the streets to join them. Gerő answered with an unwise and truculent speech, and police fired into the crowds. The shots turned a peaceful demonstration into a revolutionary one. The army joined the revolutionaries, and army depots and munitions factories handed out arms. Outside Budapest, local councils sprang up in every centre. The peasants reoccupied their confiscated fields. The communist bureaucracy melted away. Prison doors were opened. The members of the State Security Authority fled if they could. A cheering crowd escorted Cardinal Mindszenty back to the primate’s palace.

In kaleidoscopic political changes, Nagy resumed power on October 25 but then was driven from one concession to the next. On November 3 he found himself at the head of a new and genuine coalition government representing the reconstituted Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and the revived Smallholders’ Party, Social Democratic Party, and Petőfi [former National Peasant] Party.

The Soviet troops had withdrawn, and Nagy was negotiating for their complete evacuation from Hungary. On November 1 he announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact (to which it had adhered since 1955) and asked the United Nations to recognize his country as a neutral state, under the joint protection of the great powers. Soviet officials were uncertain whether to act or to let matters take their course, for fear of Western intervention. But the growing pressures for intervention from China and neighbouring Romania, Czechoslovakia, and eventually even Yugoslavia; the danger posed by Nagy’s gravitation out of the Soviet bloc; Israeli, British, and French involvement in the Suez Crisis; and an increasing realization that the United States would not risk a global confrontation over Hungary emboldened the Soviet leadership to act. Their tanks, which had halted just across the frontier, began to return, reinforced by other units. On November 4 the Soviet forces entered Budapest and began liquidating the revolution. Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy and Cardinal Mindszenty in the U.S. legation. Gen. Pál Maléter, the Nagy government’s minister of defense, who had been invited by the Soviet commanders to negotiate, was taken captive and eventually executed.

In the early morning of the same day, János Kádár—who had defected from the Nagy government and left Budapest on November 1—broadcast a radio speech wherein he declared the illegitimacy of the Nagy government and proclaimed the formation of the new Soviet-supported “Hungarian revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ government.” It consisted entirely of communists, who now congregated under the flag of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party that had replaced the discredited Hungarian Workers’ Party. The new government was headed by Kádár as prime minister and Ferenc Münnich as his second in command. Kádár promised that once the “counterrevolution” was suppressed and order was restored, he would negotiate for the withdrawal of the Soviet garrison (although the denunciation of the Warsaw Pact was retracted). Having been imprisoned himself by Rákosi’s Stalinist regime, he now dissociated himself from the “Rákosi-Gerő clique” and promised substantial internal reforms.

Most Hungarians, however, were skeptical of these promises, and fighting continued. But the odds were too heavy in favour of the Soviets, and the major hostilities were over within a fortnight, although sporadic encounters continued into January 1957. The workers continued their struggle by proclaiming a general strike and other forms of peaceful resistance. It took many weeks before they were brought to heel and many more months before some semblance of normality returned to the country. The price in human lives was great. According to the calculations of historians, the Hungarians suffered about 20,000 casualties, among them some 2,500 deaths, while the Soviet losses consisted of about 1,250 wounded and more than 650 dead.

Meanwhile, Nagy, who had left his place of refuge under safe conduct, had been abducted and taken to Romania. After a secret trial, he and Maléter and a few close associates were executed in 1958. Many lesser figures were seized and transported to the Soviet Union, some never to return, and 200,000 refugees escaped to the West (about 38,000 of whom emigrated to North America in 1956–57). Thus, a substantial proportion of Hungary’s young and educated classes was lost to the country, including several top noncommunist political leaders and intellectuals, as well as Gen. Béla K. Király, the commander of the Hungarian National Guard organized during the revolution. Material damage was also very heavy, especially in Budapest.

The Kádár regime
In the first uncertain weeks of his regime, Kádár made many promises. Workers’ councils were to be given a large amount of control in the factories and mines. Compulsory deliveries of farm produce were to be abolished, and no compulsion, direct or indirect, was to be put on the peasants to enter the collectives. The five-year plan was to be revised to permit more production of consumer goods. The exchange rate of the ruble and forint was to be adjusted and the uranium contract revised. For a time there was even talk of a coalition government.

