Hungary
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Revision as of 17:32, 20 July 2014
Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Its capital is Budapest.
Hungary was formed during the late 9th-early 10th century, when the Magyar horde settled down in the Carpathian Basin. At the beginning of the 11th, King István I converted to Christianity, firmly integrating Hungary into the existing political order.
Until the 16th century, Hungary was a strong regional power, whose influence extended to Croatia, Dalmatia, the Romanian principalities and Serbia; however, it suffered from internal instability. Hungary stopped the Mongols of the Golden Horde (although this had mostly to do with the death of the Mongol Khan), but in the aftermath, the nobles grew in power, leading to several succession conflicts. Eventually, the invasion of the Ottoman Empire and Hungary's failure to elect a strong king who could reform the realm led to its fall, as the country was partitioned by the Ottomans, the Habsburgs (who managed to get their King elected in Hungary, thus de jure annexing what remained of Hungary) and a semi-independent Transylvanian principality whose allegiance regularly switched between the Austrians and the Turks.
In the late 17th century, the Habsburgs drove out the Ottomans from most of Hungary with international backing, but Hungary did not manage to gain independence as rebelling nobles were put down by the Habsburgs. Hungary was declared an inseparable part of Austria in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1732. However, this order lasted little more than a hundred years. In the revolutions of 1848, Hungary managed to force the Habsburgs to pass democratic reforms; however, they reneged on these soon afterwards, which threw the Austrian Empire into the violent civil war of 1848-1849. The insurrection was put down after a Russian intervention, but recognising that the old order could not be upheld forever, Austria and Hungary hammered out a compromise ("Ausgleich") in 1867, establishing a dual monarchy (that was still de facto controlled by Wien, with the country's farcical democracy only functioning as far as absolute monarch Franz Joseph willed it).
During dualism, the country prospered, but the decrepit monarchy was so weak and antiquated that the first big war that came its way broke it apart, following which a republic was formed. The victorious Entente granted the newly formed states of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the expense of Hungary, which lost a large part of its territory and population. This gave a rise to Hungarian irredentism, which seeks to restore the lands of Hungary as they were under István I's rule. The slight problem with this idea is that with the exception of a few small border territories and a comparatively major Hungarian-inhabited exclave in Transylvania, most of the lands granted to Hungary's neighbors were not actually inhabited by Hungarians - and the minorities living in these lands would be less than happy to submit to Hungary once again after their historical treatment (marginalisation of their language and culture, forced Magyarization, etc.).
Hungary was under communist rule for 133 days following World War I - most Hungarians revile this period of their country, but even if one does not support communism, the short-lived Soviet Republic was commendable in that it sought to provide for the poor (offering many children their only vacation opportunity during their life), empower women and put Hungary on a path to modernity. They also fought against the Entente with an all-volunteer army, resisting them militarily. Miklós Horthy, the former naval officer who took power in 1920, sabotaged these military efforts however he could, and capitulated to the demands of the French immediately once he could. Contemporary far-rightists have rewritten this part of Hungary's history, portraying Horthy as some sort of national hero who fought against the "injustice of Trianon". It is true that during the dictatorial Horthy-regime, Hungary has been returned some of the territories it had lost, but through no merit of his own - Hitler simply reshaped the region according to his political interests, securing Hungary's blind loyalty with these territorial grants.
Horthy was eventually displaced by his German puppetmasters - he was actually blackmailed with the life of his son - and replaced with a national socialist, Ferenc Szálasi - between these two men, several hundred thousand Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust. (Again rewriting history, Horthy's adherents try to portray him as a savior of Jews, although he only briefly prevented some of the Jews from being deported, only to appease foreign opinion only until Hitler took a more stern stand on the issue.) Following the liberation of Hungary, the Soviet Union occupied the country and manipulated the elections until their candidate, Mátyás Rákosi, took power.
Under the subsequently formed People's Republic of Hungary, Rákosi terrorised the populace, abducting and executing political opponents. After a failed revolution in 1956, the Soviets allowed a more moderate János Kádár to take power. Kádár's rule was generally what could be called a "benevolent dictatorship"; to appease the people, he relaxed political control, not allowing opposition parties to challenge him, but at least not violently repressing them either (excepting a short wave of retribution immediately following the 1956 uprising). In addition, he sought to improve living conditions constantly, although in doing so, he had to plunge the country in debt to the West. Thus these improvements would have eventually proved to be unsustainable and illusory - but he was removed in 1988 and during the following year Hungary peacefully reformed into a market economy.
