Hungary
Country in central Europe, bounded north by the Slovak Republic, northeast
by Ukraine, east by Romania, south by Yugoslavia and Croatia,
and west by Austria and Slovenia.
Government
Under the terms of the `transitional constitution´ adopted October
1989, Hungary is a unitary state with a one- chamber, 386-member
legislature, the national assembly (Orszaggyules). Its members
are elected for four-year terms under a mixed system of proportional
and direct representation: 176 are directly elected (on a potential
two-ballot run- off basis) from local constituencies; 152 are
taken from regional, county, and metropolitan lists on a proportional
basis; and 58 are elected indirectly from party- nominated national
`compensation´ lists designed to favour smaller parties. Free
competition is allowed in these elections. The national assembly
elects a president as head of state and chief executive for a
maximum of two five-year terms, and a council of ministers (cabinet)
headed by a prime minister. Since 1989 opposition parties have
been able to register freely and receive partial state funding.
A constitutional court has also been appointed to serve as a watchdog.
History
Kun's soviet republic Nationalist discontent and the Austro -Hungarian
defeat in World War I led, in the autumn of 1918, to the break-up
of Hungary, leaving only a rump state - two-fifths of former Hungary
- in the hands of the Magyars (ethnic Hungarians). On 31 October
1918 revolution broke out in Hungary. Count Mihály Károlyi became
head of government and Hungary was declared an independent republic.
Karolyi was appointed president in January 1919, but he handed
over to a communist soviet republic, headed by Béla Kun, in March
1919. Kun's forces waged war on Czechoslovakia, with some success,
and on Romania, which defeated the Hungarian soviet republic,
and the Romanian army occupied Budapest in August.
Admiral Horthy comes to power
The Romanian army did not leave until mid-November 1919, and after
that Admiral Horthy, heading a counter-revolutionary army, restored
order by exercising `White terror´ in the countryside. Elections
were held in January 1920 and the National Assembly restored the
kingdom under Horthy as regent. Two attempts at restoring ex-King
Charles (Karl Franz Josef) in 1921 proved abortive.
The early years of Horthy's regime marked an improvement in
Hungary's economic position, and, despite the political repression,
there was an attempt at limited land reform. But the political
and economic power remained in the hands of a small reactionary
clique around the regent, a clique in which the large landed and
business interests were supreme. Horthy remained the real ruler
of Hungary until 1944.
Hungarian expansionism
The revision of the Treaty of Trianon, by which in 1920 Hungary lost
three-fifths of its former territory and two-thirds of its population,
became the overriding aim of Hungarian policy. Without such a
revision Hungary could never aspire to a dominant position in
the Danube Basin, which it still coveted under the governments
of Count István Bethlen (1921-31) and of Gyula Gömbös (1932-36).
Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, openly sympathized
with these territorial aspirations because they seemed to involve
the disruption of Yugoslavia, which had acquired Hungary's Balkan
possessions, and also territory claimed by Italy. The Rome Protocols
signed in 1934 between Italy, Hungary, and Austria offered a show
of resistance to the nascent menace of Nazi Germany.
However, even before the German annexation of Austria (March
1938) had made the now enlarged and formidable Germany an immediate
neighbour of both Italy and Hungary, both those countries had
decided to compromise with Germany in the hope that together they
might appear sufficiently strong to secure some advantages. In
November 1938 Hungary obtained part of Slovakia and Ruthenia under
the first `Vienna Award´; it obtained the rest of Ruthenia in
March 1939.
Hungary enters World War II
Hungary joined the Anti-Comintern Pact of Germany, Japan, and Italy
in February 1939. Yet when World War II began Hungary remained
neutral until June 1941 when, following the German invasion, it
declared war on the USSR, claiming that this action was inspired
by crusading motives suggested by the Anti-Comintern Pact and
divorced from any territorial ambitions.
