The Hungarian Campaign of the Russian Army in 1849. A Dialogue on the Research Problems

Abstract

The Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849 was a serious challenge to the European global order set at the Congress of Vienna following the Napoleonic Wars of 1815. The unfavourable outcome of the revolution reflected the disinterest of the great European powers, including Russia, in destroying the Habsburg Monarchy, which was seen as the guarantor of the European equilibrium because of its position in the centre of the continent. The focus of the dialogue is on the Russian army's Hungarian campaign in the spring and summer of 1849, one of the largest in the Russian military history of the nineteenth century by the number of troops engaged in it. How realistic was the prospect of the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy and, therefore, of a radical change in the configuration of forces in Central Europe if the Hungarian revolution were to win? What moved Russian Emperor Nicholas I when, after a lengthy period of hesitation, he resorted to military force to aid Vienna, sending a 200,000-strong army under the command of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich, the foremost Russian commander of the day? Was there a chance to resolve the ethnic strife in Hungary that was weakening the revolution in the interests of saving it? How do Hungarian historians assess the decision of the commander of the Hungarian revolutionary army General Artúr Görgei to lay down arms against the numerically superior Russian army? Was it based on the expectation that Russia would mediate the conflict between the House of Habsburg and the Hungarian National Movement? Did the Hungarian campaign bring glory to the Russian arms, and was the intervention in the internal affairs of a neighbouring power in the long-term interest of Russia in terms of foreign policy and geostrategy? What kind of stereotypes do researchers of the Hungarian Revolution and National Liberation Struggle of 1848–1849 have to face; what has been done by historians during last decades, what topics and problems do they consider as priority ones in the contemporary history? What was the historical significance (national and pan-European) of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849, and what perspectives were unrealized by Hungary’s defeat? Wouldn’t the triumph of the Hungarian Revolution have brought about a radical reformatting of the Central European space, a geopolitical shift no lesser, if not more radical, than what happened fifteen–twenty years later with the unification of Italy, the creation of the dual Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the declaration of the German Empire? What place do the events of 1848–1849 have in contemporary Hungarian historical memory? Hungarian historian Ildikó Rosonczy tries to answer these and many other questions in a conversation with her Russian colleague Aleksandr Stykalin.