The larger hopes were dashed after representatives of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria conferred with those of Hungary in Budapest in January 1957. A new program was soon issued stating that Hungary was a dictatorship of the proletariat, which in foreign policy relied on the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. Further, it was asserted that the Soviet garrison was in Hungary to protect the country from imperialist aggression. Internal reforms were again promised, however, and foreign trade agreements were to be based on complete equality and mutual advantage.

Subsequently, Kádár was at great pains to give the Soviet Union no cause for uneasiness over Hungary’s loyalty. When any international issue arose, he invariably supported Moscow’s policy with meticulous orthodoxy, even sending a contingent into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to help crush the “Prague Spring.” At home he ignored some of his promises and honoured others only superficially. The peasants were so greatly pressured to enter cooperatives that within a few years practically no private farms survived. The workers’ councils were dissolved, but trade unions were later granted rights to query decisions by management. Parliament remained a rubber stamp, and a Patriotic People’s Front (PPF), on which noncommunists were represented, was a mere facade.

The bloody retributions in 1957–59 resulted in the execution of “counterrevolutionaries” (among them Prime Minister Imre Nagy and several of his associates) and the imprisonment of thousands of others. Yet by the 1960s, conditions had changed for the better. Between 1960 and 1963, by way of two separate amnesty decrees, most of those imprisoned for “counterrevolutionary activities” or for the misuse of their party positions during the “years of the personality cult” (i.e., the Rákosi regime) were pardoned and released. At this time the United Nations (UN) ended its debate on the “case of Hungary” and by June 1963 helped to remove the moral stigma from the Kádár regime by the formal acceptance of its credentials at the UN.

Almost simultaneously, Kádár enunciated the principle that “he who is not against us is with us,” which meant ordinary people could go about their business without fear of molestation or even much surveillance and could speak, read, and even write with reasonable freedom. Technical competence replaced party orthodoxy as a criterion for attaining posts of responsibility. More scope was allowed to private small-scale enterprise in trade and industry, and the New Economic Mechanism (NEM), initiated in 1968, introduced the profit motive into state-directed enterprises. Agricultural cooperatives were allowed to produce industrial goods for their own use or to sell on demand, while the private plots of their members supplied a large proportion of fruits and vegetables for the rest of the population.

Contacts with the West were encouraged. A modus vivendi was found with the Vatican and with Protestant churches. The standard of living began to rise substantially. Tourism developed as a significant industry. In addition to a huge influx of foreign visitors—many of them from western Europe, the United States, and Canada—an increasing number of Hungarians traveled abroad. This was especially true after the introduction (Jan. 1, 1988) of “global passports,” which removed restrictions on travel. Income from tourism increased dramatically, yet the net balance was less in Hungary’s favour than would be expected, because Hungarians going to the West spent most of their official hard currency quotas on purchases of consumer goods, owing to shortages and skyrocketing prices at home.

The two decades of the NEM, which went beyond the liberalization that took place in the Soviet Union itself, were only partially successful. Productivity failed to rise according to expectations. Government regulations persisted in many areas, and the economy remained geared to the Soviet-led Comecon. A burdensome system of subventions aimed at keeping down the prices of basic necessities and services and at promoting the production of state-preferred goods made realistic cost accounting impossible. The price rise of petroleum and other industrial raw materials on the world market in the early 1970s also aggravated the situation. The gap grew between the price of energy, sophisticated industrial hardware, and raw materials, on the one hand, and the price of agricultural products, a main item in Hungary’s foreign trade, on the other. Also burdensome was Hungary’s growing indebtedness, which began in 1970 and climaxed in the mid-1990s. By the end of the Kádár regime, the nation’s gross foreign debt to the West had passed the $18 billion mark.

