Old Hats and Closet Revisionists: Reflections on Domokos Kosáry's Latest Work on the 1848 Hungarian Revolution

Abstract

SEER, Vol.8o, No. 2, April2002 Review Article Old Hats and ClosetRevisionists:Reflectionson DomokosKos'ary's LatestWorkon the I848 HungarianRevolution LASZLOPETER Kosary,Domokos.Magyarorszag e's a nemzetkozi politika i848-i849-ben. Historiak6nyvtar,Monografifak ii. MTA Tortenettudomanyi Intezete,Budapest,I99. THEpublicationof DomokosKos'ary's Hungary andInternational Politics ini848-i8491 offersanopportunity to examineHungarian historians' changingviews, since the Second WorldWar, about that brilliant apogeeoftheircountry's history: the I848revolution. Thisbookoffers an overviewof the whole subjectwhichno otherbookwrittenon a widescalehasofferedin recentyears,rathermorethanwhatitstitle promises.Itsauthorisfullyawareoftheextenttowhichhistorycanbe understoodas historiography andhe criticallydiscussesotherhistorians ' works.Moreover,Kos'ary,the eighty-eight-year-old Nestor of Hungarianhistoriansand the formerpresidentof the Hungarian AcademyofSciences,hasovertheyearsearnedthereputation ofbeing thearch-revisionist ofnineteenth-century Hungarian history. A convenientway to accountforKosary'srevisionist viewsis to explorefirst sometraditional assumptions andviewsheldaboutthesubjectandalso theirmodifications overtheyears,beforediscussing Kos'ary's workand reportingon wherethe argumentstandstoday.Kos'ary's revisionism has preyed on (if that is not an unkinddescription)two (partly overlapping) vocabulariesof interpretation. Again, for convenience sake(andtreadingin the stepsof geologists) I shallstartwiththe still visible,becausemorerecent,MarxistOldHatvocabulary whichrests on someolderinveterateIndependentist Old Hat assumptions thatI shallreviewsubsequently. Interestinthe I848revolution isundiminished inHungary. Theone hundredandfiftiethanniversary2 wasa greatboosttopublications but Laszl6 Peter is Professor Emeritus of Hungarian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. ' Domokos Kosary, Magyarorszag es a nemzetkdzi politika I848-I849-ben, Budapest, I999 (hereafter, Kosary, Magyarorszdg). 2 More than 250 publications appeared on the I soth anniversary of the I848 Hungarian revolution, according to Robert Hermann in Buksz,Budapest, 3, 2000, p. 264. OLD HATS AND CLOSET REVISIONISTS 297 the interest has been constant over the years.3Historians are eager to meet the public's unquenchable demand for books on I5 March, the first Hungarian ministry, the National Assembly and, above all, the Warof Independence. Quite rightlyso:thesewere the formativeevents at the birth of modern Hungary. As Andras Gergely observed, afterSt Stephen's reign, the I848 revolution was the most significantturning point in the country's history;4it has become emblematic of national identity. The revolution (always in the singular rather than plural) is creditedwith the creation of Hungarian civil society out of legally and culturally diverse social groups; it became a focus for national aspirationsto attainindependence;anditstragedywasthatitgenerated conflictsand civilwar within the kingdombetween the Hungarian and the rivalSlav and Romanian movements. Partlybecause these three themes have ever since I848 impinged on perennial concerns, it is not surprising that most writings on i 848 followwell-troddenpaths. Historiansareworkingon hallowed ground; their attitudes towards established views are duly deferential. They have learnt from Alexander Pope: 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread'. And yet a closer look at some of the historians'works reveal markedchanges in outlook and new concerns of interestalthough, and this is a vital qualification, the revision of traditional views is mostly covert rather than explicit. Indeed the changes have not altered the historicalperspective from which I848 is evaluated. The practitioner who departsfromone or anotherof the Old Hat assumptionsis usually a closet revisionist. There is a palpable change in that historianshave tacitlyabandoned the Marxist frame of reference based on the idea of 'revolutionary progress'. That interpretation, established after I947, distinguished three political trends:the revolutionary(Kossuthand the radicals),the 'liberal' (the Batthyany ministry and the Assembly'smoderates;later, the Peace Party in Debrecen) and finally, the long list of counterrevolutionaries : the Court, the aristocracy, the Catholic bishops, General Lederer, Baron Josip Jelacic, the Palatine, General Gorgey, the Slav and the Romanian movements. On this basis attitudeswere contrastedaspatriotic,or 'wobbly',5or treacherous.In allocatingthese labels historiansfreelymixed up anti-Viennese nationalismwith social radicalism on the grounds that European revolutionary progress 3 See the comprehensive review of the Hungarian historical literature on the subject by Robert Hermann, 'Az I 848-49-es forradalom es szabadsagharc a magyar tortenetirasban', Aetas, I 999, I -2, pp. 62-85 (hereafter, Hermann, 'i 848-49'). 4 Andras Gergely, Egy nemzetet az emberisegnek, Budapest, i987, p. 485. Robert Hermann refers to the revolution as a 'most important chapter in Hungarian history', 'I848-49', p. 62. 5 Ingadozo or megalkuvo(appeaser). 298 LASZLO PETER happily'coincided'(thecriticalverb)withthe struggleforHungarian national independence just as any diminution of Hungarian independence was ipsofactocounter-revolutionary. Politics lay at the roots of this revolutionary rhetoric. The regime established by the communist takeover in 1947 faced an...