Soon two-thirds of the Hungarian army - an army built up with
the connivance of Hitler in defiance of the Trianon Treaty - was
destroyed on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. Though Hungary
also obtained land from Romania and from Yugoslavia as a result
of its German alliance, it was soon obvious that it had in fact
sacrificed its own independence in return for the paper fulfilment
of its irredentist ambitions.
By 1941 Hungary had become a mere satellite of Germany. In December
1941 it was forced into declaring war on Britain and the USA.
Throughout the war, Horthy made repeated and largely futile efforts
to modify the frequent German demands on Hungary. The defection
of Romania from the Axis (August 1944) led to a strong movement
in Hungary for coming to terms with the Allies, but the announcement
that the USSR had promised Transylvania to Romania was a sufficient
inducement to the Hungarians to continue the war.
The defeat of Hungary
A few days later Soviet and Romanian troops crossed the Romanian frontier
into Hungary. Between 8 and 10 October 1944 they had crossed the
River Tisza, taken Szeged, advanced to within 100 km/60 mi of
Budapest, and also taken Debrecen. Horthy asked for an armistice,
but was promptly deposed by a group of Hungarian Nazis, and fled
from the country. The Germans installed a puppet government headed
by Ference Szálasi of the far- right Arrow Cross movement.
One Soviet army was approaching Budapest from the east in November
1944 while another army, advancing up the Danube from the direction
of Yugoslavia, reached Lake Balaton on 5 December, and soon the
Red Army was surrounding the capital. Later in the month Gen Miklos
was appointed premier by a provisional National Assembly at Debrecen,
already under Soviet occupation, and his government declared its
readiness to conclude an armistice with the USSR and the other
countries with which Hungary was at war, and to declare war on
Germany.
German resistance in Budapest, however, continued until 13 February
1945, by which time a large part of the city had been reduced
to ruins. By early April the Germans had been driven out of Hungary,
and with them went the Nazi puppet government, while that of Miklos
now became the effective government for the whole of Hungary.
In Moscow (20 January 1945) the provisional national government
of Miklos concluded an armistice with the Allies by which Hungary
undertook to withdraw its troops within the frontiers of Hungary
as they existed at the end of 1937. It also agreed to pay reparations
totalling an equivalent of $300 million to the USSR, Czechoslovakia,
and Yugoslavia. The Vienna Arbitration Awards of 1938 and 1940,
assigning northern Transylvania to Hungary, were declared null
and void.
The beginning of Soviet domination
In March 1945 the Miklos government, which included the communist agriculture
minister Imre Nagy, brought into operation a land reform bill,
involving confiscation of all large estates, and the redistribution
of land to the peasants. On 27 August a Soviet-Hungarian trade
agreement was signed providing for a reciprocal exchange of Hungarian
goods and for extensive Soviet participation in the control of
Hungarian industry, production, communications, and banking. The
privileges thereby conferred on the USSR provoked a protest from
Britain and the USA, and the ratification of the agreement was
deferred by the Hungarian Assembly.
In the subsequent elections, the Smallholders' Party obtained
an overwhelming majority, and Zoltán Tildy, its leader, became
prime minister. Tildy's government issued a decree expelling from
Hungary all German-speaking residents, numbering 500,000, in addition
to the Germans, numbering about 250,000, previously ordered to
leave. An elected assembly inaugurated a republic in 1946, with
Tildy as president, but it soon fell under Soviet domination,
although only 70 Communists had been returned out of a total of
409 deputies.
Hungary lost more than two-thirds of its national wealth in
the war and emerged badly devastated and with a great burden of
reparations (of which two-thirds were due to the USSR and the
remaining one-third in equal shares to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia).
In fulfilment of the commercial agreement of August 1945 with
the Soviet Union, joint Soviet-Hungarian companies were founded
for the exploitation of Hungarian bauxite deposits and oil fields.
The two greatest sources of Hungary's national wealth were thus
put under direct Soviet control and management. Following the
inter- Allied Potsdam Conference of July- August 1945 all shares
in Hungarian undertakings that were in German hands were transferred
into Soviet possession. This factor placed the USSR in the position
of directing the management of many Hungarian industrial undertakings.