Carlile Aylmer Macartney
George Barany
Steven Béla Várdy


 

Political opposition to reform, including Soviet and Comecon criticism of the NEM, all but brought it to a halt in 1973–78. Administrative interventions by state agencies and party and trade union organizations caused a return to the methods of the centralized command economy under the pretext of protecting the relative earnings of industrial workers compared with those in agriculture or of taxing only “unearned” profits of successful enterprises. Rezső Nyers, the architect of the NEM, was demoted in 1974, only to be brought back to the Politburo in May 1988, at a time of deepening political and economic crisis. By the end of the 1970s, reformers had again prevailed over their opponents. New measures included cuts in the central bureaucracy, encouragement of small firms and private enterprises, revisions of the price and wage system to reflect more closely conditions on the world market and costs of production, and the creation of a commercial banking system.

Reforms of the late 1980s

Economic reforms
The efforts to introduce market reforms into Hungary’s socialist economy extended to the international arena. Already a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Hungary was admitted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1982 and received assistance from the World Bank. Hungary was the first among members of Comecon to enter into agreement with the European Economic Community (later the European Community, now embedded in the European Union). While the Soviet Union remained Hungary’s most important trading partner and the source of its energy supply, Hungary had to turn to the West for technological assistance and capital investment in the process of modernizing the economy. Trade relations with the West, in which Austria and West Germany played particularly important roles, were crucial at a time when barely half of Hungary’s foreign trade involved members of Comecon. Foreign trade constituted a larger proportion of Hungary’s gross national product (GNP) than that of any other Comecon country.

Efforts to adjust Hungary’s economy to the world market were handicapped by the adverse effects of the energy crisis of the 1970s and the de facto reversal of the NEM in the same decade. Although agricultural production continued to advance, in part because of favourable international market conditions, the rest of the economy deteriorated. This process was further aggravated by misallocation of funds, reluctance to abandon costly projects such as the Danube hydroelectric power plant, and participation in joint projects of Comecon. There was also unwillingness to drastically reduce subsidies to inefficient enterprises and for many basic necessities and services, which were kept at an artificially low price level. As a result, Hungary’s hard currency indebtedness by the end of the 1980s was the highest per capita indebtedness of any country in eastern Europe. Inflationary pressures began to build up, and real wages and living standards declined.

The appointment of Károly Grósz as prime minister in mid-1987 led to a program of severe belt-tightening; a harsh, hastily prepared income tax law aimed at cutting consumption; anticipated unemployment in some segments of the economy; and steep rises in consumer prices, transportation costs, and basic services such as gas, electricity, telephone, water, and rents. Minor changes in the party leadership, still controlled by Kádár, and the reshuffling of the government—including the establishment of the first Ministry of the Environment in eastern Europe—eased acceptance of unpopular measures introduced to stabilize the collapsing economy. But, as a consequence of these growing economic difficulties, Kádár’s prestige—which had peaked in the late 1970s and early ’80s and made him the most popular communist leader within the Soviet bloc—plummeted.

Political reforms
By the late 1980s, growing numbers of Hungarians had concluded that years of misgovernment could not be erased by economic reforms alone. The process of de-Stalinization reinforced the desire to reexamine the political premises of Grósz’s program, which seemed to imply that to keep their hard-won personal freedoms Hungarians should pay with economic misery and further social polarization. By the time the annual inflation rate reached 17 percent, public pressure compelled the party conference in May 1988 to replace Kádár with Grósz and also to replace several of Kádár’s supporters within the Politburo and the Central Committee. In November 1988 a young economist, Miklós Németh, became the prime minister, and in June 1989 a quadrumvirate composed of Imre Pozsgay, Grósz, Németh, and Nyers—chaired by the latter—temporarily took over the direction of a deeply split party. In October the party congress announced the dissolution of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and its transformation into the Hungarian Socialist Party. A splinter group of conservatives, under the leadership of Gyula Thürmer, saved a small fraction of the old party under its original name and continued allegiance to its communist policies.

