Hungarian Elites Research Articles

Big Dreams of Small Nations

Even though more than a hundred years have passed since the end of the First World War, the Hungarian historical consciousness has still not been able to fully come to terms with the lost war and its consequences, namely the Treaty of Trianon. One important reason for this phenomenon, which many authors consider to be a „cultural trauma”, is that the „Hungarian national space” imagined by Hungarian national activists at the time of the unfolding of Modern Nationalisms collapsed in 1918, as recorded in the 1920 peace treaty and reaffirmed in the 1947 one. From the outset, the space considered by the Hungarian elites as Hungarian overlapped with the similar visions of neighbouring non-Hungarian national movements, and at the end of the First World War the latter’s concepts were realised – at the expense of the Hungarian. The present essay traces the process of the emergence, competition and reorganisation of Hungarian and rival “national spaces” from the 19th century to the present day.

Rethinking Autonomy: Traveling between Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

AbstractTo improve the validity of our comparative endeavors in ethno-politics, this piece re-examines the relationship between conceptual definitions, categories of classification used in large-N datasets, and thick description found through case studies. It does this through the lens of claims to autonomy by ethnic minorities, and in particular through a detailed comparative case study of what autonomy means as a programmatic goal for ethnic minority Hungarian elites in Romania and Slovakia. Three unexpected findings emerge which make the case for qualitative research to better inform the categories and variables used in large-N datasets (1) there is a weak relationship between the conceptual definitions of autonomy and the way it is coded in relevant datasets like the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset; (2) empirically, the Hungarian comparative case studies show that elites do not think of autonomy in the same way as the conceptual literature nor do their understandings of autonomy easily fit into the coding categories of datasets; (3) there is inconsistency across Hungarian minority elites in their own definitions of autonomy as well as the lack of distinctions between autonomy and other institutional arrangements. This raises issues of equivalence and ambiguity and I conclude with suggestions for better measurement.

Hungarian Nationalism and Hungarian Pan-Turanism until the Beginning of the Second World War

Abstract After the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century, the development and spread of nationalism in Europe began to accelerate. The development of the national consciousness of the peoples living under the domination of the empires in Europe damaged the legitimacy of the empires in Europe and started to threaten the existence of the empires in Europe. These nationalist movements especially affected the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Tsardom, and these regions became areas of nationalist conflict.1 The word ‘Turan’, which is used to describe the Central Asian lands where Turkish tribes live, gained its ideological meaning in the 19th and 20th centuries. ‘Turanism’, which started to gain its ideological meaning in the second half of the 19th century in Hungary, which can be defined as an Asian country in the middle of Europe, has become an ideology identified with Hungarians, Hungarian nationalism and the Hungarian awakening. ‘Hungarian Turanism’, which has undergone many changes in its ideological depiction, was born and strengthened from the search for national identity among economic and social problems in Hungary, which is considered an ‘insecure’ society in Europe due to the threats of Slavic and Germanic elements. Hungarian nationalism and Hungarian identity, which were shaped in an ethnocultural context, evolved from a liberal/political basis to an ethnocultural and pan-nationalist practice. Especially at the beginning of the 20th century, the ‘Hungarian Turanism’ ideology, which started to strengthen with the Hungarian elites and intellectuals focusing on Hungarian national interests, culture and expansionist policies against external threats, led to the emergence of a new nationalism movement, Pan-Turanism. Hungarian nationalism and ‘Hungarian Turanism’ ideology, which started to develop and transform on different grounds, especially after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, became stronger in the interwar period after the First World War and became an important part of the fascist Hungarian parties supported by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

ОСМЫСЛЕНИЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО ОПЫТА ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ С ВЕНГЕРСКИМИ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИМИ ЭЛИТАМИ В СЕРБСКОЙ ЛИБЕРАЛЬНОЙ ПУБЛИЦИСТИКЕ (1861–1872)

