Rustica Nova. The new countryside in Hungary at the turn of the millennium

Abstract

This paper comprehensively presents the complex transformation of rural Hungary after the turn of the millennium. The post-socialist land re-privatization provided land to more than 2 million families, but by the time of EU accession (2004) a highly concentrated large estate structure had already developed. The number of the village population decreased somewhat, but its proportion remained high at around one-third, together with rural towns people 50% in Hungarian society. Despite the surviving and hybrid structures, depeasantization, the disappearance of the traditional peasantry, took place, as a result of tourism, the new type of town-village relations, the cultural reinterpretation of the countryside and its traditions began, but the social disadvantages are still more strongly concentrated in the villages than in the cities.