Meanwhile, informal associations, clubs, and debating circles such as the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the Federation of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége; Fidesz), the Network of Free Initiatives, and the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Society proliferated and served as points of departure for new political parties. The Democratic Union of Scientific Workers, supported by a substantial portion of academic and clerical employees of scholarly institutions, was the first independent professional association to challenge the communist-controlled National Council of Trade Unions and to establish contact with the Polish union Solidarity, as well as with organized labour in the West. Filmmakers, writers, and journalists rediscovered their right of free speech, publishers printed manuscripts that had been kept locked up for decades, new periodicals appeared, and the press, radio, and television threw over taboos that had prevailed for more than 40 years.

The 950th anniversary of the death of King St. Stephen I, who led the Christianization of Hungary, was celebrated with medieval pomp in August 1988. It was commemorated in the presence of the primate of Poland, Józef Cardinal Glemp, representing Pope John Paul II. This began the transformation of Constitution Day—introduced four decades earlier under Rákosi—back into the original St. Stephen’s Day.

Major achievements were made in the areas of religious freedom and state-church relationship through the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religion, passed in January 1990. Full diplomatic relations with the Vatican were reestablished in March 1990, and Pope John Paul II made an official visit to Hungary in August 1991. In 1988 the Boy Scouts (viewed as a conspicuously Christian organization in Hungary) was resuscitated, in 1989 the law that had disbanded Christian religious orders in 1950 was repealed, and in 1990 the state began to return to the Catholic and Protestant churches some of their former prestigious educational institutions. The World Jewish Congress held its executive session in Budapest in 1987, and in June 1990 the Hungarian Christian-Jewish Council was established to promote interaction among religious denominations.

The fate of the Hungarian minorities in the neighbouring countries of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, as well as, after 1945, in Subcarpathian Ruthenia (now known as Carpatho-Ukraine), had been a concern of every Hungarian government in the period between Hungary’s dismemberment after World War I and the rise of communist domination following World War II. Territorial revisionism had been a cornerstone of interwar Hungarian foreign policy, and concern for the minorities remained alive among a significant portion of the Hungarians both at home and abroad even after World War II. But this concern did not apply to the communist Hungarian government, which forbade even mentioning this question during the three decades following World War II. The fate of the minorities, however, became an increasingly acute issue after Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rise to power in Romania and his brutal anti-Hungarian domestic policy in Transylvania.

The Kádár regime tried to avoid this question so as not to offend fraternal communist governments within the Soviet bloc, but the ascension of human rights in international politics during the 1970s made it increasingly difficult to do so. By the late 1980s, conditions had reached a point where Hungarian party and government leaders were obliged to join the worldwide public protests against the repression of Hungarians in the surrounding states. They were particularly incensed by Romania’s policy of reapportionment and relocation of the rural population, which, if fully implemented, would have destroyed a large number of ethnic Hungarian settlements and in effect would have advanced the cause of the policy of mass assimilation. By granting asylum to refugees from Transylvania (not only Hungarians but also Romanians and Germans) at a moment of economic insecurity, by tolerating if not encouraging a sharp media campaign and mass demonstrations in front of the Romanian embassy in Budapest, and by submitting formal complaints to international organizations after an unsuccessful meeting between Grósz and Ceaușescu in August 1988, the Hungarian government indicated its determination to take an active interest in the fate of Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries. This policy in defense of human rights, combined with renewed openings toward Austria, establishment of trade relations with South Korea, and resumption of diplomatic relations with Israel (severed since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967), was taken as a sign of a more independent foreign policy, as were the efforts at strengthening Hungary’s ties with western Europe.

All the while, Hungarian American organizations were very active—in advance of the Hungarian government—in trying to turn the attention of world leaders to the plight of the Hungarian minorities in the surrounding states, especially in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Their incessant agitation aggravated and embarrassed the Hungarian government, which soon addressed the issue of Hungarian minorities.