The Communists seize power
In February 1947 the Communists, with Soviet connivance, carried out
a coup d'état that destroyed the effective power of the Smallholders'
Party and made themselves supreme, though the semblance of Western
democracy was retained for a little while longer. In March 1947
the USA sent a note of protest to the Soviet chairman of the Allied
Control Commission for Hungary against Soviet interference with
the non- Communist government of Hungary. The peace treaty with
the Allies was ratified by the Hungarian National Assembly on
July 1947 and by President Tildy on 8 August 1947. The Soviet
occupation troops were then officially withdrawn, only an unspecified
number of communications units officially remaining.
Another general election took place on 31 August 1947, in which
the avowed Communists gained only 22 % of the total votes. The
real power, however, was already in their hands, and there followed
a rapid elimination of liberal and social-democratic elements,
and an increasing orientation of Hungary towards the USSR in both
domestic and foreign affairs. In August 1948 Tildy resigned the
presidency.
In February 1949 the Communists absorbed the remnants of the
Smallholders' Party, and of various moderate left-wing groups,
in a ` People's Independent Front´, which, after winning the elections
in May, adopted in August a new constitution that made Hungary
a `republic of workers and working peasants´ after the Soviet
model. British and US protests that the Hungarian government had
broken the peace treaty of 1947 by its denial of the freedoms
and human rights that it had agreed to secure were to no effect.
Rákosi's Stalinist regime
A Stalinist regime was imposed under Communist Party leader Matyas
Rákosi (1892-1971), who emerged as dictator after his potential
rival L Rajk had been condemned to death and hanged on trumped
up charges. Postwar reconstruction was carried out on Communist
lines: industry was nationalized and attempts were made to organize
agriculture on Soviet lines. In addition, a wave of secret-police
terror was launched.
The non-Communist postwar governments had already tackled the
basic question of land reform and redistribution, and this was
carried further by the Communists. In 1950 a five-year plan designed
`to transform Hungary from an agrarian industrial country into
an industrial agrarian country´ was put into operation, but it
fell short of its original target.
By 1949 the state had nationalized the Catholic schools and
dispossessed the clergy of 400,000 ha/100,000 acres, granting
the church only about 11,000 ha/27,000 acres. In 1950, 59 Catholic
orders with more than 10,000 members were dissolved and their
property confiscated by the state, and in 1959 a new law gave
the state the right to appoint its own nominees to bishoprics
not filled within 90 days of falling vacant.
In February 1949 the trial was held before a `people's court´
of Cardinal József Mindszenty, archbishop of Esztergom and prince
primate of Hungary and a long-standing opponent of communism,
on charges of disloyalty to the state and `anti- democratic´ activities,
followed by conviction and a sentence of life imprisonment and
confiscation of all property. The trial aroused the strongest
protests in Western Europe and the USA.
The Hungarian national uprising
Popular discontent was widespread, and the country's economic position
most unstable. In July 1953 Imre Nagy became premier in place
of Rakosi, and his policies were more moderate than that of his
predecessor. With the support of Soviet premier Georgi Malenkov,
Nagy introduced some measure of economic liberalization. After
the fall of Malenkov, in April 1955 Nagy was replaced by the more
hardline Hegedus. In 1956, in the wake of Khrushchev's denunciation
of Stalin in his `secret speech´, pressure for democratization
mounted, and Rá kosi stepped down as Communist Party leader.
In October 1956 popular discontent in Hungary reacted suddenly
and violently to the example set by Poland, which had achieved
peacefully almost overnight some measure of independence from
the USSR. On 23 October a huge crowd in Budapest demanded the
withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary and the return to power
of Nagy, who had been readmitted to the Hungarian Communist Party
ten days earlier. He became premier on the 24 October, and János
Kádár was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party,
now renamed as the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP).
Nagy lifted restrictions on the formation of political parties,
and on 27 October he reformed his government, including non- Communists
in it, and promised that there would indeed be a Soviet withdrawal.
Soon after this Cardinal Mindszenty returned, a free man, to Budapest.
