Hungarian Events Research Articles

Online solutions and sustainability in festival tourism

The article describes the activities of the Arts for Rural Development Foundation and the Hungarian Tourism Programme Foundation (MTPA) and details how they support online solutions for festival tourism and sustainability. By means of examples, the Arts for Rural Development Foundation shows how festivals can be a tool for rural development. The Valley of Arts Festival and the Kerekdomb Festival are outstanding examples of cultural events which have had a long-term impact on the region’s economy and community. The Foundation’s mission is to boost the economy of rural areas and to preserve and promote local cultural and built heritage. Involving volunteers and partners, excellent communication and sustainable methods, the events actively support rural development. The MTPA focuses on the development and competitiveness of the domestic events sector by providing professional materials, conferences and international contacts. RaKÉTa supports the professional development of event organisers and the coordination of events through a scholarship programme and a unique calendar of events. The Valley of Arts Festival’s sustainability strategy reduces its environmental footprint through a range of environmentally friendly solutions, supporting public transport and making progress on waste management. The MTPA also focuses on training event organisers and increasing their international visibility, helping the Hungarian events sector to grow and become more competitive.

Trends of educational theatre practices in Hungary: Effects, impacts, contents, central issues and opinions

During the second half of the 2012–13 theatre season, we mapped all then-existing educational theatre practices in Hungary against a standardized set of criteria. We contacted a total of 298 institutions and observed 118 programmes in person. For each programme, we collected data from six sources: children or youth participating in the programmes; teachers accompanying the participants; organizational contact persons; creators/performers of the programmes; observing of the programmes by independent observers; and secondary research on the internet. In this article, we present an interpretative qualitative analysis of the findings. Covered areas include whether a programme could alter prejudice and bias, whether post-show workshops can find solutions to issues raised by theatre performances and whether participant children and youth can link performances and programmes to current Hungarian events.

The role of Czechoslovakia in the Revolution of 1956 and in the consolidation of the Kádár regime

Czechoslovakia’s attitude to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is a little-known story, even if there have been a few works on the subject in the last three decades. However, these papers have presented either exclusively the reaction of Czechoslovak (Prague) or Slovak (Bratislava) political leaders to the events. This study promises more than that. It is the first attempt to present, in a complex way, not only the documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), but also the documents of the Czechoslovak Peo- ple’s Army, the Interior Ministry and the economic documents, in order to show how Czechoslovakia reacted to the Hungarian Revolution and how it helped the Hungarian government headed by János Kádár, which was formed after the suppression of the Revolution, in the process of consolidation. The aim of this paper is to provide a synthesis of thousands of pages of documents from the archives of Prague and Bratislava relating to the events of the Hungarian Revolution and to answer the question of the role played by the Czechoslovak political, military, interior and economic leadership in the Hungarian events.

Amerikai-Magyar Ödüsszeia – Avagy a szülőföldtől szülőföldig, a fogadott hazán keresztül: gondolatok Ludányi András Amerikai életutam: A második világháborútól a 21. századig c. könyvéről (2020)

Although the eighty-year-old writer defines the genre of his work as an essay, it is a work that pushes genre boundaries genre, as it is at once an autobiography, oral history in written form, political history, a family novel, and an entertaining read, rich in humorous stories. Ludányi, a documentarist, names specific dates, people and events, thus adding color to the American and Hungarian events of the second half of the twentieth century through his lived historical experiences. His memoir is substantial, rich in personal and historical data, and provides interested readers with a valuable documentary source.

THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION OF 1956 IN THE KGB DOCUMENTS: THE CASE OF TWO ARCHIVES

The article deals with the general analysis of documents on the history of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which are in the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Archive of Transcarpathian Oblast. It is the first attempt to show the documents about the deportation of Hungarian citizens to the Soviet Union and to present the reactions of the local Transcarpathian Hungarian nation to the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and it also highlights the actions of the authorities that were aimed at the purposeful total ideological control and thus influenced the formation of the general public’s opinion about the surrounding events. The main aim of the study is to show the deportations of the Hungarian revolutionists to the Soviet Union in 1956 through archival documents and to introduce the political leaflet distributor groups in Transcarpathia, which were formed during the Hungarian war of independence in 1956. There are archival documents containing different data about the behavior of the Hungarian population in Transcarpathia related to the Hungarian events. The documents also provide information about the punishments that concerned the Hungarian groups engaged in politics. These documents reveal that the political general headquarters in Uzhhorod had been operating for a long time after Hungary was invaded by the command of Moscow. It is possible to argue that the process of exploring the sources relating to the retaliation after the revolution of 1956 has not been finished yet, there are still hundreds of archival documents, mainly in Ukraine and in the former Soviet Union Archives, which still need to be explored. However, besides getting to know the real facts of the history of the Revolution in 1956, it is important to perceive that, despite the oppression, there were people in Transcarpathia too, who dared to be brave, to believe, and protest. And there were ones who paid with their lives for justice. Because of participating in the revolution, many people were arrested, sentenced, imprisoned, deported, and executed. Their truth and role should be clarified.

The Yugoslav factor in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and its impact upon Yugoslav-Soviet relations

This article is dedicated to the process of normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet relations, which took place on the background of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The goal consists in identification of causes for the absence of strong negative influence of the Yugoslav factor in the Hungarian events upon the relations between the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Using the analysis of a wide array of sources and systematic consideration of the international situation that formed in 1956, the authors characterize the dynamics and vector of Yugoslav-Soviet relations during this period, determine the degree of impact of the Yugoslav factor in all its manifestations upon the development of Hungarian events, as well as trace the influence of the Hungarian Revolution upon Yugoslav-Soviet relations. The scientific novelty of this research consists in the analysis of direct and indirect participation of Yugoslavia in the conflict, which has been traditionally regarded as the conflict between the Soviet Union and Hungary alone. The conclusion is made that in 1956, the Soviet Union sought to unite the socialist countries on the background of tense foreign policy situation, trying to overcome the consequences of the conflict of 1948 and “attach” Yugoslavia to the bloc. Despite the fact that such intentions were jeopardized by the events of 1956 due to a range of controversial steps taken by Belgrade, Moscow did not immediately turn to public criticism of the Yugoslavs, as the mutual cooperation between the two countries was rather advantageous that the return to the situation of 1948 – 1953.

Political Readings of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Portugal

The 1956 Hungarian revolution had a resonant echo in Western Europe, gaining large attention and media coverage. This article explores how the small, peripheral Atlantic country of Portugal, on the other side of the European continent (Lisbon lies more than 3,000 kilometers from Budapest), which was under the rightwing conservative dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar’s New State at the time, became interested in the Hungarian events, allowing them to be written about in the most influential newspapers. The article begins with a discussion of the basic context of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and of the Portuguese political context in the mid-1950s (the Salazarist regime and the bulk of the oppositional forces) and then offers an analysis of articles found in seven important Portuguese newspapers. Essentially, it presents a survey of the coverage of the Hungarian Revolution in the Portuguese press and explores how those events were interpreted and how they had an impact on the ideological readings and positions of the government, the moderate opposition, and the radical opposition of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). The 1956 revolution merited extensive coverage in the Portuguese papers, with titles, pictures, and news boxes on the front pages sometimes continuing into the next pages of a given paper or on the last page. The stories were narrated, for most part, in a lively, fluid, sentimental, and apologetic language. The New State in particular, but also moderate publications which were oppositional to Salazar, endorsed the Budapest revolutionaries and criticized and denounced orthodox communism in the form of Soviet repression, either in the name of Christendom, national independence, and the Western European safeguard against communism (in the case of Salazarism), or in the name (and hope) of a democratic surge, which would usher in strident calls for civil liberties (in the case of oppositional voices). With the exception of the press organ which voiced the official position of the Portuguese Communist Party, supporting the Soviet response against the Hungarian insurgents (and thus was in sharp contrast with the larger share of public opinion), there was a rare convergence, despite nuances in the language, in the images, narratives, messages, and general tone of the articles in the various organs of the Portuguese press, which tended to show compassion and support for the insurgents in Budapest because their actions targeted communism and tended to decry the final bloody repression, which exposed the Soviet Union as a murderous regime.