Nevertheless, by the late 1980s this issue created a breach in the leadership of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ (communist) Party, with some of the reform communists demanding greater attention to the plight of the Hungarian minorities. Some also asked for a reassessment of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which for more than three decades had simply been referred to as an “imperialist-inspired counterrevolution.” The first major figure to label that revolution a “popular uprising” (not a “counterrevolution”) was Imre Pozsgay, who, though a member of the Politburo, was already moving away from strict Marxist ideology. He joined forces with a most unlikely partner, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, the oldest son of the last king of Hungary, to sponsor the Pan-European Picnic of Aug. 19, 1989, when hundreds of East Germans who were visiting Hungary breached the formerly unbreachable Iron Curtain and fled to Austria. Within three weeks the Hungarian government had opened the long-closed western border and permitted tens of thousands of East German refugees to cross into Austria on their way to West Germany. This government-approved mass exodus—combined with interviews broadcast by Hungarian television with Alexander Dubček and Ota Šik, leaders of the Czechoslovak reform movement, and with the exiled king Michael of Romania—led to formal protests by the governments in East Berlin, Prague, and Bucharest, but this did not alter the course of events.

The changes on the domestic scene were no less dramatic. They extended to the constitutional framework built since the communist takeover. Guidelines for a new constitution, drafted by the government and approved by both the party and the National Assembly, did not mention the “leading role of the Party,” spelled out by the constitution of 1949. The draft of the new constitution sanctioned a multiparty system that had already been accepted in principle by the party leadership. The new constitution—which transformed the communist-inspired “People’s Republic” into the “Republic of Hungary” and which was promulgated on Oct. 23, 1989, the 33rd anniversary of the Revolution of 1956—was based on the principle of the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers and also included guarantees of individual and civil rights. Many additional changes followed that year, including the creation of the post of president (to be elected by Parliament) in place of the Presidential Council and the establishment of a Constitutional Court to examine the constitutionality of existing laws, decrees, and regulations and to nullify all laws found to violate the words and spirit of the constitution. The National Assembly, which theretofore had served only as a rubber stamp for party and governmental decisions, also underwent significant changes. In its autumn 1988 session, it rejected the government’s budget and then gradually transformed itself into an independent legislature that came to be solely responsible for all legislation.

Important new legislation included amendments to the law of assembly, which granted the holding of indoor meetings without special permission. It also featured a new enterprise law, which allowed the private ownership of businesses with up to 500 employees, permitted foreigners to own up to 100 percent of an enterprise, and allowed mixed (i.e., joint state and private) ownership of property. Also indicative of the new reforms, the government consulted with independent organizations and spokesmen of the opposition in the course of preparing the new laws.

Alternative independent parties and organizations continued to grow in the late 1980s. The first and most prominent among the new parties was the Hungarian Democratic Forum, followed by Fidesz and the Alliance of Free Democrats. Soon several of the traditional political parties that had been destroyed or emasculated by the communists in the late 1940s also emerged, including the Independent Smallholders’ Party, the Social Democratic Party, the National Peasant Party (under the new name of Hungarian People’s Party), the Christian Democratic People’s Party, and finally the ex-communist Hungarian Socialist Party. Their emergence was accompanied by the rise of several partylike interest groups, such as the Historical Justice Committee, the Independent Legal Forum, the Opposition Roundtable, and the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Society. Some of these parties leaned toward socialism, others moved more in the direction of liberalism, still others positioned themselves as agrarian peasant parties, and there were also those that combined Christian Socialism with a big dose of traditionalism.

George Barany
Steven Béla Várdy

Postcommunist Hungary

Political developments
After it had become evident that the existing communist regime was doomed, the transitional government headed by Németh (November 1988–May 1990) began a systematic dialogue with the opposition. This took the form of a National Roundtable (March–September 1989), wherein the methods of a peaceful transition were discussed by the representatives of the government and the major opposition parties. As a result, Parliament passed a new election law, which introduced a system of proportional representation for a unicameral National Assembly to consist of 386 members. Of these 386 parliamentarians, 176 were to represent individual electoral districts, while the remaining 210 seats were to be allocated on the basis of voting for regional and national lists of candidates.

Elections were duly held in two rounds in March and April 1990, resulting in a major victory for a right-centre Hungarian Democratic Forum-led coalition that included the Smallholders and the Christian Democrats and which took nearly three-fifths of the seats in Parliament. The opposition was represented by the Alliance of Free Democrats, which captured one-fourth of the seats, and the Hungarian Socialist Party and Fidesz, each of which garnered fewer than one-tenth of the seats. Because these three parties stood for three distinct ideologies, they were unable to create a united front, which put them at a considerable disadvantage.

