Kovács , János Mátyás Trencsényi , Balázs Brave New Hungary: Mapping the ‘System of National Cooperation’ (review)

Abstract

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 384 A fascinating piece by Jonathan Webber, ‘A Jew, a Cemetery, and a Polish Village: A Tale of the Restoration’, in many ways concludes the practices of remembering and recovering Jewish space through a detailed discussion of the extreme complexities and challenges faced by those who carry out even a relatively simple project, such as erecting a fence around a small Jewish cemetery without visible traces of tombs in the village of Brzostek. As Webber points out, ‘the strongly educational element of the entire Brzostek project has confirmed that energetic intercultural dialogue can genuinely help a recovery of history and a reconciliation with the past, which can amplify personal and communal identities in fruitful ways’ (p. 259), despite stereotypes on both sides. These two volumes provide an insightful and penetrating contextualization of the dramatic process of change in post-Communist Poland, with its desire for the Jewish presence to become a ‘normalized’ part of a pluralistic, modern society that is not afraid of learning about its past. More importantly, however, the books strongly imply a new future for Jews not just in Poland but also in the spaces of history, mutual understanding and greater cooperation. UCL SSEES Katarzyna Zechenter Kovács, János Mátyás and Trencsényi, Balázs (eds). Brave New Hungary: Mapping the ‘System of National Cooperation’. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York and London, 2020. ix + 449 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. $130.00: £100.00. This is a useful collection of articles on an important issue in contemporary European politics — the question of what to do about the authoritarian, self-described ‘illiberal democracy’ constructed in Hungary since 2010 by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats). Most of the nineteen contributors are Hungarian, many from Hungary’s academic diaspora, including historians, political scientists, economists and sociologists. The editors make clear their Orbán-critical standpoint and desire to defend liberal values, while being keen to avoid ‘using emotional language’ (p. 2). Renáta Uitz focuses on the ‘Declaration of National Cooperation’ issued by the new government in 2010, and its sequel, the Fundamental Law of 2011, which became Hungary’s new constitution and the basis for the socalled ‘System of National Cooperation’ (SNC). Uitz makes a clear case for the Fundamental Law’s importance as a driving force behind government policies on all fronts, explaining the extreme legalism of Fidesz’s approach, which creates a framework for justifying the suppression of dissenting voices. Everything since has been done gradually, but with great underlying purpose. REVIEWS 385 Ferenc Laczó examines the SNC’s ‘politics of history’, providing a survey of who’s who in historical scholarship, and how the historical profession has been politicized by a regime obsessed with rewriting the historical record. The rise of a neo-nationalist narrative is mirrored by the decline, or absence, of a coherent liberal vision. Laczó focuses on Holocaust commemoration, which has become debased by the attempt to blame everything on the occupying powers, whether Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, and on ‘honoring the victims without casting doubts on nationalist visions of history’ (p. 42), by playing down Hungarian participation in the mass murder of Jews. There is a glancing reference to the role of Mária Schmidt, ‘the leading memory activist of the Hungarian Right’ (p. 43), although more could have been said about this particular ideologue. Virág Molnár discusses non-government organizations (NGOs) and Fidesz’s campaign against ‘foreign agents’. Orbán, taking a leaf out of Vladimir Putin’s book, has made a habit of penalizing and driving out of Hungary any NGO receiving funds from foreign donors, and regardless of its purpose. An early victim was Ökotárs, a non-profit environmental organization which the government baselessly accused of financial irregularities, before ordering a police raid on its premises in 2015 and eventually shutting it down. The refugee crisis of 2015 provided Orbán with even greater justification, as he saw it, for cracking down on NGOs seeking to help refugees and asylum-seekers, accusing such groups of being funded by the Hungarian Jewish émigré tycoon and philanthropist George Sörös for his...