ОСМЫСЛЕНИЕ ВЕНГЕРСКИХ СОБЫТИЙ 1956 г. В РОССИЙСКОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕ

ОСМЫСЛЕНИЕ ВЕНГЕРСКИХ СОБЫТИЙ 1956 г. В РОССИЙСКОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕ

Polio Across the Iron Curtain: Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic by Dóra Vargha

Reviewed by: Polio Across the Iron Curtain: Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic by Dóra Vargha Donna Harsch Dóra Vargha. Polio Across the Iron Curtain: Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic. Global Health Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xii + 260 pp. Ill. $105.00 (978-1-108-42084-6). Dóra Vargha's well-documented and clearly argued monograph is a welcome addition to the historiography on polio outside the United States and, more generally, to the history of medicine and public health in Socialist Eastern Europe. The book draws on primary sources from thirteen archives and libraries, including Hungarian repositories, an Albert B. Sabin collection, World Health Organization records, and International Committee of the Red Cross documents. It incorporates eyewitness accounts from fifteen people interviewed by Vargha. It offers a very interesting analysis of the intense coverage of polio by the Hungarian press. Last but not least, it weaves in information and arguments from a multitude of secondary studies. From this material, Vargha reconstructs a many-sided story that covers the epidemiological, cultural, and political history of polio in Hungary after the Second World War, while also situating Hungarian events and discourse within a wider medical context of international and cooperative efforts to develop a cure, on the one hand, and within the global political framework of Cold War ideological hostility and all-round rivalry, on the other. [End Page 633] The history of the fight against polio in Hungary, Vargha demonstrates, actually challenges the view that Cold War antagonisms were ubiquitous and constant in the 1950s and 1960s. The search for a cure and the testing of vaccines, she argues convincingly, were characterized by transnational medical collaborations that crossed the Cold War divide. Polio researchers and public health officials from all over the world, not only the United States and Western Europe, shared medical data and information, presented research at international congresses, and participated in major vaccine trials. Interest in polio peaked at the same time around the world because in the 1950s so many countries experienced frequent and severe polio epidemics. Socialist health officials in Hungary (and the Soviet Union) were eager to learn from and work with research teams from the West in carrying out the decisive trials of the Sabin vaccine, while Western hospitals and medical personnel were happy to help supply equipment and vaccine to Hungary (and other Eastern European states). Transnational exchange and cooperation were actively promoted by the World Health Organization—which, she argues, gained respect and, gradually, participation from East Bloc countries in the 1960s. The book traces the course of multiple polio epidemics in Hungary from the late 1940s through 1961. It discusses the varieties, technology, accessibility, venues, medical personnel, and patients' experience of polio treatment. It tracks the opening and extension of treatment centers and examines the ways in which Hungarian public health officials, doctors, and nurses worked to overcome and/ or circumvent shortages of, most significantly, iron lungs. Beyond the facts of polio, Vargha evaluates change and continuity in public discourse and private opinion about polio in Hungary. She considers why polio elicited considerably more official and popular fear than infectious diseases that were more common and deadlier than polio. As have other scholars, she points, above all, to the dominant demographic of its victims, children, and to the relatively high incidence of paralysis and, from that, long-term disabilities among them. Polio's perverse association with children's beloved summer recreational activities, she suggests, also contributed to the broad and deep anxieties that polio epidemics sparked. Polio's disproportionate impact on innocent children, she argues, is another reason that researchers and, more importantly, governments were willingly to breach the Iron Curtain when solving this international problem. The cooperative and successful effort against polio both represented and encouraged rising global concern about children's welfare. Inside Hungary too, the book shows, anxiety about polio's threat to children crossed domestic political divides and tempered the Communist regime's ideological rigidity. Initially, the repression that followed the crushing of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 hurt the efforts of doctors to diagnose and of hospitals to treat polio patients. When a polio epidemic broke out...