The dominant figure in the right-centre coalition was József Antall, who served as postcommunist Hungary’s first prime minister until his death on Dec. 12, 1993. A “liberal” leader, though mostly in the 19th-century sense of the word, Antall favoured an egalitarian and tolerant society. But he also wanted an ordered society with respect for law and national traditions and with concern for the Hungarian minorities in neighbouring states.

Many Hungarians believed Antall made a major mistake when he failed to sweep entrenched communists from the Hungarian bureaucracy, government agencies, and security forces. Initially, these former communists kept a low profile, but many carried out the privatization of state enterprises in a way that lined their own pockets. The former “party aristocracy” became the new “moneyed aristocracy,” some of whom began to move back into the country’s political leadership as well (a pattern that was detectable in virtually all of the former Soviet-bloc countries.)

As a consequence of the difficulties it faced and the problems it failed to tackle, the ruling coalition’s popularity waned after four years in power, and, in elections in 1994, the ex-communist Socialist Party captured 54 percent of the seats in Parliament. In spite of their absolute majority, the Socialists decided to form a coalition with the Alliance of Free Democrats, thus gaining control of nearly three-fourths of the seats in Parliament. This left-centre coalition was led by Gyula Horn, communist Hungary’s last foreign minister, who in that capacity had been at least partially responsible for the policies that led to Hungary’s reorientation to the West and the tearing down of the Iron Curtain. As prime minister, he pursued many of the policies initiated by Antall, including the privatization of the economy and the move toward membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). At the same time, he undid many of the Hungarian Democratic Forum’s cultural policies that had been designed to take Hungary in the direction of traditional patriotism.

The alternation of left-centre and right-centre governments continued in the 1998 elections with the victory of a right-centre alliance consisting of the Fidesz–Hungarian Civic Party, the Smallholders, and the much-reduced Hungarian Democratic Forum, which together controlled slightly more than 55 percent of parliamentary seats. The leader of this coalition, Viktor Orbán, moved to strengthen the position of prime minister. He also oversaw the ascendance to NATO membership in 1999.

Orbán’s greater attention to national issues, including the fate of the Hungarian minorities in the surrounding states, was frowned upon by the Socialist-led opposition. This created an ever-widening chasm between the right-centre and left-centre in Hungarian politics that carried into the 21st century.

In 2002 the tables turned again, after a divisive election with a wide turnout (nearly three-fourths of those eligible voted) brought the Socialist–Free Democrats coalition back to power. The new prime minister, Peter Medgyessy, guided Hungary to membership in the EU in 2004 but also became the first postcommunist premier to resign, after losing the confidence of his party. He was succeeded in late 2004 by Ferenc Gyurcsány, a onetime party bureaucrat who made a fortune in the free-for-all business activities in the 1990s, including profiteering from the privatization of Hungarian state assets. In elections in 2006, the Gyurcsány-led Socialist–Free Democrats coalition became the first government to win consecutive terms since the end of the communist era.

Economic and social change
Even though there were major differences in the ideological motivations of the various postcommunist political parties and governments, they all agreed on the main goals to be achieved. These included the privatization of state-owned assets, the creation of a politically and culturally pluralistic society, and the attainment of membership in the Western community of nations by joining NATO and the EU.

Reforms under the Antall regime left no sector of the economy untouched, as the reintroduction of the market economy demanded a whole new economic and institutional infrastructure. Despite fits and starts, the first postcommunist government liberalized trade, deregulated most prices, and introduced and executed a wide-ranging privatization policy. Within two years of attaining power, it relaunched the Budapest Stock Exchange and a largely independent Central Bank and initiated the most-liberal foreign investment policy among the states of the former Soviet bloc. Moreover, despite the massive dislocation this approach caused, the government also introduced a bankruptcy policy that wrung out many of the inefficient state enterprises from the economy.