On 1 November the government announced plans for Hungary to withdraw
from the Warsaw Pact and become a neutral power. These changes
were, however, opposed by Kádár, who set up a counter-government
in eastern Hungary.
The anti-Soviet rising in Budapest had been followed by spontaneous
national risings in many other parts of Hungary. It was a rising
in which young people of all classes, of a generation that had
known no other government except the communist one, were predominant.
Bitterness and violence on both sides were extreme. At first it
seemed that the revolution would succeed. The Soviets appeared
to be withdrawing from Hungary, and the Hungarians had themselves
effectively disposed of most of their own pro-Soviet fellow citizens,
in particular those in the hated secret police.
The crushing of the uprising
The very success of the revolt sealed its ultimate fate; for though
they might have been prepared to make minor concessions, the Soviets
were not prepared to see one of their satellites throw off all
vestiges of communist government.
Taking advantage of the fact that the world's attention was
distracted by the Suez Crisis in the Middle East, Soviet forces
advanced to crush the rebels. On 4 November Budapest was heavily
bombed by Soviet planes, and Nagy was replaced as premier by Kadar.
Nagy himself took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, but was subsequently
abducted from there by the Soviets. In June 1958 it was announced
that he had been executed for `high treason´.
Within a few days the Hungarian revolt was over, utterly crushed
by the Soviet armies. Some 200,000 refugees poured across the
frontiers into Austria and Yugoslavia, to be given asylum in various
countries in Western Europe and in the USA. Cardinal Mindszenty
sought refuge in the US embassy. The Kadar government acted ruthlessly
to suppress all traces of revolt, and during 1957-58 many of the
alleged leaders of the rebellion were brought to trial and sentenced
to death or to long periods of imprisonment.
While the uprising was still in progress the UN Security Council
condemned Soviet intervention in Hungary, but this was vetoed
by the USSR. The General Assembly of the UN called on the USSR
to withdraw its troops from Hungary, but this was disregarded.
The USSR maintained that it had been invited by the Hungarian
government to assist in suppressing a reactionary rising.
Liberalization under Kadar
From 1960 onwards there was increasing liberalization in Hungary. Many
political prisoners were freed under an amnesty in 1962, and several
Catholic church leaders were also released. Some relaxation in
the application of Marxist theory to agriculture and industry
gave both peasants and industrial workers greater individual rights,
while the managerial and professional classes were awarded privileges
on merit, rather than being tied to active participation in Communist
politics. Living standards rose. Hungary's economic position remained
precarious, but increasing numbers of tourists from the West helped
to strengthen its international balances. A number of those who
had fled from Hungary in 1956 returned.
Kadar, who, starting as a Soviet puppet, had successfully engineered
the transformation from bloody repression to relatively liberal
communism, relinquished the premiership of Hungary in June 1965,
but retained the secretaryship of the HSWP, and therefore the
real control of Hungarian affairs. Hungary became the spearhead
of economic reform in the Eastern bloc. On 1 January 1968 the
`new economic mechanism´ was introduced, in which concessions
were made to a market economy. Intellectual freedom also grew
considerably in Hungary in the 1960s, although not after 1968
(the year of the crushing of the Prague Spring). The transformation
had been accomplished without lessening Hungary's close ties with
the Soviet Union.
A new primate of Hungary, Monsignor László Lekai, was appointed
in February 1976, the Vatican's right to make decisions about
the Hungarian church thus being acknowledged by the communist
government. Hungary remained, however, a loyal member of the Warsaw
Pact and Comecon.
Reform in the post-Brezhnev era
Hungary's relations with the USSR significantly improved following
the death of the conservative Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev,
in 1982, with Hungary's `market socialism´ experiment influencing
Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika programme. Further reforms introduced
in 1987- 88 included additional price deregulation, the establishment
of ` enterprise councils´, the introduction of value-added tax
(VAT), and the creation of a stock market.
