Eastern Europe

A reader reports from Hungary One of the perks of living in Hungary is not having to ask your grandparents: “What was it like living in a one-party state?” — because you already know. You see outrageous government propaganda everywhere. You see the posters of the crowds of refugees – excuse me: “migrants” — which would have you believe that they are out for Hungarian blood. You hear the endless droning speeches denouncing the treacherous liberals, and the sinister conspiracies trying to undermine Hungary. You turn on the TV, switch to the right wing propaganda channel of your choice, and you...

With the death of Ágnes Heller on 19 July an era in Hungarian politics has come to an end. She was one of the last links to the Hungarian Marxist György Lukács and the so-called Budapest School of the 1960s, which consisted of a number of his former students, including Heller’s husband Ferenc Feher. Born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Heller survived the Holocaust. Her father – an inspirational figure who helped many Jews to survive – perished in the final months of the war. After 1945 she enrolled at university and joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1947 after hearing Lukács give a...

Thanks to John Cunningham for this list... Aczel, Tamas (ed.) Ten Years After: The Hungarian Revolution in the Perspective of History. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. Bekes, Csaba, et al. (eds.) The 1965 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents. Budapest: CEU Press, 2002. Cox, Terry (ed.) Hungary 1956 – Forty Years On. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Dent, Bob. Budapest 1956: Locations of Drama. Budapest: Könyvkiad, 2006. Litvan, György, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt and Repression 1953-1963. London: Longman, 1996. Lomax, Bill. ‘Twenty Five Years After 1956: The...

In September 1847, before they had even written the Communist Manifesto , Karl Marx and Frederick Engels declared: “If a certain section of German socialists has continually blustered against the liberal bourgeoisie, and has done so, in a manner which has benefited nobody but the German governments... then the Communists have nothing in common with [them]”. Marx and Engels rarely quoted their own earlier writings. They considered that article so important that they cited it again in 1865. Breaking off collaboration with a socialist newspaper in Germany (launched in the tradition of Ferdinand...

The Orban government in Hungary has removed the statue of Imre Nagy in Budapest in a overnight secret operation. Nagy was the liberalising Stalinist who was returned to power by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He was overthrown by the Russian invasion which put down the revolution, and then executed in 1958. Nagy is not our hero. For most of his career he was a Stalinist apparatchik. But for many Hungarians he is a symbolic martyr of the Hungarian revolution. In 1989, he was rehabilitated under popular pressure and 200,000 people turned out for his reburial. That was a key event in the...

For part one click here In the last part of this article I looked at how Bibó analysed the historical background of antisemitism in Hungary. But on a more general level what makes an anti-semite “tick”? Bibó begins by considering the personal experiences of anti-semites, “[…] anyone who knows anti-semites even a little, knows that they base their claims about Jews on very personal experiences, presented in honest and passionate form. It would be incorrect to claim that they invent their experiences because of their shared prejudices, interests and ideologies; there are indications that the...

Even right-wing media outlets like the Spectator have denounced the Tory MEPs who recently voted against or abstained on the European Parliament initiating Article 7 proceedings against Hungary. That procedure allows MEPs to refer a member-state to the Europe Council to determine if it does not respect human rights, democracy, rule of law and so on. But this is hardly news! Since being elected in 2010 the Fidesz government of Viktor Orbán has: • Rewritten the constitution so that key checks and balances (including judicial ones) on executive powers were removed. • Bought up the media. This...

For part two click here Bibó was not a Marxist but a member of the National Peasant Party (NPP) — a party of radical reformists who adhered to a political position which was loosely described as “the third road” (or “third way”): neither Communist (i.e. Stalinist) or capitalist. It was, in effect, left-reformist and probably closer to the politics of Bennism (but with an agrarian orientation) than anything else to which it could be compared in the UK today. That political stream had a short existence from 1939 to 1948. In the Hungarian elections of 1945 the NPP won 42 seats in the National...

It is 90 years since the death of the Hungarian Communist Jenö Landler. His is not a name that will evoke much response today. He did not leave a written legacy but he was one of those who work tirelessly behind the scenes and never occupy the spotlight. Without him and countless thousands of other unsung activists where would we be today? They too should be remembered and honoured along with the “big names”. Landler was born in Gelse in Hungary in 1875, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained in early life as a lawyer but quickly attached himself, to the rapidly growing Hungarian...

For a single democratic Palestinian state I would like to express some thoughts relating to the article ‘Gaza mobilising for an internationalist response’ by Martin Thomas and your editorial ‘For an independent Palestine alongside Israel’ (Solidarity 466) I find it hard to see how the 1947 partition could ever have successfully established two separate states within such a relative small and narrow geographical area, both dependent on the same scarce natural resources, and each by definition with their own armed state machines inherently hostile to each other. Even harder with all the history...