Hungarian privatization policy differed from its counterparts in other countries in east-central Europe. The Hungarian government sold off companies on a trade-sale basis rather than adopting the coupon privatization of the Czech Republic, Russia, or, to a lesser extent, Poland. While the government was criticized for selling out the “family silver” to offshore investors, limits were set on foreign participation in the key strategic sectors of energy and telecommunications. This Hungarian approach to privatization was comparatively slower than those of other former communist countries, but it resulted in company-level restructuring that was absent from privatization plans implemented elsewhere.

Ironically, the same government that paved the way for a relatively strong institutional infrastructure for the emerging market economy was simultaneously weak in implementing a stable macroeconomic policy. Hungary suffered from a high debt burden and “twin deficits”—fiscal deficits and current account deficits. In the mid-1990s the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions held the country in low esteem. Lajos Bokros, finance minister for Horn, attempted a turnaround with an austerity package (since known as the Bokros package) that called for the dismantling of the last vestiges of Hungary’s expensive cradle-to-grave socialist policies. He devalued the currency, reduced social benefits, and accelerated the sale of key sectors of the Hungarian economy—such as electricity and gas—to foreign investors. While international financiers cheered these reforms, Bokros himself was widely reviled in the Hungarian press.

These economic reforms brought stability but were not without social costs, including the corruption that characterized the privatization process. State assets were secretly funneled into the companies of political apparatchiks, many of whom were never brought to justice. In consequence of this rapid privatization, property relationships during the 1990s changed significantly. In 1989 about four-fifths of the gross domestic product (GDP) was still produced by state enterprises, but by the end of the 1990s this share had been reduced to less than one-third. The bulk of the private investors were domestic, but significant foreign investment was made by Germans, Americans, Austrians, the Dutch, and the French. Privatization in the agricultural sector was rapid, with more than four-fifths of all agricultural land having moved into private hands by the end of the 20th century—even though a significant portion was not cultivated.

The postcommunist transformation brought about other unforeseen difficulties for Hungary, including the collapse of the country’s traditional eastern markets (Comecon) and the protectionist agricultural policy of the EU. Low-quality Hungarian goods and produce that had previously supplied the uncritical markets of the Soviet bloc now had to compete in the open market. The gradual reorientation of Hungarian foreign trade to the West required painful readjustments and led to trade deficits. By 1997 about three-fifths of trade was with the EU. The difficulties stemming from the transformation resulted in a radical and increasing decline in the country’s GDP as the millennium approached. Double-digit inflation was another bugbear, peaking at 35 percent in 1991 and riding a roller coaster until the end of the century. Inflation affected wages and pensions as well as employment levels, all of which showed losses in the immediate postcommunist period. Some of this unemployment was because of the collapse of the Soviet-bloc markets and the liquidation of many inefficient industrial plants and mines that had been kept in operation by the communist regime through state subsidies simply to hold down unemployment.

The introduction of the free market also resulted in the radical polarization of Hungarian society. The relatively egalitarian society of the communist years had relinquished its place to economic inequality and an increasingly class-structured society, in which the average income of the upper one-tenth of the Hungarian population was many times that of the lowest tenth. By the mid-1990s the living standards of perhaps one-third of the population had declined to below subsistence level. The collapse of the old regime also resulted in the collapse of the cradle-to-grave social welfare system, which had been the hallmark of the communist state. Although of moderate to questionable quality, the existence of that system had supplied a measure of security to the population. All of these changes in the Hungarian way of life were accompanied by the growth of corruption, the rapid spread of narcotics among the young, and a huge jump in the crime rate (between 1985 and 1997 the number of reported crimes increased from 165,000 to 514,000). As a result, beginning even in the early 1990s, a growing number of people began to think with a degree of nostalgia about the world they had left behind. According to surveys conducted in 1991, 1994, and 1995, respectively 40 percent, 51 percent, and 54 percent of the population believed that the “new system [was] worse than the old one.”

