The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (Analysis and Documents) by András s> Bozóki (review)

Abstract

772 SEER, 8 I, 4, 2003 beloved by journalists during the I990S of blaming all Slovakia's woes on Meciar and what is sometimes dubbed the country's backward culture. Instead she provides an account of internal Slovak politics which highlights such factors as the lack of qualified personnel in the ministries, the rapidly draftedconstitution, differentdegrees of development in Slovakia'sregions, a Bratislava-basedelite unable to build bridgeswith the mass Slovakpublic and the salience of the national issue over the usual left-right political cleavage. Moreover, she stressesthe importance of Slovakdomestic politics in deciding the country'schances of foreignpolicy success. Two criticisms deserve to be levelled at the book. Firstly, the lack of a conclusion drawing together the book's many insights and venturing some projectionsfor Slovakia'sfuture.(The book stopsratherabruptlyat the end of the concise chapter on economics.) The second criticism should be levelled not at the author, but the publisher. Given the target marketfor the book is described in the front cover as 'studentsof East Central Europe, EU eastern enlargement and post-communist democratisation', one wonders how many sales Routledge imagines it will generate when a 40-page book is priced at no less than ?5o? The book's fate, therefore, is to be condemned to dusty university library shelves, which is a shame, because Henderson's excellent book deservesto have as wide an audience as possible. CREES T. HAUGHTON University ofBirmingham Bozoki, Andras (ed.). T7he RoundtableTalks of 1989. The Genesisof Hungarian Democracy(Analysis and Documents).Central European University Press, Budapest, 2002. xxxiv + 409 pp. Notes. Tables. Appendices. Bibliography .Index. ?39.95. HISTORY matters in Central and Eastern Europe. Given the ideological permeation of history-writingin the Communist era, historians have been particularlybusy since the inaugurationof regime change. Re-examination of the (if with significant exceptions) sterile, mechanistic 'Marxist-Leninist' understandingof historyserveda variety of needs. Among othersit reopened scholarly dialogue, it provided the basis for new school textbooks, while the need to understand, assess, and 'come to terms with' the Communist period itselfbecame an importantelement of the processof 'decommunization'. At the same time history once again became an ideological plaything for politician-intellectuals,who invented and reinvented the past to mobilize the population on the basis of 'identity'or 'symbolic'politics. The most notorious example was provided 'pre-transition',in I986, by the infamous nationalist Memorandum of the SerbianAcademy of Science. This was not to remain an isolated instance, nor was the political use of history restrictedto nationalist intellectuals. Many of those who spearheaded the 'revolutions' of I989 also played a key role in the new politicalparties.They proved more than readyto rewritehistorytojustify and promote theirown politicalpersuasions. This is but one reason for the importanceof the unstintingeffortsof Andras Boz6ki and his team of scholars to document fully the Hungarian Round REVIEWS 773 Table of I989. Hungary and Poland constitute the two cases where round table negotiations between the establishment and the opposition were absolutely fundamental to the path and pattern of post-Communist transformation . Like the Polish Communists, the MSzMP, dominated from midI988 by its reform wing, sought democratization as a means to the perpetuation of Partypower. Unlike the Poles, with whom they held a series of personal consultations, Hungarian leaders were more realistic in their analysis and increasingly sensitive to the growing precariousness of their position. Indeed, the new 'pragmatic,reformist,more enlightened, skepticalcynical generation' (Bozoki and Karfacsony,p. 93) was essential to both the start and the process of negotiations. The party rapidly abandoned its early institutional preferences, including bicameralism. Yet it held on until quite late to the view that it could continue to govern through a coalition arrangementwith the historic parties or with the (subsequentelection victor) the Hungarian Democratic Forum (Klmmardiscusses changing MSzMP strategy,pp.4I-69). The Polish case is only partly documented, and one consequence was the early emergence of a variety of conspiracy theories about relations between Solidarity intellectuals and the regime. The Hungarian Round Table was similarlyan elite affair,with little informationmade availableto the public as to the course of the discussions.Boz6ki'swork ensuresthe wholesale lifting of this veil, for he has overseen the publication in Hungary of eight volumes of detailedprimarysourcematerial,includingminutesandtranscripts.This book in turnprovidesananalyticalsynthesisofvariousdimensionsoftheroundtable process by...