Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Political Continuity in Hungary by Jason Wittenberg (review)

Abstract

176 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g and those backing the junta that ousted him, plus a decade when the SW. province ofAdjaria (Ach'ara) was effectivelya self-governing fiefdom under local potentate Asian Abashidze, who controlled all land trade with neigh bouring Turkey (1993-2003). A fractious state and consequential weak central authority facilitated the development of decentralized corruption, based on the long-standing networks of family, friends or other social groupings thathad become a sinequa nonof daily life inGeorgia. After toppling Shevard nadze inNovember 2003,Mikheil Saak'ashvili quickly re-established control over Ach'ara (spring 2004), but S. Ossetia and Abkhazia remain de facto independent (though unrecognized) states. Divergent recent historiesmust have contributed to the different structures obtaining inArmenia and Georgia, and my only slightquarrel with the book is itsacceptance of the view that responsibility for theAbkhazian war laywith the paramilitary leaders of the then-ruling State Council, Tengiz K'it'ovani and Djaba Ioseliani (p. 42), the potted history of whose career in note 8 needs refining. I have long argued that the only logical explanation for this pointless war was the (vain) hope thatGamsakhurdia's supporters innext-door Mingrelia would rally behind Shevardnadze's 'pan-Georgian' flag against the common (Abkhazian) enemy; in other words, I see Shevardnadze's cynical (mis)calculation behind this catastrophe at a timewhen he was immune from criticism in the West. Stefes makes some complimentary remarks about Saak'ashvili, the current Georgian president, in terms of anti-corruption moves but recognizes that ultimately there could be dangers ahead, given the powers amassed in the president's hands ? Shevardnadze too originally came topower as Party Boss in Georgia in 1972 as an anti-corruption campaigner. The book should be a valuable eye-opener for all interested in the region, where ignorance has too often determined policy. Occasionally a wrong word or syntactic construction has crept in, but these are minor distractions. Department of Near & Middle Eastern Languages& Cultures B. G. Hewitt SOAS, UniversityofLondon Wittenberg, Jason. Crucibles ofPolitical Loyalty: Church Institutionsand Political Continuity in Hungary. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2006. xiv + 293 pp. Tables. Figures. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. ?45-00. This, the firstbook by a young American political scientist,has the rare dis tinction of having considerable value to scholars working indistinct academic disciplines. In examining theChristian churches' resistance to theHungarian Communist regime, and the influence they had on shaping current party affiliations, this study has an importance for both historians and political scientists of post-World War Two Hungary and should be of interest to any scholar studying Communist and post-Communist regimes. REVIEWS 177 This study derives its double appeal by explaining why traditional party loyalties in Hungary endured the revolutionary transformation of society brought about by theCommunist regime that governed the country between 1948 and 1989. Not only did the elections of both 1948 and 1990 result in a victory for the parties of 'the right' but also, as this study carefully demon strates, an examination of voting preferences on a local level reveals remark ably strong continuities between pre- and post-Communist election outcomes. In spite of the socio-economic and generational changes that took place inHungary under the Communist regime, many localities inHungary sup ported precisely the same type of parties in 1990 that they had supported forty-twoyears earlier. The key to explaining these continuities, this study argues, lieswith the Christian churches which, in spite of the Communist regime's secularizing efforts, retained their influence on, and continued to shape the voting preferences of, the Hungarian electorate. To demonstrate how the churches were able to retain their influence, the author has made profitable use of local and church archives (supplemented by additional research in theHungarian National Archive) to examine how, in two sample counties, theChristian churches resisted the secularizing pressures of the Communist regime. The close examination of these two counties situ ated at opposite ends of the country, the one (Zala) predominandy Catholic, the other (Hajdu-Bihar) predominantly Calvinist, enables this study toprovide a compelling account of how both the Catholic and Calvinist churches provided a viable alternative to theCommunist regime. The picture of church state relations that...