Evaluative morphology in the verbal domain

AbstractSo far, evaluative morphology has received less attention in the verbal domain than in the nominal and adjectival ones. This paper shows that – besides frequentative morphemes like-gAtand preverbs liketele-‘full’, le- ‘down’, fel ‘up’, etc. – in Hungarian events can be evaluated by means of the verbalizer suffix-kVdik. This formation is unusual in evaluative morphology since it is a category-changing operation. The suffix-kVdikcan be attached to adjectives and to nouns expressing a profession or an occupation. Depending on the speaker’s intention, the morphologically complex verb suffixed with-kVdikcan attribute to the activity an evaluative, mostly pejorative meaning. The paper suggests that this phenomenon goes beyond evaluative morphology and can be better analyzed in terms of morphopragmatics.

Основные аспекты причин и последствий политических кризисов в некоторых социалистических странах в 50-х годах ХХ века

In countries of Eastern Europe in which the model of a state system of the totalitarian type construct- ed on the Soviet sample constantly was already in the late forties approved arose, socio-political and economic crises developed and went deep. Deterioration in a level of living of the population against the background of violation of democratic freedoms was a consequence of copying of the Soviet experience of social and economic transformations. As the argument confirming such conclusions it is possible to read out powerful social and political crises in Poland, Hungary and GDR 1953-1956, on the one hand, and sharp strengthening of repressive policy of the state for any dissent, from another. Studying of history of the Hungarian events of 1956 is of particular importance for all post-socialist countries as it I was the first open armed protest against the Soviet dictatorship. The crucial role of a power factor in preservation of Eastern Europe under control of the USSR has been visually shown to the whole world. The Hungarian events have ingenerated also a crisis situation of the world communistic movement as in a number of the Communist Parties split between those who, acting under a banner of «national communism», have condemned, and those who have supported the Soviet actions in Hungary was outlined. Besides strong- arm tactics of the USSR has pushed away to the west from the communistic movement of many of those who sympathized with him earlier, first of all intellectuals. Key words: Hungary, GDR, Poland, command system, state, policy, crisis.

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Ukrainian Historiography and Memoirs

The article deals with Ukrainian historians’ scholarly contributions to investigate the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, as well as the reflection of these historical and at the same time tragic events in memoir literature. The influence on the Ukrainian historical science of a new stage in the development of Hungarian and Russian historiographies of the 1956 October Revolution, which began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is noted. Among the studies of domestic historians, the author highlights the monographs of I.Korol’, V.Luschaj and R.Pyliavets’, publications about echoes of the 1956 Hungarian events in Transcarpathia, as well as memoirs of the Ukrainian public-political and cultural figure, dissident and human rights activist L.Taniuk.

A Development of Hungarian Copyright Law Until the Creation of the First Copyright Act (1793-1884)

The study attempts to outline the development of Hungarian copyright law from 1793 until the enactment of Act XVI of 1884. This study primarily focuses on Hungarian events; however, it is inevitable to set our sight beyond borders at points and evoke especially German, Austrian and French events which the Hungarians were paying undivided attention to as well. The chapters of the paper introduces the emergence of the concept of copyright law in the early 19th century, as well as the legislative proposals from the middle of the 19th century. Finally, the most important elements of the first copyright act of Hungary are also outlined.

Psychological Effects of Economic Recession and Unemployment

the aim of this study is to explore research projects to demonstrate some of the problems connected with health consequences of unemployment. there is a growing body of evidence that unemployment can influence physical and mental health. this review essay focuses on health consequences of economic recession and unemployment. the author explores some important Hungarian events which serve as a historical context of the whole topic to later analyse the mental effects of unemployment. Concerning the mental consequences of this phenomenon, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem often occur among unemployed people. Learned helplessness is well known in the literature as well. the author makes an attempt to interpret the topics above and the stages unemployed people undergo. Numerous psychological theories of unemployment are known such as frustration theory, life-span developmental theory, deprivation theory, agency restriction theory, and the vitamin model, which try to explain the importance of work in people’s life. In this paper the author tries to emphasise the possibility of a crisis originating in the economic recession and affecting not only individual life but also the whole society.