Nevertheless, at the turn of the 21st century, many saw the country’s changing nature in a very positive light. In addition to joining NATO and the EU, Hungary had been instrumental in 1999 in reviving the Visegrád Forum of Cooperation, first established in 1991 by the leaders of Hungary (József Antall), Poland (Lech Wałesa), and Czechoslovakia (Václav Havel). Having lapsed in 1994 because of a lack of interest by the Czech political leadership, the Visegrád Forum was revived with the inclusion of both halves of former Czechoslovakia—the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Even more dramatic was Hungary’s integration into the transatlantic world, underscored by the growing cooperation between Hungary and the United States.

In contrast, the rift between Hungary and Romania deepened. Ethnic disturbances in Romania had continued even after the fall of the Ceaușescu regime, and in February 1990 Hungary renounced their 1979 bilateral agreement, which made it impossible for Hungarians in Romania to hold dual citizenship. The continued mistreatment of the Hungarian minorities—particularly in Romania and Slovakia, but also in Serbia and Carpatho-Ukraine—was a lingering issue in the relationship between Hungary and the so-called “successor states.” The situation for the Hungarian minorities was significantly better in Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia.

In 2000 Hungary celebrated the millennium of its establishment by St. Stephen I as a Christian kingdom in the heart of Europe. (The state was actually founded prior to the year 1000, at the time of the Árpáds’ conquest of the Carpathian Basin.) As Hungary began its second millennium as a Christian state, its infrastructure had been rebuilt, its automobile stock increased, its roadways improved, its telephone system modernized, and its businesses updated. Accompanying the inflow of foreign capital and the arrival of major American, European, and Japanese corporations, important native corporations flourished. Shortages that used to characterize communist society had disappeared—albeit at the expense of emphasizing the growing difference between the haves and the have-nots. At the beginning of the 21st century, political conditions had stabilized, and the Hungarian economy had become one of the most competitive in east-central Europe. Assessing Hungary’s transformation at the end of the 1990s, the London-based Financial Times reported, “Hungary’s economy is now able to flourish untouched by political developments…to which no government can do substantial harm.”

Sadly, this projection did not turn out to be quite correct. The Socialist-Liberal coalition government elected in 2002 introduced social-spending programs that created significant problems for the Hungarian economy. By 2006 Hungary had recorded the worst fiscal deficits of any country in the EU, forcing the Gyurcsány government to introduce austerity measures reminiscent of the Bokros package of 1995. The crisis atmosphere that resulted first boiled over in September 2006, with Gyurcsány’s secret speech to the Hungarian Socialist Party, in which he acknowledged that “we did not actually do anything for four years.…Instead, we lied morning, noon, and night.” The ensuing confrontation between the Gyurcsány-led governing coalition (Hungarian Socialist Party and Alliance of Free Democrats) and the Orbán-led opposition (Fidesz) reached a symbolic flash point on Oct. 23, 2006, the 50th anniversary of the Revolution of 1956. While Gyurcsány held a small official commemoration in front of the Parliament Building, an Orbán-led mass meeting on the streets around Hotel Astoria was interrupted by conflict between the police and demonstrators.

Steven Béla Várdy
Nicholas A. Vardy

The Gyurcsány government’s austerity policies—largely undertaken in an attempt to hit the economic benchmarks required for inclusion in the euro currency zone—took further aim at the country’s health care system, introducing legislation in 2007 that restructured hospitals and allowed for private investment in a new system of health insurance funds. While the increasingly unpopular government was successful in reducing the deficit, in the autumn of 2008 the already shrinking Hungarian economy was rocked by an international financial crisis, and the government received a rescue package of $26 billion from the EU, the IMF, and the World Bank. Earlier in the year, more than 80 percent of the electorate had approved a Fidesz-initiated referendum to abolish fees for doctor and hospital visits and university tuition that had been enacted by the government. In March 2009 Gyurcsány, still reeling from this defeat and unable to stem the downward-spiraling economy, announced that he would resign from office, with his tenure set to end on April 14 pending the results of a no-confidence vote scheduled for that day.

As the first decade of the new century moved toward its close, Hungarian society appeared polarized. Despite the general discontent over government mismanagement during a period of European economic prosperity, Hungarians looked back with pride and forward with hope.

Ed.