Национальная самоорганизация сербов в Австрийской монархии с 1690 по 1867 гг. претерпела значительные изменения в ходе взаимодействия с венгерскими элитами (администрацией комитатов, католическим духовенством, депутатским корпусом Государственного собрания). На материале периодической печати, программных политических манифестов, источников личного происхождения и др. в статье показано, как затяжной сербо-мадьярский конфликт при вмешательстве в него австрийских властей сформировал «стратегию выживания в условиях полиэтничного государства и политическую культуру сербов, базировавшуюся на устойчивой антипатии к осуществляемой концепции развития в Венгерском королевстве единой политической нации. Также представлен новый взгляд на мобилизацию сербского сообщества в условиях принудительной интеграции, наиболее действенными средствами которой являлись популяризация травмирующего опыта взаимоотношений с титульным этносом и его стигматизация путем применения «языка вражды» в пропагандистской компании, развернутой сербскими либералами в 1866–1872 гг.The Serbs’ national self-organisation in the Habsburg monarchy from 1690 to 1867 underwent significant changes in the course of interaction with the Hungarian elites (county administrations, the Catholic clergy, deputies of the Diet). Periodicals, political writings, ego-documents and other sources demonstrate how the Serbian–Magyar conflict against the background of the Austrian authorities’ interference into the inter-ethnic relations resulted in the making of a “survival strategy” in the composite monarchy and crystallisation of a specific political culture of the Serbs, based on a stable antipathy to the triumph of the concept of “natio Hungarica”. The article presents a new look at mobilisation of the Serbian community in the context of forced integration, the most effective means of which were the popularisation of traumatic experience of relationships with the titular nation and its stigmatisation by using the “hate speech” in the propaganda campaign launched by Serbian liberals in 1866–1872.

Looking to the Past to Survive the Future: The Hungarian Minority in Slovakia

This article belongs to the special cluster, “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. With reference to the Hungarian minority’s overarching concern over its declining population in Slovakia, this article reveals how different elements of the past are activated, remembered, and renegotiated to ensure the minority’s cultural survival. Using elite interviews, party documents, and a detailed analysis of two local newspaper archives in Hungarian, I unpack how memory and politics interact in the post-EU accession period. First, I uncover how political and civil society actors use acts of commemoration as a conduit to circulate certain narratives of the Hungarian minority identity. Through remembering historic Hungarian leaders and events, elites affirm and construct the minority identity, thus enabling its cultural reproduction. The Habsburg and Austro-Hungarian Monarchy period is referred to most frequently with the celebration of national heroes. Events spanning the twentieth century are generally mourned as painful and detrimental for the Hungarian minority. While the acts of commemoration are “soft” measures to ensure cultural survival, Hungarian political actors also desire “hard” guarantees through institutional measures, best encapsulated by their desire for autonomy arrangements. However, the Slovak nation’s own past of claiming autonomy and their eventual secession from Czechoslovakia in 1939 conditions the cultural rules around language and the appropriate vocabulary that Hungarian elites can use. Consequently, Hungarian minority elites appropriate the past strategically in two ways. They readjust their tactics through using different vocabulary to claim autonomy and second, they pursue policy reforms across areas such as education and regional development, thus making the de facto possibility of autonomy more palatable to their Slovak counterparts.

The traitorous national periphery: the legacy of identity politics of imperial Hungary in a new eastern metropolis of Czechoslovakia – Košice/Kassa

ABSTRACT The city of Košice/Kassa played (and continues to play) a role in the Hungarian national narrative as one of the most prominent places of memory. Nevertheless, over the course of the First World War, Czech and Slovak political elites assumed the Slovak origin of the majority of local inhabitants. Although the Czechoslovak censuses in 1921 and 1930 already accounted for 60% of local inhabitants identifying as ‘Czechoslovaks’, the ethnic praxis of indigenous autochthonous Slovak speakers continuously featured signs of imperial-era assimilationist identity politics. The main objective of this paper is to situate the local Slovak community within phantom geographies of post-First World War East-Central Europe and to explain the centre-periphery position of Košice/Kassa in the national politics of the Hungarian and Czechoslovak political and intellectual elites. It will also answer the key question of whether Trianon transformed the national landscape of the city as was originally assumed and desired by Czechoslovak authorities. The author concludes that the indifferent attitudes of a majority of local autochthonous Slovak speakers towards the attempts at (Czecho)Slovak nationalization reflects a centuries-long transmitted linguistic-cultural heterogeneity of the local urban milieu, the closeness of the Hungarian border, and a preference for Budapest over Prague and Bratislava. Thus, when speaking about the centre-periphery position of Košice/Kassa, its central position in Hungarian politics and culture made it advantageous for Hungarian national elites to nationalize the ethnic identities of locals and to legitimize claims for a territorial tenure of the city. Pro-Hungarian behavioural patterns and electoral results favouring pro-Hungarian political parties subverted the legitimacy of the Czechoslovak seizure of Košice/Kassa, which was conveniently misused by Hungarian political elites as an argument contributing to the territorial revision of Trianon in 1938.