The new capitalist regime did not fulfill its promises either; the destruction of the collective farms and the rapid privatisation and subsequent destruction of the state industries threw the Hungarian economy into shambles, and social inequality rose. Numerous politicians took the opportunity to sweep up whatever they could during the privatisation drive, quickly disavowing their communist past (and calling everyone else communists - generally, the more ex-communists a party has, the more likely they are to use this tactic). The Hungarian political climate is very unhealthy, and the Parliament meetings are extremely uncivilised at times - politicians resort to sectarian bickering and thinly veiled insults against each other, the meetings are frequently sabotaged by one party or another putting on a show, and there is little civilised discourse as the two main parties - Fidesz and MSZP - demonize each other constantly.
The Hungarian language (Magyar) is unrelated to almost any other European language (except for Finnish and Estonian, which are distantly related). Hungary is the only European nation where a person's name has the order of family name first followed by given name(s). So, a person named "John Smith" in other Western countries would be named "Smith John" in Hungary. Hungarian sports a highly complex and structured grammar, extensive agglutination (think portmanteau, except it can go on for several words) and a diverse phonology including forty-four distinct sounds, of which fourteen are unique vowels. The frequency and variety of diacritics used to distinguish the vowels from each other, as well as unusual consonant combinations, make written Hungarian very recognizable.
Apart from the United States, Hungary is the only country on Earth with no laws whatsoever against blasphemy.
Politics
Major parties
Fidesz: (Fiatal Demokrata Szövetség - Young Democrat's Alliance) Originally, it was a liberal party, one of the first civic parties which played a role in the transition to a market economy. After a strong defeat at the elections of 1994, they started to move to the right. In 1998 they won the elections and quickly shifted to conservatism under the leadership of its ambitious and charismatic leader Viktor Orbán, whose control over the party was near-absolute even at that point. (A book released in 2002 titled "A Viktor" offers an interesting insight into his character and his ruthless political methods which manifested even back then.) After losing two elections, the party became more aggressive, radical, and corrupt, not to mention they allied a non-secular party, KDNP. After winning the elections in 2010, the party had won an overwhelming majority and running amok while ruining the economy, education, health care system, etc. in the name of rebellion against the "bankers of Brussels". In fact, their policies lead the country into a recession; meanwhile, Orbán and his party rapidly deconstructed Hungarian democracy - using their supermajority, they rewrote the constitution, now "Basic Law", to suit their reactionary ideology. (A widely used moniker for the Orbán-regime is "Viktatúra", a pun involving the Hungarian word for 'dictatorship' and Orbán's first name.) The government has also assumed total control over the media, passed control of several agricultural and industrial facilities to their economic backers (their confiscation of tobacco shops and redistribution to family members and friends was widely regarded as blatant robbery). In addition, perhaps most disturbingly, Fidesz has increasingly begun to flirt with the far right, perhaps to compete for Jobbik for their voterbase - they enabled the cult of Miklós Horthy, the dictator of interwar Hungary who subordinated the country to Hitler, among other things. They also rule through fear - a mayoral election in the town of Baja had to be actually repeated as Fidesz was revealed to have used fraud to win, and throughout the capital, they intimidated the supporters of the opposition, including employing people in black cars to follow the opposition candidate all day and spy on her. Orbán also regularly organises paramilitary squads, most notoriously the ironically named "Békemenet" (March for Peace), whose members are generally paid a lump sum of money to attend marches.
Interestingly Fidesz has "birthers" among their haters. An urban legend says Viktor Orbán is a Roma (in some far-right version he's also Jewish) and his original name is Viktor Orsós. The claimers trying to defend the statement by some horrible photos, one with terrible lighting (made his skin look darker, racists claims Roma people have darker skin), one with an ugly moustache (stereotype). The problem is that his father and grandfather also was Orbán from the birth, but the "birthers" can explain it. Needless to say, there are much more valid reasons to criticise Orbán's government.
