Nation, State, Europe and national revival in Hungarian party politics: the case of the millennial commemorations

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes This article is based on research for the project ‘“Fuzzy Statehood” and European Integration in Central and Eastern Europe’ (reference L213252001), funded under the ESRC's ‘One Europe or Several?’ programme. The author would like to thank Nigel Hardware, A´gota Scharle, Ga´bor To¨ro¨k and Kataryna Wolczuk for help with research materials; members of the project research team and advisory board, colleagues at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, and participants at the conference on ‘Contours of Legitimacy in Central Europe’, St Antony's College, Oxford, 24–26 May 2002, for helpful responses to earlier presentations of the research; and Judy Batt, Peter Fowler, Graeme Murdock and Kataryna Wolczuk for comments on a final draft. Ma´te´ Szabo, ‘Nation-State, Nationalism, and the Prospects for Democratization in East Central Europe’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 27, 2, 1994, pp. 377–399; Juan J. Linz & Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), ch. 2; Kataryna Wolczuk & Judy Batt, ‘Redefining the State: The Constitutional Process’, in Stephen White, Judy Batt & Paul Lewis (eds), Developments in East European Politics 2 (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998), pp. 83–102; Petr Kopecky´ & Cas Mudde, ‘What has Eastern Europe Taught Us about the Democratization Literature (and Vice Versa)?’, European Journal of Political Research, 37, 4, 2000, pp. 517–539; Judy Batt, ‘European Identity and National Identity in Central and Eastern Europe’, in Helen Wallace (ed.), Interlocking Dimensions of European Integration (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001), pp. 247–262. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 5. Speech at the conference on ‘National Image’, Budapest, 2 December 1999; text at www.orbanviktor.hu as of February 2003. Geoffrey Evans & Stephen Whitefield, ‘Social and Ideological Cleavage Formation in Post-Communist Hungary’, Europe-Asia Studies, 47, 7, 1995, pp. 1177–1204; Herbert Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). For evidence from parliamentary surveys see Ja´nos Simon, ‘Kifele´ integra´cio´, befele´ dezintegra´cio´? A politikai elitcsoportok viszonya az euro´pai integra´cio´hoz e´s egyma´shoz’, in Sa´ndor Kurta´n, Pe´ter Sa´ndor & La´szlo´ Vass (eds), Magyarorsza´g politikai e´vko¨nyve 1997 (Budapest, Demokra´cia Kutata´sok Magyar Ko¨zpontja Alapı´tva´ny, 1997), pp. 669–684; and Ja´nos Simon, ‘A harmadik szabadon va´lasztott … (Parlamenti ke´pviselo˝k orienta´cio´i, attitu˝djei e´s e´rte´kei 1998-ban)’, in Sa´ndor Kurta´n, Pe´ter Sa´ndor & La´szlo´ Vass (eds), Magyarorsza´g politikai e´vko¨nyve 1999 (Budapest, Demokra´cia Kutata´sok Magyar Ko¨zpontja Alapı´tva´ny, 1999), pp. 133–147. For the argument that Hungary's elite divide is fundamentally a left-right one see Andra´s Ko¨ro¨se´nyi, ‘Bal e´s jobb. Az euro´pai e´s a magyar politikai paletta’, Politikatudoma´nyi Szemle, 2, 3, 1993, pp. 94–111. For a recent survey see Igna´c Romsics, ‘Nation and State in Modern Hungarian History’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 42, 164, 2001, pp. 37–60. ‘Bourgeois’ is a more useful translation of the Hungarian word usually rendered as ‘civic’. Both translations will be given in this article (although, as used by those right-wing actors who claim it for themselves, the meaning of the Hungarian term has actually become closest to ‘not [post-] communist’). This article cannot tackle the variety of terms of self-designation used by different parties in the ‘national’ camp. The distinction between exclusion from the Hungarian nation on the basis of political as opposed to ethnic or religious criteria is often blurred, especially as regards the Jewish case. Partly, this is because the concern for Hungarian nationhood, in the anti-communist political sense to be sketched below, brings political elites who do not believe that this form of nationhood can only be achieved through ethnic and/or religious exclusion together in the broad ‘national’ camp with those who do. Moreover, those who hold that Hungary and the Hungarians should be Christian subdivide further into those who would sustain a Hungarian