The foundations of hybrid authoritarian state capitalism in Hungary

Authoritarian capitalist practices are gaining foothold not only in non-democratic states, such as China, but even in countries with strong liberal institutions. From Greece to the US, an increasing number of countries show its symptoms: curtailing democratic contestation in order to stabilise accumulation. Hungary is one of the most puzzling cases. Hungarian elites followed the good governance blueprints of international institutions, implementing liberal political and economic reforms between 1990 and 2010. For long, the country was considered to be a frontrunner of the third wave of democratisation, yet now it is seen as the prime example of the illiberal turn. Orbán’s political-economic model, hybrid authoritarian capitalism institutionalised by the accumulative state, has been stable for eight years now. To understand the emergence, stability and potential vulnerability of this regime, this article digs deeper into the contradictions of post-socialist liberal policies.

Clash of claims: Nationalizing and democratizing policies during the first parliamentary election in multiethnic Czechoslovak Ruthenia

This paper examines the question of why the countrywide 1920 parliamentary election in Czechoslovakia was postponed in its eastern borderland, Podkarpatská Rus, by putting this event into a context of simultaneous processes of democratization and nationalization, described here as the “double transformation.” The territory in question was inhabited by a Ruthenian majority, who received the support of the government in Prague; a Jewish population without clear preferences regarding their loyalties and aims; a still-influential Hungarian minority; and finally, a Czech-dominated state administration. The aim of the state administration was to let the ethnically mixed population of Ruthenia vote for its parliamentary representatives in the most democratic way possible. However, this intention clashed with the realities in place: old loyalties of the local population toward the Hungarian elites, Hungarian revisionism, a lack of governance, and security issues. Complicating the situation, Romanian troops still occupied the eastern part of Ruthenia as a result of the war among Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania in 1919; Romanians claimed part of the territory for their own nation-state. Faced with these thorny issues, the Czechoslovak state administration felt constrained to postpone the elections until 1924.

Elementary school teachers in the national movement. Polish-Ukrainian educational context in Galicia in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century

The profession of a national teacher is considered in the context of the demands of the national movement against the background of aggravation of Polish-Ukrainian controversies in Galicia in the second half of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. Paragraph 19 of the Basic Law on Citizens' Responsibilities and Rights provided for equal opportunities for the development of their own education and language for representatives of all nationalities of the Habsburg Monarchy. Due to the fact that the policy of decentralization of Franz Joseph I was implemented, first of all, under pressure from the Polish and Hungarian elites, the Poles in Galicia considered their own right to fill the intellectual and cultural space freed from Germanization. However, they were opposed by a numerical Russian element, calling for equality proclaimed at the state level. In this context, the issue of public schooling has become extremely acute, because primary school was the instrument that allowed spreading national consciousness among the general public. Particularly contradictions emerged after 1869, when the general school obligation was introduced. Changes in the perception of the role of the teacher are also associated with these transformations. As the lowest level of the intelligentsia, according to national discourse, the national teachers obliged the figures of the national movement to act as mediators between the wider social groups and the intellectual elite. These responsibilities were often at odds with the teacher's educational function and forced him to seek a compromise between national and professional requirements. The choice of a teacher in favor of national responsibilities has often caused conflicts with the school administration and the provincial authorities. The practice of community-based translation also made it difficult for teachers to engage with local communities. The local school board used the transfer of especially active teachers in the national movement to ethnically other communities as a form of punishment for political activity within the school. This meant that the Ruthenian teachers often found themselves in an almost completely Polish environment, and the Poles - in Russian. Such translations adversely affected the quality of work, both because of linguistic problems and moral and psychological pressure. On the other hand, the moment of the teacher's personal values ​​was important. A large number of teachers viewed their profession through the lens of humanism, that is, service without exception to everyone, regardless of nationality. These teachers abandoned the demands of the national movement, provoking condemnation and accusations in the absence of national consciousness. Keywords Galicia, teacher, national movement, intellectuals.

Competitive Civilizing Missions: Hungarian Germans, Modernization, and Ethnographic Descriptions of theZigeunerbefore World War I

AbstractThis article examines writings on theZigeuner(“Gypsies”) by three prominent Hungarian-German scholars—Johann Schwicker, Anton Herrmann, and Heinrich von Wlislocki—as responses to Magyarization pressures, which divided Hungarian-Germans by threatening the traditional privileges of some while offering others opportunities for social advancement. Hungarian and German elites alike castZigeuneras primitiveNaturvölkerin an effort to legitimize reform efforts. By writing about theZigeuner, scholars asserted competing Magyar and German models for modernization and reform. Passionate German nationalist Johann Schwicker called for theZigeunerto assimilate into Hungarian and Romanian culture, arguing that Germanization was beyond their reach, thereby asserting German culture's supposedly superior status as an elite culture. By contrast, Hungarian nationalist Anton Herrmann urged the Magyarization of theZigeunerto strengthen the Hungarian nation-state, denigrating the role of German and Romanian culture. Finally, Heinrich Wlislocki rejected all nationalist modernizing efforts, presenting theZigeuneras a romantic symbol of the premodern age. In all three cases, Schwicker's, Herrmann's, and Wlislocki'sZigeunerbore very limited resemblance to Romani lived experience. Collectively, the writings of these three scholars illustrate both the range of Hungarian-German responses to nationalist modernization, as well as the role of national disputes in shapingZigeunerkunde(“Gypsy Studies”).

