Eastern Europe

Reading list on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Thanks to John Cunningham for this list... Aczel, Tamas (ed.) Ten Years After: The Hungarian Revolution in the Perspective of History. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. Bekes, Csaba, et al. (eds.) The 1965 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents. Budapest: CEU Press, 2002. Cox, Terry (ed.) Hungary 1956 – Forty Years On. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Dent, Bob. Budapest 1956: Locations of Drama. Budapest: Könyvkiad, 2006. Litvan, György, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt and Repression 1953-1963. London: Longman, 1996. Lomax, Bill. ‘Twenty Five Years After 1956: The...

The reactionary right, liberalism and the left

In September 1847, before they had even written the Communist Manifesto , Karl Marx and Frederick Engels declared: “If a certain section of German socialists has continually blustered against the liberal bourgeoisie, and has done so, in a manner which has benefited nobody but the German governments... then the Communists have nothing in common with [them]”. Marx and Engels rarely quoted their own earlier writings. They considered that article so important that they cited it again in 1865. Breaking off collaboration with a socialist newspaper in Germany (launched in the tradition of Ferdinand...

Orban rewrites history

The Orban government in Hungary has removed the statue of Imre Nagy in Budapest in a overnight secret operation. Nagy was the liberalising Stalinist who was returned to power by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He was overthrown by the Russian invasion which put down the revolution, and then executed in 1958. Nagy is not our hero. For most of his career he was a Stalinist apparatchik. But for many Hungarians he is a symbolic martyr of the Hungarian revolution. In 1989, he was rehabilitated under popular pressure and 200,000 people turned out for his reburial. That was a key event in the...

The roots of antisemitism in Hungary

For part one click here In the last part of this article I looked at how Bibó analysed the historical background of antisemitism in Hungary. But on a more general level what makes an anti-semite “tick”? Bibó begins by considering the personal experiences of anti-semites, “[…] anyone who knows anti-semites even a little, knows that they base their claims about Jews on very personal experiences, presented in honest and passionate form. It would be incorrect to claim that they invent their experiences because of their shared prejudices, interests and ideologies; there are indications that the...

Tories accommodate soft-fascism

Even right-wing media outlets like the Spectator have denounced the Tory MEPs who recently voted against or abstained on the European Parliament initiating Article 7 proceedings against Hungary. That procedure allows MEPs to refer a member-state to the Europe Council to determine if it does not respect human rights, democracy, rule of law and so on. But this is hardly news! Since being elected in 2010 the Fidesz government of Viktor Orbán has: • Rewritten the constitution so that key checks and balances (including judicial ones) on executive powers were removed. • Bought up the media. This...

The development of antisemitism in Hungary

For part two click here Bibó was not a Marxist but a member of the National Peasant Party (NPP) — a party of radical reformists who adhered to a political position which was loosely described as “the third road” (or “third way”): neither Communist (i.e. Stalinist) or capitalist. It was, in effect, left-reformist and probably closer to the politics of Bennism (but with an agrarian orientation) than anything else to which it could be compared in the UK today. That political stream had a short existence from 1939 to 1948. In the Hungarian elections of 1945 the NPP won 42 seats in the National...

Jenö Landler 1875-1928

It is 90 years since the death of the Hungarian Communist Jenö Landler. His is not a name that will evoke much response today. He did not leave a written legacy but he was one of those who work tirelessly behind the scenes and never occupy the spotlight. Without him and countless thousands of other unsung activists where would we be today? They too should be remembered and honoured along with the “big names”. Landler was born in Gelse in Hungary in 1875, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained in early life as a lawyer but quickly attached himself, to the rapidly growing Hungarian...

LETTERS: Two states? & What next for the left in Hungary

For a single democratic Palestinian state I would like to express some thoughts relating to the article ‘Gaza mobilising for an internationalist response’ by Martin Thomas and your editorial ‘For an independent Palestine alongside Israel’ (Solidarity 466) I find it hard to see how the 1947 partition could ever have successfully established two separate states within such a relative small and narrow geographical area, both dependent on the same scarce natural resources, and each by definition with their own armed state machines inherently hostile to each other. Even harder with all the history...

Caesar marches on in Hungary

On Sunday 8 April 2018, Viktor Orbán’s FIDESZ party (Hungarian Civic Alliance) and his partners, the Christian Democratic Party, won 134 seats out of the 199 in the Hungarian Parliament. This is Orbán’s third victory. He has the two-thirds majority he needs to run roughshod over the Constitution. The campaign was in effect run on a single issue – immigration, although Hungary has the third lowest level of immigration in the whole of the EU. Xenophobic rhetoric of the worst kind spewed out from the Orbán camp. If you believed him, Hungary was about to be overrun by Jihadists, terrorists...

LETTERS: Pseudo-political Disneyland & Corbyn's International Friends

Pseudo-political Disneyland I really enjoyed reading Dan Katz’s article on pulling down statues. He makes a number of valid points. Maybe I can add a few details. After it was pulled down, Stalin’s statue in Budapest was smashed up and one part of it was used as an improvised public urinal. Pretty soon after, all parts of the statue disappeared including the boots which initially remained stuck on their plinth. Rumour has it that everything was melted down. There is a vivid reconstructed scene depicting the toppling of the Stalin statue in Marta Mészáros’ film ‘Diary for my Father and Mother’...

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