state at least accommodating non-Christian ethnic and religious minorities and those who would not. Secondly, this blurring occurs because the notions of degrees of ‘Hungarianness’, or ‘non’ or ‘anti-nationalness’, and the terms of the critique of the condition of post-communist Hungarian nationhood made across the ‘national’ camp, are likely to be seen by many left-liberals as attacks on ‘Jewishness’, whether or not the ‘national’ actors concerned also assert a Christian conception of the national identity or use explicit anti-Semitic language. This is because of the affinities between this language and that of the ‘Christian–national’ politics of the inter-war period, which helped to turn ‘Jewishness’ into a political as much as ethnic or religious category in the Hungarian context, while also being associated with ethnically based anti-Semitic policies and ultimately Hungary's role in the Holocaust. The underlying issue is that the same terms (and, as we shall see, historical symbols) have different meanings for different political elite groups, a fact which is not without political utility for some of the players involved, while also causing serious difficulties for moderates in the ‘national’ camp. A discussion of the Jewish–Hungarian and anti-Semitism issues is beyond the scope of this article, which also does not aim at a systematic investigation of the different positions within the ‘national’ camp. Rather than a rigorous identification of the Hungarian ‘national’ camp with one specific ideal type presented in the literature, this article aims to establish a general affinity between their activities and a type of politics variously labelled ‘nation-building’, ‘national revivalist’, ‘nationalising’ or ‘nationalist’ by other writers. For the general argument that nationalism is a form of political action in response to and shaped by a particular state context, and aiming at forms of state change, see John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2nd edition, 1993). See especially Knud Erik Jørgensen (ed.), Reflective Approaches to European Governance (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997), Part III; Ole Waever, ‘Explaining Europe by Decoding Discourses’, in Anders Wivel (ed.), Explaining European Integration (Copenhagen, Copenhagen Political Studies Press, 1998), pp. 100–145; Martin Marcussen et al., ‘Constructing Europe? The Evolution of Nation-State Identities’, in Thomas Christiansen, Knud Erik Jørgensen & Antje Wiener (eds), The Social Construction of Europe (London, Sage, 2001), pp. 101–120; Thomas Diez, ‘Europe as a Discursive Battleground’, Cooperation and Conflict, 36, 1, 2001, pp. 5–38. For these see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, 2nd edition, 1991); Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Canto edition, 1992); Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, Sage, 1995). For the historiographical debate about the relative roles of the Pope and Emperor Otto III in Stephen's receipt of the Crown see La´szlo´ Pe´ter, ‘The Holy Crown of Hungary, Visible and Invisible’, Slavonic and East European Review, 81, 3, July 2003, pp. 421–510 at pp. 426–431. Under government resolution 1152/1998, 1 December 1998. The debates took place on 8 and 13 December and voting on 21 December 1999; all parliamentary transcripts and other materials are on the parliamentary website, www.mkogy.hu. The limited, inductive nature of the procedure followed here, and the nature of the case study selected, mean that the bias of this research was towards under-specifying variation within each of the two political elite camps while over-playing differences between them. For a systematic party-by-party investigation which similarly concludes that Hungarian party ideologies yield differing approaches to the EU see Agnes Batory, ‘Attitudes to Europe. Ideology, Strategy and the Issue of European Union Membership in Hungarian Party Politics’, Party Politics, 8, 5, 2002, pp. 525–539. Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, p. 79. See note 8. This interpretation, in which the mainstream ‘national’ camp sees Hungarian nationhood as voluntaristic and separate from citizenship both inside and outside the borders, resolves some of the contradictions identified in his study of the political ideas behind the millennial law by Osamu Ieda, ‘Restoration of St Istva´n’s Crown: Where is the Orba´n Government of Hungary Headed?', in Jan Sy`kora (ed.), A New Dialogue Between Central Europe and Japan (Prague, Charles University Institute of East Asian Studies, 2000), pp. 96–109. However, under the interpretation given here, the act of declaring Hungarian nationality in the census is still seen to be sufficient for membership of the nation only in the case of external Hungarians, not their internal counterparts. One way of resolving this difficulty would be the argument that the census declaration of Hungarian nationality testifies to a greater commitment to the national identity in the case of Hungarians outside Hungary than their internal counterparts, owing to the pressures for assimilation that exist abroad. Speech at the conference on ‘National Image’. On this aspect of Hungarian right-wing thought see George Scho¨pflin, ‘Conservatism and Hungary’s Transition', Problems of Communism, 40, 1–2, 1991, pp. 60–68; Tama´s Fricz, A ne´pi-urba´nus vita tegnap e´s ma (Budapest, Napvila´g, 1997), pp. 19–24. Government of Hungary, Az u´j e´vezred ku¨szo¨be´n: Korma´nyprogram a polga´ri Magyarorsza´ge´rt, 1998, pp. 47–48. Government of Hungary, A nemzeti megu´jhoda´s programja, 1990, pp. 9, 195; Ne´pszabadsa´g, 13 June 1997. Zolta´n Rockenbauer, ‘Magyar millennium’, in Sa´ndor Kurta´n, Pe´ter Sa´ndor & La´szlo´ Vass (eds), Magyarorsza´g politikai e´vko¨nyve 2002, Vol. 1 (Budapest, Demokra´cia Kutata´sok Magyar Ko¨zpontja Ko¨zhasznu´ Alapı´tva´ny, 2002), pp. 106–112 at p. 109. The opposition failed in an attempt at the Round Table negotiations to have the constitutional preamble refer to the nation; see Andra´s Bozo´ki (ed.), A Rendszerva´lta´s Forgato´ko¨nyve. Kerekasztal-ta´rgyala´sok 1989-ben, Vol. 4 (Budapest, Magveto˝, 1999), pp. 148–149. See Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘The Constitutional Basis of Hungarian Conservatism’, East European Constitutional Review, 9, 4, 2000, pp. 51–57. For the changing meanings given to the Crown and its doctrine over time see Pe´ter's exhaustive study ‘The Holy Crown …’; also Ja´nos M. Bak & Anna Gara-Bak, ‘The Ideology of a “Millennial Constitution” in Hungary’, East European Quarterly, 15, 3, 1981, pp. 307–323; Katalin Sinko´, ‘A´rpa´d versus Saint Istva´n. Competing Heroes and Competing Interests in the Figurative Representation of Hungarian History’, Ethnologia Europaea, 19, 1989, pp. 67–83. Pe´ter contends that the Holy Crown doctrine had no sixteenth-century roots and was overwhelmingly a late nineteenth-century invention. There is a particular problem as regards the Holy Crown, as some of those who look positively to the Crown and/or its doctrine are also territorially revisionist and/or anti-Semitic. One of the extreme nationalist, anti-Semitic journals that sprouted in the early 1990s, for example, was called Szent Korona. Its editor was successfully prosecuted in 1993 for incitement to racial hatred; see La´szlo´ Szo˝cs, ‘A Tale of the Unexpected: The Extreme Right vis-a`-vis Democracy in Post-communist Hungary’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21, 6, November 1998, pp. 1096–1115 at pp. 1107–1108. On the two main elite camps' different approaches to history see Fricz, A ne´pi-urba´nus vita … pp. 19–24; and for the ‘what are post-communist conservatives supposed to conserve?’ problem, Scho¨pflin, ‘Conservatism …’. The ‘national’ camp's claims to embrace all of the national past on principle are further undermined because their wish to encourage only feelings of national pride and confidence leads them into their own form of historical selectiveness. Barry Schwartz, ‘The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory’, Social Forces, 61, 2, 1982, pp. 374–402; Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989); Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, pp. 64–68; John Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994); Patrick Hall, ‘Nationalism and Historicity’, Nations and Nationalism, 3, 1, 1997, pp. 3–23; George Scho¨pflin, Nations, Identity, Power (London, Hurst & Company, 2000), pp. 74–78. See Geoffrey Hosking & George Scho¨pflin (eds), Myths and Nationhood (London, Hurst & Company, 1997); Maria Bucar & Nancy M. Wingfield (eds), Staging the Past. The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University