National Alcohol in Hungary’s Reform Era: Wine, Spirits, and the Patriotic Imagination

Hungarian elites saw wine consumption as a matter of national pride. The glorification of wine, and particularly of the luxury vintage Tokaji, reflected the economic interest and social customs of the Hungarian aristocracy, whose members tended to see themselves as the Hungarian nation. When liberal reformers began rationalizing the wine sector for mass production and export in the early nineteenth century, wine patriotism also became merged with the economic nationalism of Hungary’s Reform Era. Hungarian wine patriotism involved the denigration of alcoholic beverages other than wine, such as beer and spirits, since Hungarian public opinion associated these other alcoholic beverages with non-Magyar minorities in the Kingdom of Hungary, such as Slovaks, Croats, Germans, or Jews. Hungarian wine patriotism thus also illustrates the rise of Magyar chauvinism, anticipating ethnic conflict in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Failed Eastern integration and a partly successful opening up to the West: the economic re-orientation of Hungary during the 1970s

The article investigates the ‘long 1970s’ (1968–82), when Hungary re-orientated its economic and foreign-trade relations. Hungary was always a promoter of a deepening of Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) co-operation and when it noticed that socialist integration stagnated at the level of the bilateral exchange of commodities, Budapest gradually launched a policy of opening up to the world outside the CMEA. The year 1977 was a turning point in economic policy. Hungarian elites' thought and attitude towards the West changed, but not independently of the world economic crisis and its impact on Hungary. The oil crisis sharpened latent tensions, and behind the robust growth serious problems appeared. Although Hungary intensified its interrelations with the West and the Third World, the country was not able to profit from the advantages of international trade and co-operation. The article is based on state, party and senior economic leaders' archives.

The ethnicity of knowledge : statistics and Landeskunde in late eighteenth-century Hungary and Transylvania

the ethnicity of knowledge This essay discusses the emerging field of statistics in the multiethnic lands of the Habsburg Monarchy. It analyzes how the science of the social realm used ethnographic description (Volkerbeschreibung) to underscore the claims to the social predominance of German and Hungarian elites in Hungary and Transylvania. It is known that the end of the eighteenth century corresponds to the institutionalization of a number of scholarly disciplines in the academic centers of the Holy Roman Empire. These disciplines developed in the framework of the German tradition of state sciences (Staatswissenschaften), as well as the philological, historical and ethnographic fieldwork of German scholars in the Central and Northern Asian territories of Russia. Ethnography as a descriptive and comparative study of peoples emerged thus from a quasi-colonial context in Siberia, to be adopted later as an academic discipline in the institutions of composite and multiethnic states. Both in Russia and the German and Habsburg context the scientific exploration of the human resources served economicadministrative purposes. It had to be the adequate tool of governing social differences, the latter being ‘translated’ in ethno-cultural terms by ethnographers 1 .

Historical Studies of Elite Groups in the Age of Computer Science: The Case of Post-Feudal Hungary

This essay addresses the issue of social stratification, which is the basic organizing factor of life in human communities, since it defines one’s position in any societal environment as well as the fabric or the internal structure of societal togetherness. It deals with one essential aspect of social stratification, namely that of elite formation, taking as a relevant example the case study of Hungary. It is argued that new computer technologies make possible large-scale surveys of elite formation, opening up new vistas for the interpretation of major process of social change that took place in Central European societies. The first part of the essay provides a historical overview of processes of elite formation in modern Hungary. The second part presents an ambitious program of research on the evolution of Hungarian elites from the 1867 “Compromise” with Austria to the beginning of the Communist regime (1948). This unprecedented vast survey was initiated in 2005 and will be completed in 2009. The main target concerns educated elites, but the project also deals with other elite clusters, on a selective basis. The method employed is prosopographical, covering some 200,000 individual biographies. The essay provides a comprehensive description of the technical side of the survey and of the socio-historical scope of the problems it highlights.