Poland under Communism: A Cold War History by A. Kemp-Welch (review)

774 SEER, 88, 4, OCTOBER 2OIO authorities usedterror toachievethesegoalsbut,unlike during the1930s, they maintained a tightgripon itsapplication:terror was targeted againstvery specific groups,such as the UPA, and partymemberssubjectedto purges facedexclusionor demotionratherthanexecution.At the same time,the regimeplaced greater emphasison propagandain orderto winthesupport of locals in the Westernprovinces.It showeditselfto be flexiblein the methodsemployed, as evidentin the policyof limitedUkrainianization in Western Ukraine.Indeed,thoughtheregimeopposedtheUPA's separatist goals,itdidallowsomeroomfortheexpression ofa Ukrainian identity, granting Ukrainea specialplace in the hierarchy of Sovietnationsas Russia's littlebrother' whiletrying to appointlocal cadresin Ukraine. Atfirst glance,theseconclusions reflect Boeckh'scallfora moredifferentiatedunderstanding ofStalinism thatgoesbeyondthetotalitarian andrevisionistapproaches .However,throughout hermonograph, Boeckhseemstoplace moreemphasis on Stalinism as a regime imposedfrom aboveuponan unwilling population.At times,she claimsthatthe West Ukrainianpopulation rejectedSoviet proclamationsand measureswithoutprovidingsufficient evidenceforthis.Indeed,itwouldbe interesting to knowhowtheUkrainian populationof Galicia, whichcertainly was generally hostileto the Soviet regime, viewedthemorepositive - fromthepointofviewofa Ukrainian nationalist aspectsofSovietrule ,forinstancetheexpulsionofthePolish population. The rangeofBoeckh'sknowledge is impressive. Her workincludesmany interesting factsand references thatwillbe ofuse to researchers. The monograph 'sbreadth,however,provesto be a drawback.Boeckhmovesswiftly fromtopicto topic,notalwaysrelating themto each otheror back to her overallargument. The moregeneralsectionsprovidea usefulsummary of their subjectfornewstudents oftheSovietUnionand Ukraine,butareperhapslessinteresting forspecialists, whilethedetailoftheprimary research is perhapstoo specific foranyonebutexperts. This givestheworkan uneven feeland itis unclearexactly forwhomitis intended. Stalinismus inderUkraine, therefore, containsmuchwhichis useful.It will hopefully inspire and helphistorians toundertake further research on Ukraine afterthe Second World War, an area whichto date has been woefully neglected.However,unfortunately, Boeckh'smonographhas a numberof flaws whichmaydenyitthelasting impactwhichsucha comprehensive work wouldotherwise deserve. Regensburg C. R. GlLLEY Kemp-Welch, A. Poland underCommunism: A Cold War History.Cambridge University Press,Cambridgeand New York,2008.xii + ''' pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index.£50.00: $99.00. The economicsituation couldnothavebeen moredire.After yearsofliving above itsmeanswithgovernment subsidized foodpricesthatdid notreflect the actual cost of food and worldmarketprices,the Polish government reviews 775 was forcedto respondwithpricehikesforbasic staplesand meat without increasing wages.The peoplewentontothestreets and massivestrikes shut offnationalproduction. The government was forcedto withdraw theprice hikes andcontinued thesubsidies withmoney borrowed from Western capitalists .In a greattwist ofirony, justliketheChineseCommunist loanstoWashington haveallowedAmericans to continue their bad consumerist habitsand liveabovetheir