Press, 2001). For Hungary in particular see Andra´s Gero˝, Modern Hungarian Society in the Making: The Unfinished Experience (Budapest, Central European University Press, 1993); Heino Nyysso¨nen, The Presence of the Past in Politics. ‘1956’ after 1956 in Hungary (Jyva¨skyla¨, SoPhi, University of Jyva¨skyla¨, 1999); and the survey of nineteenth and twentieth-century Hungarian commemorative legislation by Judit To´th, ‘A jelke´pes joga´llam’, Mozgo´ Vila´g, 2002, 3, pp. 3–12. Edith Markos, ‘The Government Promises the Church more Religious Freedom’, Radio Free Europe Research Report, 13, 38, Part III, 23 September 1988, pp. 13–17. Gyula Teller, in parliament, 3 July 1990. Teller left the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats after it went into government with the main communist successor Socialist Party in 1994 and under the 1998–2002 FIDESZ-led government headed the political analysis department in the Prime Minister's Office. Hereafter, all quotations or citations referenced only with a date come from parliamentary debates. For earlier meanings given to Stephen see Sinko´, ‘A´rpa´d versus Saint Istva´n …’. ‘Europeanisation’ is being used here in a loose sense, to mean simply ‘becoming European’ or ‘joining Europe’, not in the more technical sense of the ‘Europeanisation’ of EU member states' national policies and institutions. 5 March 1991. Ne´pszabadsa´g, 21 August 2000. Ne´pszabadsa´g, 3 September 2002. On the importance of foundational myths see Connerton, How Societies Remember, pp. 45–48; John Gillis, ‘Introduction: Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship’, in Gillis (ed.), Commemorations …, pp. 3–24 at pp. 7–9; George Scho¨pflin, ‘The Functions of Myth and a Taxonomy of Myths’, in Hosking & Scho¨pflin (eds), Myths and Nationhood, pp. 19–35 at pp. 33–34. Ko¨ro¨se´nyi, ‘Bal e´s jobb …’, at p. 106. La´szlo´ Kontler, ‘The Need for Pride. Foundation Myths and the Reflection of History in Modern Hungary’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 41, 160, 2000, pp. 54–74. See Bak & Gara-Bak, ‘The Ideology of a “Millennial Constitution” …’; Sinko´, ‘A´rpa´d versus Saint Istva´n …’. For a contemporary example see the millennial contribution of one of the most prominent ‘Eastern’ theorists, Ferenc Jo´s Badiny, A sordo¨nto˝ a´llamalapı´ta´s (Budapest, O˝si O¨ro¨kse´gu¨nk Alapı´tva´ny, 2000). 13 December 1999. Sinko´, ‘A´rpa´d versus Saint Istva´n …’, at p. 75. For the arguments related to Christianity occasioned in the late nineteenth century by proposals to make 20 August a national holiday see Katalin Sinko´, ‘Az u´j kenye´r u¨nnepe’, in Ma´rton Szabo´ (ed.), Szo¨vegvalo´sa´g. I´ra´sok a szimbolikus e´s diszkurzı´v politika´ro´l (Budapest, Scientia Humana, 1997), pp. 263–271. The customary name is somewhat misleading given that a Numerus Clausus law capping Jewish university enrolment was on the statute book from 1920 (although enforced to varying degrees in subsequent years). For the text of the 1938 law commemorating Stephen see Andra´s Gergely & Ga´bor Ma´the´ (eds), The Hungarian State. Thousand Years in Europe (Budapest, Korona, 2000), at pp. 520–521. The notion of anniversary ‘capture’ is from Zdzislaw Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity: Essays in Political Anthropology (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 107. For an official presentation of 20 August from the high communist period see Ro´bert Ve´rtes, Nemzeti e´s mozgalmi u¨nnepeink (Budapest, Kossuth, 1977), pp. 155–167. For more recent critical scholarship on the anniversary under communism see Sinko´, ‘Az u´j kenye´r u¨nnepe’; A´kos Kova´cs, ‘Az u´j kenye´r u¨nnepe’, Mozgo´ Vila´g, 2002, 2, pp. 3–29. See government resolutions 1089/1996, 28 August 1996; and 2374/1997, 20 November 1997. Quoted in Ja´nos Dobszay, ‘A´lom az a´llamban’, HVG, 24 October 1998. Bozo´ki (ed.), A Rendszerva´lta´s Forgato´ko¨nyve …, p. 42. For the Democratic Forum proposals see the amendments tabled to the draft constitutional principles by Istva´n Balsai and Tama´s Sepsey (H/2252/13) and Boross (H/2252/54); for the Smallholders see Ma´czo´'s 1995 constitutional conception, tabled as T/895, and Jo´zsef Torgya´n, Ha´za´nk holnap: Kisgazda program I (Budapest, 1995), pp. 115–120. See parliamentary resolution 119/1996, 21 December 1996. As already