KDNP: (Keresztény Demokrata Néppárt - Christian Democratic People's Party) A minor Christian fundamentalist party which has little relevance except for being a junior coalition partner for Fidesz - as such, it is also used as an outlet for certain unpopular policies of the Fidesz-KDNP government. The party is very similar to the U.S. Republican Party in its politics as well as its scandallous conduct. Some of its members include Rózsa Hoffmann, whose educational reforms were so unpopular that they sparked massive student riots that nearly culminated in the storming of the Parliament at one point (although the protest remained peaceful), as well as Zsolt Semjén, who had a statue for Ronald Reagan erected in Budapest, and was one of the several members of the government who turned out to have plagiarised their PhD-s.
MSZP: (Magyar Szocialista Párt - Hungarian Socialist Party) A leftover from the old communist party, without any communism, Fidesz' long life nemesis. The name is a bit of a misnomer; their politics are not so much socialist as left-center, and their economic policy is decidedly neoliberal, with strong adherence to austerity measures. They won elections in 1994, 2002, 2006; the latter were infamous for the Speech of Öszöd and for the party's attempt to privatize the health care system and make it like in the USA. (The speech of Öszöd was an audio recording which leaked out of a private meeting session - the incumbent prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, admitted to having "lied, cheated and stealed" throughout their term. The leak was followed by mass riots, where both sides were guilty in their handling of the situation - the MSZP government used excessive police force to disperse the protests at times, but it could be argued that it was forgivable as far-right thugs hijacked the protests, spreading wanton destruction including an infamous attack on a television station HQ.) Because of these measures they lost a lot of their popularity, which made them to only get a small portion in the parliament instead of the usual 40-50%.
After learning from the past (e.g. investing too much money into the social security system instead of jobs) and getting rid of Ferenc Gyurcsány, they regained some of their popularity in recent polls. (It helps that Fidesz' bad economic policies have made them look like an attractive alternative.) It remains to be seen whether their new leader, Attila Mesterházy, can put the country on the path to progress if they are elected, or whether they will repeat the mistakes of their past.
Jobbik: (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom - Movement for a Better Hungary) A "national radical" party, very infamous for their voters' (and some of their leading politicians') racism and anti-Semitism. Sporting conservative morals and third positionist economic politics, they're definitely far-rightists, although not entirely homogenous. Some of their members are Christian Democrats who initially held parties such as the German CDU/CSU as a model, and are disappointed with the path the party took; some are outright Hitlerists; most are ultra-nationalist far rightists who have a reverence for fascist strongmen, or just neonazis. Generally speaking, the party is united by a hatred for Jews and demagogic appeal to the youth, although the party is notoriously rocked by scandals - one of their prominent members was expelled after it was discovered he was a Jew (although another member was quickly clarify how that was not, in fact, the reason), while others regularly get arrested by the police for various petty crimes.
While they trying to get rid of the racist, anti-Semitic, and (neo)Nazi titles - even threatening those who call them Nazis with court action - their affiliated groups (Magyar Gárda, Betyársereg, and so on) show that the comparison is very valid. They have an unofficial "news outlet" in the website Kuruc.info - basically a Hungarian Metapedia which actually operates with American servers (to avoid being shut down by the authorities) and advertises Jobbik frequently.
LMP: (Lehet Más a Politika - Politics Can be Different) A "green party" founded in 2009, the LMP was founded by a mix of liberals and moderate conservatives who tried to offer an alternative to the Fidesz-MSZP dichotomy. Trying to appear modern and appealing to the youth, they used similar tactics to the Jobbik in their recruitment, although their policies are considerably more tolerable. Ironically, despite their name, they quickly became populistic and demagogic (two traits against which they have always campaigned) and lately they have splintered and become irrelevant - they almost bear no mention except for the sad fact how no new party can ascend above the corrupt, rotten Hungarian political climate.
Együtt 2014: (Together 2014) Another one of the opposition parties, "E14" is a union of several organisations campaigning for freedom of press, democracy and other liberal causes. It is led by Gordon Bajnai, a former ex-MSZP member who led the government for a year during the 2006-2010 term, after Gyurcsány's resignation. Their ideology is not much different from that of the MSZP, and the source of most of its support is Bajnai's charismatic character.
DK: (Demokratikus Koalíció - Democratic Coalition) A party led by the former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány. Despite his ill reputation (which was exacerbated by a Fidesz media campaign blaming him for all of the country's problems, to such an extent that "it's Gyurcsány's fault" is actually a satirical saying at times), he has managed to rebound and has some support, mostly among the elderly. DK is a liberal party, somewhat to the right of MSZP and Együtt 2014, and is a strong proponent of secular reforms.