meansduring thepasttwenty years, Western loanskeptfood prices on an affordable level and the Communistsin power in Poland during theCold War.The economicsituation becameincreasingly untenable. Servicing thegrowing nationaldebt,letalonepayingbacktheloans,became prohibitive. Whenwouldthebreaking pointbe reached? This verysituation repeateditself in December 1970, June 1976,August 1980and was on theagenda again formuchofthelate 1980s.Poland was 'thesocialist country whichhad knownthelargestnumberofsociopolitical crisessince its creation'(JacquesLévesque, TheEngima ofigSg, Berkeley, CA, 1997,p. 126).A. Kemp-Welch'sfinebook is in largepart about this perennial dramaofsociopolitical crisis in Polandduring mostofthetimethe Communists wereinpower.After a summary oftheStalinist system imposed on Poland(including thedailyuse ofterror and thepersecution ofthestrongly rootedCatholic Church,a bastionof resistanceagainstCommunism), Kemp-Welchpursuesthe inherently fascinating storyof reform- the repeatedattempts at political and economicliberalization after Stalin'sdeath in 1953and Khrushchev's secretspeechin 1956. KempWelch 'sfocuson growing 'polycentrism' (p. 93n)intheCommunist sphereafterKhrushchev made peace withTitoism,producesa transnational history ofopposition, resistance, subversion and protest in Moscow'sEastern Europeansatellites, lasting formuchoftheperiodofSovietcontrol overthe region.This book places theunique Polishprotests ofJune 1956in Poznan - whentensofthousands ofworkers and peasantstookto thestreets and attackedCommunist partyheadquarters, yelling'Down withthe Russians! Down withtheGermans!We wantFree Poland' (p. 87) - intothelarger context ofa rebellious bloc,whendemonstrations turnedto insurrections in Polandand Hungary. He demonstrates howclosely thePolishand Hungarian events of1956wereinterrelated (when, mostsymbolically, thousands ofPolish workers and students and pensioners donatedbloodtotheHungarianrebels, p. 115).The importance ofthe1956events was thatToles regainedfreedom ofexpression, an experience thatcan be abruptly terminated butcannotbe so easilyforgotten' (p. 115).The seedsoftheSolidarity movement had been sown. In November1970,Polishfamilies 'spenthalftheir budgetonfood'(p. 180). When the Politburoraised food pricesby 40 per cent rightbeforethe Christmas season,people tookto thestreets, fearing 'thespectreofhunger' (p. 181).The ship-building regionoftheBalticcoastaroundGdanskbecame thecentre ofworker protest. In a fascinating detailfrom a bookrichindetails culled fromCommunistPartyarchives,Kemp-Welchexplainswhy. The Germanpopulationhad been expelledfromDanzig at the end of World War Two and peopledisplacedfrom further eastsettled in thecity. Younger workers, who joined the labour forceafter1956,had escaped the worst Stalinistrepression.These were the people who took to the streetsin 776 SEER, 88, 4, OCTOBER 2OIO December1970chanting 'We wantbread!We wanttruth!' (p. 183).After this insurgency, Gomulkalosthisjob as first partysecretary and was replacedby Gierekwho revokedthedetested pricehikes.Buttheproblemofdeepening economiccrisis wouldnotgo away. The samepeoplerepeated thedramainGdanskinthehotsummer of1980. This timethefreelabourunionSolidarnoscemerged in a generalstrike with Lech Walçsa as itscharismatic leader.This timeitwas Gierekwho resigned and theCommunist Partyrespondedwithmartiallaw to repressand...