noted, the effort to convert these into a new constitution failed. Bills T/1531 and T/1532, respectively, both August 1999. Government resolution 1115/1998, 18 September 1998. For ‘genre memory’ see Jeffrey Olick, ‘Genre Memories and Memory Genres: A Dialogical Analysis of May 8, 1945 Commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany’, American Sociological Review, 64, 3, 1999, pp. 381–402. Zolta´n Rockenbauer acknowledged explicitly the FIDESZ-led government's wish to emulate 1896 rather than 1996 in ‘Magyar millennium’, at pp. 106–107. For the 1896 millennial see Bak & Gara-Bak, ‘The Ideology of a “Millennial Constitution” …’; Gero˝, Modern Hungarian Society …, ch. 11. For a comparison of the 1896 and 2000–01 millennials highly unfavourable to the latter see Andra´s Gero˝, ‘Ke´t millennium Magyarorsza´gon’, Mozgo´ Vila´g, 2002, 8, pp. 13–24. The proposed amendment, from Istva´n Balsay, was T/1919/4 and the final legislation was Law 1996: XXX, ‘A Honfoglala´s 1100. e´vfordulo´ja´nak emle´knapja´ro´l’, 19 April 1996. Quotes from Attila Va´rhegyi of FIDESZ, Political State Secretary at the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage at the time of the millennial, in ‘Ko¨ve´r lett a FIDESZ elno¨ke’, Magyar Hı´rlap Online, 29 January 2000, at www.magyarhirlap.hu; and Istva´n Nemesku¨rty, the FIDESZ-led government's Millennial Commissioner, and his chief adviser, former FIDESZ press spokesman Zsolt Bayer, both in Dobszay, ‘A´lom az a´llamban’. Cf. Alan Finlayson, ‘Ideology, Discourse and Nationalism’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 3, 1, 1998, pp. 99–118 at p. 116: ‘The nation and its connotations must apply universally, within the nation, but this particular universal is only guaranteed by the declaration of some outside, some other to the nation. To be itself the nation must always produce that antagonistic other which prevents it from being itself’. Bill T/1816, ‘A Szent Istva´ni-i a´llamalapı´ta´s emle´ke´nek mego¨ro¨kı´te´se´ro˝l e´s a Szent Korona´ro´l’, November 1999. The final legislation was Law 2000: I, ‘Szent Istva´n a´llamalapı´ta´sa´nak emle´ke´ro˝l e´s a Szent Korona´ro´l’, 1 January 2000. Tama´s Bauer of the Alliance of Free Democrats, 8 December 1999. The proposed liberal amendment was number 4 in the composite T/1816/59; the Kova´cs–Vastagh amendment was 3 and the other Socialist amendment 5 in the same composite. Amendments tabled by the FIDESZ parliamentarian Ga´bor Tama´s Nagy (10 and 16 in the same composite) also sought to lose the identification of the Hungarian state and Europe as Christian. FIDESZ parliamentarians also voted against a proposal from the Independent Smallholder parliamentarian Be´la Horva´th to mention the taking of Christianity in the title of the millennial law; see his proposed amendment 2 in the composite T/1816/65. On this point see Szo˝cs, ‘A Tale of the Unexpected’, at p. 1104. 8 December 1999. Since 1990 Hungary has signed ‘basic treaties’ exchanging border guarantees for assurances on minority rights with Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania. The phrase was not, however, accidental, appearing also in one of the government resolutions governing the millennial commemorations; government resolution 1152/1998, 1 December 1998. Speaking at the launch of the children's reading and song book commemorating the millennium, Ezer Esztendo˝, To¨ko¨l, 10 March 2000, report at www.orbanviktor.hu as of February 2003. Be´la Turi-Kova´cs, Independent Smallholders, 8 December 1999. See also his proposed amendment 29 in the composite T/1816/59 and the contribution of the Democratic Forum's Ka´roly He´re´nyi, 8 December 1999. The Holy Crown as the embodiment of the Hungarian nation was also the conception in Torgya´n's withdrawn bills T/1531 and T/1532. Author's observation. For this interpretation of the ‘status law’ see Zsuzsa Csergo & James M. Goldgeier, ‘Virtual Nationalism’, Foreign Policy, 125, 2001, pp. 76–77; Brigid Fowler, ‘Fuzzing Citizenship, Nationalising Political Space: A Framework for Interpreting the Hungarian “Status Law” as a New Form of Kin-state Policy in Central and Eastern Europe.’ One Europe or Several? Programme Working Paper 40/02, Brighton, Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, 2002. Bill T/1816. Szila´rd Sasva´ri, 8 December 1999. The relevant amendment was 3 in the composite T/1816/65. Both the liberal opposition Alliance of Free Democrats and Hungarian Justice and Life voted against this amendment in committee, although Hungarian Justice and Life went on to vote for the final legislation; see Ne´pszabadsa´g, 16 December 1999. According to Pe´ter, the intervention of the then President of the Academy of Sciences, Ferenc Glatz, who could not be seen as a left–liberal figure, was crucial in forcing the government's retreat; ‘The Holy Crown …’, pp. 423, 504. Istva´n Zolta´n To´th, ‘A Millennium e´ve´nek megu¨nneple´se’, in Sa´ndor Kurta´n, Pe´ter Sa´ndor & La´szlo´ Vass (eds), Magyarorsza´g politikai e´vko¨nyve 2001 (Budapest, Demokra´cia Kutata´sok Magyar Ko¨zpontja Ko¨zhasznu´ Alapı´tva´ny, 2001), pp. 756–763 at p. 756. The nine included former trade union leader Sa´ndor Nagy, who shortly after went on to found an internal party platform for ‘nationally-committed left-wing politics’; and Ma´tya´s Szu˝ro¨s, Hungary's transitional president and one of the leading proponents of ‘national’ politics in the ruling party at the time of the transition, who left the Socialists shortly before the 2002 elections. Text downloaded from www.mszp.hu on 29 August 2000. See Andra´s Bozo´ki, ‘The Ideology of Modernisation and the Policy of Materialism: The Day After for the Socialists’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 13, 3, 1997, pp. 56–102. T/1816/59, number 3. Downloaded from www.mszp.hu on 29 August 2000. Speech ‘Belief and self-respect’ made at the gala concert, State Opera House, Budapest, 3 January 2000; text reproduced in Magyar Felso˝s, 2000, 7, at www.magyarfelsooktatas.hu/20.7/01.html. This sketch of the millennial programmes is based on the publications of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, Millenniumi Programfu¨zete I and Millenniumi Programfu¨zete II (Budapest, 1999). For official accounts see also Flo´ria´n Kova´ts, ‘O¨sszefoglalo´ a Magyar Millennium Korma´nybiztos Hivatala 2000. e´vi teve´kenyse´ge´ro˝l’, in Sa´ndor Kurta´n, Pe´ter Sa´ndor & La´szlo´ Vass (eds), Magyarorsza´g politikai e´vko¨nyve 2001 (Budapest, Demokra´cia Kutata´sok Magyar Ko¨zpontja Ko¨zhasznu´ Alapı´tva´ny, 2001), pp. 750–755; To´th, ‘A Millennium e´ve´nek megu¨nneple´se’; Rockenbauer, ‘Magyar millennium’; and the official commemorative volume, Magyar Millennium Korma´ny -bizto´s Hivatala, U¨nnepel az orsza´g. A Magyar Millennium Emle´kko¨nyve 2000–2001 (Budapest, Kossuth, 2001). FIDESZ, Van ma´s va´laszta´s: Polga´ri Magyarorsza´g (Budapest, 1998), p. 14. Government resolution 1152/1998, 1 December 1998. Cf. Orba´n telling his audience that ‘it’s not a real millennium without a big millennial exhibition' in a speech at the Gelle´rt Hotel, Budapest, 31 March 2000; text at www.orbanviktor.hu as of February 2003. Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, Millenniumi Programfu¨zete II, no page numbers, section II/3. 8 December 1999. Downloaded from www.mszp.hu on 29 August 2000. Ne´pszabadsa´g, 8 July 2000. See 168 O´ra, 31 May 2001; Magyar Nemzet, 10 November 2001. Speech at the conference on ‘Nemzet e´s Euro´pa’, Veszpre´m, 9 March 2002; text at www.orbanviktor.hu as of February 2003. Presenting his government's programme to parliament, 2 July 1998. Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, Millenniumi Programfu¨zete I, no page numbers, section III/10. See also the section linking the state of Hungarian culture with Hungary's foreign policy ‘room for manoeuvre’ in the FIDESZ 1998 parliamentary election manifesto, Van ma´s va´laszta´s …, p. 51. Remarks at the discussion evening ‘Elo˝nyo¨k e´s ha´tra´nyok az Euro´pai Unio´ban’, 18 May 2000, transcript in Ge´za Gecse (ed.), A´llam e´s nemzet a rendszerva´lta´s uta´n (Budapest, Kairosz, 2002), pp. 244–265 at p. 247. See also Rockenbauer, ‘Magyar millennium’, at p. 110. For evidence of Lezsa´k's greater concerns about integration compared with the dominant Democratic Forum line see his proposed amendments 7, 12, 24 and 28 in composite T/1816/59. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London, Fontana Press, 1993), p. 258. Geertz's dichotomy is applied to post-communist Central and Eastern Europe by Judy Batt, ‘European Identity and National Identity …’. Downloaded from www.mszp.hu on 29 August 2000. ‘Elo˝nyo¨k e´s ha´tra´nyok …’, at pp. 246–247.