Magazine / History / Narrating the Nation / Article | 06/05/2008

Communism in eastern central European national histories, by Attila Pók

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Hungary: the crowned republic

In the official and semi-official Communist representations of Hungarian history in the 20th century, the period of the Republic of Councils, between 21st March and 1st August 1919, played a key role. After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, and following the short-lived democratic republic, a Communist-dominated coalition between Communists and Social Democrats took power in Hungary. In the Communist view, this proved the fact that Communism was deeply rooted in Hungary. In the collective Hungarian memory, however, this event has instead always been linked with the tragic territorial losses of the country after the First World War (some two thirds of the previous state territory).

It is assumed that the victorious powers sanctioned Hungary's dismantlement only out of fear that the country's Communism would spread. Without the Communists in power, they would have been much more tolerant and generous. No historical source confirms this, but the myth that the Communists squandered the country survived and awoke with special force in the years 1989-1991. Many Communist officials in 1919 were of Jewish origin. Therefore the anti-Communist rhetoric had anti-Semitic undertones. In the political struggles of the early post-Communist period, liberals – who were often the children of former Communist officials – were often presented as the descendants of the former Communist "squanderers of the country”. For instance, at the beginning of 1990, a radical right-wing newspaper wrote that anti-Semites of old Hungary would not have hated capitalist businessmen, but instead Marxist Freemason intellectuals who sold Transylvania and first invited the Communists in.[1]

According to a representative opinion poll taken sixty years after the end of the Second World War[2], Hungarian society was divided into three large camps over the question of how to evaluate those events. About one third of the population believed that the Soviets had indeed liberated Hungary, another third spoke of occupation, and the remaining third thought that neither liberation nor occupation was the right expression. The results of this poll confirmed the thesis put forward by a young Hungarian political scientist on the basis of only thirty case studies: in the structuring of post-Communist societies, shared ancestry and inherited mentalities have driven economically definable differences into the background. [3] This in no way suggests that material factors play no role at all in the structuring of post-Communist societies. It is instead to say that the mechanisms of collective memory influence the structuring of post-Communist societies to a greater extent than in West European societies. History plays an important role in determining electoral attitudes in Hungary: in the above mentioned opinion poll, 43% of the larger party in the governing coalition, the Socialists, and as much as 51% of the smaller coalition partner, the Liberals, said that the Red Army had "liberated” Hungary, while 41% of the opposition conservative Young Democrats (FIDESZ) said that it had occupied it.

The discussion about the fate of the Holy Crown of Hungary shows the complexity of how to deal with the Communist past. The crown, which since the 11th century has been a symbol of Hungarian sovereignty, ended up towards the end of the Second World War in Fort Knox in the USA. At the beginning of 1978, in spite of protests from the majority of Hungarian political exiles, the Americans gave this exceptionally valuable symbol of Hungarian national identity back to the Hungarian state as a sign of détente. The crown was handed over by an American delegation led by US Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, to representatives of the Communist-led Hungarian state in the late 19th – early 20th century Hungarian parliament building. Although part of the agreement was that János Kádár, the First Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, would not attend the ceremony, this gesture nonetheless signified American recognition of the legitimacy of Communist power in Hungary.

Together with other crown jewels, the crown was kept in the Hungarian National Museum until the end of 1999. The year 2000 was of great significance for the politicisation of this tradition. That year was the thousandth anniversary of the adoption of Christianity and the creation of the Hungarian state, and thus the national celebrations could be linked to the general Christian jubilee. The conservative government coalition mobilised very considerable financial and logistical resources for the celebrations from 1st January 2000 to 20th August 2001, in which a leading role was reserved for the Holy Crown. To open these celebrations of the thousand-year existence of the state, the Christian-National government had the crown brought ceremonially into the parliament building. This gesture was criticised by the socialist-liberal opposition, which argued that the roots of the legitimacy of today's Hungarian state did not lie in a crown bestowed by the Pope, but instead the sovereignty of the people symbolised by the constitution.

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