Democratic Elitism under Challenge: Reflections on the 2006 Hungarian Events

This article in an analysis of the prolonged political crisis in Hungary, the 2006 highlights issues pertinent to a broader study of democratic politics. The study shows that the weakness of anchors binding the masses and elite is crucial, since in such circumstances mediatisation takes over in politics, toting up political promises, which leads to budget overspending. Shortcomings of the elite theory itself are identified: a realistic weighting is necessary to measure the influence of political, business, media and other elites; not political leadership as such but also different types of leadership need to be addressed; institutional, structural and behavioural innovations taking place on the elite level should be considered; the richness of the institutional variety is also to be noted.

Revolution, uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956

There were from the very beginning two ways of conceptualising the events of 1956 in Hungary, labelling it as a revolution or a national uprising. There also emerged a third way of conceptual definition when what occurred in 1956 was named an anti-totalitarian movement. From the theoretical perspective of Begriffsgeschichte the Hungarian events of 1956 cannot simply be assumed under the notion of ‘revolution’, the term first applied to what took place in France in 1789, since it was not the kind of a forceful collective effort leading to an unknown future. The notion of ‘revolutio’ works better to describe the analytical meaning of the Hungarian anti-Soviet and anti-Communist disturbance. The reason has been that the main thrust of the Hungarian situation in 1956 was similar to the seventeenth-century English and the eighteenth-century American ‘revolutions’, to return definitively to a point of departure by regaining some of the formerly lost social and political liberties.

1956 Reconsidered: Why Hungary and Not Poland?

SEER,Vol. 8o, No.4, October 2002 1956 Reconsidered: Why Hungary and Not Poland? JOHANNA GRANVILLE As the French moralist FranSoisde la Rochefoucauld (I 613- I 68o) wrote, 'although men flatterthemselveswith their great actions, they are usually the resultof chance and not design'. The differentcourses of events in Poland and Hungary in October 1956 have long intrigued scholars.Why did the Soviet Union intervene in Hungary but not in Poland? A simple reason for the Kremlin leaders' forbearance in Poland may be that the simultaneous eruption of the Hungarian revolution a chance occurrence, in part - distractedthem. More sophisticated explanations have developed among three groups of historians. One group of Cold War historians has explained Soviet actions by focusing on the two countries' different historical experiences . They posit that, for the Russians, dealing with the Hungarians was a 'novel experience', since no part of Hungary had ever been under Russian rule. The Second World War, they add, was less traumatic for Hungarians than for Poles.' A second group has emphasized individual personalities, arguing that the outgoing heads of the Stalin-eraleadership,EdwardOchab in Poland and Erno Gero in Hungary, shaped events the most.2 Others in this group argue, alternatively,thatWladyslawGomulkaand StefanCardinalWyszy'nski Johanna Granville is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clemson University. Research for this article was supported by long- and short-term grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Woodrow Wilson Center, East European Studies division. ' See Adam Bromke, 'Poland' (hereafter, Bromke), in Bela K. Kiraly and Paul Jones (eds), T7he Hungarian Revolution ofi956 inRetrospect, Boulder, CO, 1978 (hereafter, Kiraly and Jones), p. 89. Also, Ferenc A. Vali, Rift andRevoltinHunga?, Cambridge, MA, I96 I, p. 264. Gyorgy Litvan points out that Hungary 'had nothing to lose by its actions' because it was the only East European satellite whose communist leaders 'did not bring any "wedding gifts" from Moscow', unlike Poland (given land once part of eastern Germany) and Romania (given Transylvania). See Litvan, 'A Forty-Year Perspective on I956', in Terry Cox (ed.), HungagyI956 -Forty Years On,London, 1997 (hereafter, Cox), pp. I9-20. 2 See G. H. N. Seton-Watson, 'Introduction', in Kiraly and Jones, p. 3. See also Joseph Rothschild, ReturntoDiversity:A PoliticalHistogyofEast Central EuropeSinceWorldWarII, New York, I989, pp. 157-59; Francois Fejto, A HistogyofthePeople's Democracies. Europe SinceStalin, London, I971, p. 52; and Michael Checinski, Poland:Communism, Nationalism,Anti-Semitism, New York, I 982 (hereafter, Checinski), p. 122, n. 30. A great number of excellent scholarly monographs exist on the Hungarian Revolution which cover additional important aspects, including the Suez crisis, the Chinese role, and Soviet documents published in Pravdaon 31 October I956, on 'Friendship and Cooperation with Socialist States'. Given the limited scope of this article, however, I will focus exclusively on the Polish and Hungarian events themselves. JOHANNA GRANVILLE 657 were wiser, bolder leaders, better able to deter Soviet aggressionthan were Imre Nagy and CardinalJozsef Mindszenty.3Still a third group has argued that, in contrast to the Poles, the Hungarians alarmed the Soviet Union by going too far, especially by declaring neutrality, withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact, and establishing a multiparty system.4 Nearly a decade has passed since communist bloc archivesopened, and thus perhaps it is appropriateto take stock and ask: do the new documents drasticallyalter these older explanationsof the Poland and Hungarian events?This articlewill compare the events in Poland and Hungary closely, drawing on recently declassified documents from Hungarian, Polish, and Russian archives. I will conclude that the documents do not alter the older interpretationssignificantly.Nevertheless ,the documents do yield a more nuanced view of Gomulkaand Nagy and the ways in which they interactedwith their colleagues and theirconstituencies. Historians can easily challenge the first explanation (that dealing with the Hungarians was a 'novel experience' for the Russians). It is beyond the scope of this article to compare at length Polish and Hungarian relations with the Soviet Union. However, historians can easily point, for example, to the I849 tsarist invasion to help the Austrians suppressthe Hungarian revolution; the communist regime under Bela Kun (March-July I9 I9); and the experience of the thousandsof Hungarian POWs in the USSR, many of whom were not 3 See Paul Kecskemeti...