As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, change came quickly to Hungary
from 1988. Kádár, who had become an obstacle to reform, was replaced
as general secretary of the ruling HSWP by Károly Grósz 1988,
and was appointed to a new post, that of party president. Two
radical reformers, Rezso Nyers and Imre Pozsgay, were brought
into the Politburo.
The Hungarian Democratic Forum was formed in September 1988
as an umbrella movement for opposition groups, and several dozen
other political parties were formed in 1989- 90. A period of far-reaching
political reform followed, in which the rights to demonstrate
freely and to form rival political parties and trade unions were
ceded. The official verdict on the 1956 events was revised radically,
with Nagy being posthumously rehabilitated.
In May 1989 the border with Austria was opened, with adverse
effects for East Germany as thousands of East Germans escaped
to the West through Hungary. Two months later Grósz was forced
to cede power to the more radical reformist troika of Nyers (party
president), Pozsgay, and Miklos Nemeth (prime minister from November
1988), who joined Grósz in a new four-person ruling presidium.
Constitutional changes
In October 1989 a series of constitutional changes, the result of round-table
talks held through the summer, were approved by the national assembly.
These included the adoption of a new set of electoral rules, the
banning of workplace HSWP cells, and the change of the country's
name from `People's Republic´ to simply `Republic´. Also in October
the HSWP changed its name to the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP),
and adopted Poszgay as its presidential candidate. Conservatives,
including Grósz, refused to play an active role in the new party,
which had become essentially a social-democratic party committed
to multiparty democracy. Despite these changes, the HSP's standing
was seriously damaged in the `Danubegate´ scandal of January 1990,
when it was revealed that the secret police had bugged opposition
parties and passed the information obtained to the HSP.
Transition to a market economy
As a major step in the privatization programme, begun in 1987, a stock
exchange was opened in Budapest in 1990. In January 1991 the forint
was devalued by 15% in an effort to boost exports. A Compensation
Bill for owners of land and property expropriated under the communist
regime was approved by the National Assembly in June 1991 in an
effort to stimulate the privatization programme and inward foreign
investment. Gross national product fell by 7% in 1991, industrial
production fell by one-fifth during the first half of 1991, and
by the close of 1991 unemployment rose to more than 7%. However,
of all the former communist European states, Hungary experienced
the smoothest transition towards a market economy. This was credited
to the establishment of self-management and privatization before
the downfall of the communist regime in 1989.
Foreign relations
In February 1990 talks were held with the USSR about the withdrawal
of Soviet troops stationed in Hungary . In June 1990 the Hungarian
government announced the end of any participation in Warsaw Pact
military exercises. The Pact and Comecon were disbanded by July
1991, enabling the country to move towards the West more directly.
Hungary joined the Council of Europe in November 1990. The last
Soviet troops left Hungary, on schedule, in June 1991. In December
1991 Hungary signed a ten-year association agreement with the
European Community (EC), and in June 1993 the EC (now the European
Union) formally invited the country to apply for membership. In
1994 Hungary joined NATO's ` partnership for peace´ programme
as a prelude to full membership of the alliance.
In March 1996 a friendship treaty with the Slovak Republic was
signed, and Hungary became a member of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD). A Treaty of Cooperation with
Romania, signed in September 1996, renounced any claim by Hungary
to territory in Transylvania, while Romania agreed to guarantee
rights to its large ethnic Hungarian minority.
Ex-communists take the lead
Prime Minister Jozsef Antall died in December 1993 and was succeeded
by former interior minister Peter Boross of the MDF. The May 1994
assembly elections showed a sharp swing to the left, with the
ex- communist HSP emerging victorious from the first round and
its pragmatic leader, Gyula Horn, becoming prime minister. Despite
holding an absolute majority in parliament, the Socialists formed
a coalition government with the centrist Alliance of Free Democrats
in July 1994, and pledged to maintain a pro-Western, market- centred
reform course. A radical economic-reform package, unveiled in
March 1995, advocated major cuts in public spending to reduce
the level of indebtedness, devaluation of the forint to boost
exports, and a stepping up of the pace of privatization.
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