The Unity of Peace and Socialism? The World Peace Council on a Cold War Tightrope Between the Peace Struggle and Intrasystemic Communist Conflicts

The paper explores the theoretical unity between socialism and peace that motivated the communist‐dominated World Peace Council (WPC) in the Cold War. Within the broad WPC spectrum, intrasystemic conflicts were tangibly expressed around the Hungarian events of 1956. With growing differentiation in world communism, especially Sino‐Soviet conflict, tensions escalated when Warsaw Treaty states marched into Czechoslovakia in 1968. Instrumentalization of peace councils to serve state and party interests provides a second analytical focus on the link between peace and socialism. As Third World states emerged and national liberation movements consolidated political ideologies, the concept of just war acquired new meaning within anti‐imperialist discourse. Examples are the Arab‐Israeli wars, unconditional advocacy of armed struggle, and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The World Peace Council danced a tightrope during the Cold War between Soviet security interests, systemic ambitions, and underlying communist postulates.

REVOLUTION RECONSIDERED: INSTITUTION-BUILDING IN A MORAL VOID

The series of events that began in early 1989 and culminated in the free elec­ tions in March 1990 have been characterized as of one of four kinds. According to the British journalist T. G. Ash, it was a resolution suggesting that what happened in Hungary was more than reform but less than a Though intended as a clever oxymoron, the term is grossly misleading as it ob­ scures and trivializes the qualitative difference between the point of departure and the point of arrival, that is, the difference between dictatorship and democracy Acccording to the former democratic oppositionist ideologue Janos Kis and several others who chose this formulation, the Hungarian events amounted to a lawful revolution. The term stresses the notion of legal continuity and the non­ violent and non-confrontational nature of events. In my view, it is a misnomer as it deliberately overlooks the essentially politicsand power-driven substance of the process and, by design, fails to make any kind of moral distinction between the before and after spirit and normative content of laws and institutions. Constitutional was the label chosen by Andras Bozoki and his fellow editors and contributors to an 8-volume documentary collection and ana­ lytical commentary to characterize the outcome of the National Roundtable talks of the summer of 1989 which paved the way to free elections and the change of the political regime in March-April 1990. The formulation is attractive, yet it is still an oxymoron which fails to reconcile, in terms legitimacy and cognitive con­ sonance, the yawning gap between the means, that is, an improvised legal artifact in the form of a modified constitution, and the ends, that is, revolution and the customary epistemological connotations of this term. Negotiated revolution, is my formulation, that depicts the events as a series of elite pacts which culminated in public endorsement of the outcome by free elections in March-April 1990. Such pacts, by the nature of the enterprise, tend to incorporate the negotiators short-term political and economic interests and hide their personal beliefs, ethical choices, and moral preferences. The point is that real revolutions are meant to be fought and won on the barricades rather than behind closed doors at the negotiating table. Moreover, real revolutions are ex-