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Memory Practices: the Red and White Terrors in Hungary As Remembered After 1990

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Memory Practices: the Red and White Terrors in Hungary As Remembered After 1990 east central europe 44 (2017) 186-215 brill.com/eceu Memory Practices: The Red and White Terrors in Hungary as Remembered after 1990 Béla Bodó University of Bonn, Germany [email protected] Abstract This article examines the memory of the Red and White Terrors as they relate to public monuments after the collapse of state socialism. It shows how the memory of politi- cal violence has been exploited and instrumentalized by various actors to achieve po- litical and cultural ends, and the role of civic organizations and private individuals in keeping the memory of these two key events in Hungarian history alive. Finally, the article discusses the commoditization of memory and memory practices in the last fifteen years, and the role of the Red and White Terror in identity politics. Keywords political violence – memory practices – mourning memorials – justice – 1919 – Council Republic – the 1956 Revolution – Red Terror – White Terror The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the fall of 1918 inaugurated a period of rapid change in East-Central Europe. Independent Hungary, which emerged as one of the “successor states” to the Dual Monarchy, experienced two revolutions in ten months. The democratic regime, born in the October Revolution of 1918, was too weak and indecisive to defend the country’s bor- ders and put its reforms, such as the distribution of the large estates among peasants, into practice. The formation of the Hungarian Council Republic in March 1919 was a response to the greed of the victorious Entente powers and neighboring states, which raised impossible territorial demands on the new republic. For a short while, the nation rallied behind the new radical govern- ment in the hope that, with the help of the Soviet Red Army, it would be able to © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/18763308-04402010Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:45:39AM via free access <UN> Memory Practices 187 reverse the fortunes of the war. Hungarian soldiers marched under the red flag of the world revolution to reclaim at least some of the territories that had come under Czech and Romanian control after October 1918. While, at the beginning, the large majority of Hungarians supported the foreign policy of the Coun- cil Republic, they watched with apprehension its efforts to transform society from the start. The politically inexperienced leaders of the Council Republic, many of whom came from journalistic backgrounds, were determined to put their radical ideas into practice. Having only limited public support to realize their revolutionary agenda, they were soon forced to resort to violence to break popular resistance to their plans. The Red Terror, as the suppression of peas- ant rebellions and middle-class opposition became known in Hungary and the world, cost the lives of at least five hundred people. In the end, the Council Republic failed miserably on both fronts. By the end of June 1919, it had turned the better part of the population into the enemy of communism. At the end of July the invading Romanian Army broke through the front line and occu- pied the central part of the country and Budapest. The leaders of the Council Republic either went into hiding or fled the country. The four-month experi- ence with the Council Republic evoked a strong reaction from the traditional elites and the peasantry, which suffered the most under communist rule. The officers’ detachments and the right-wing civic militias, which mushroomed after the collapse of the Council Republic, went on a campaign of revenge. They targeted not only the supporters of the Left, but also innocent Jews, whom they blamed for the lost war, foreign occupation, the two revolutions, the communist violence, and social and economic collapse. Their violent cam- paign, which progressive contemporaries both in Hungary and abroad called the White Terror, killed at least 1500 people and injured countless more be- tween August 1919 and March 1920 (Ungváry 2000; Bödők 2015; Salamon 2008; Ablovatski, 2004; Bodó 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2015). Paramilitary and mob violence in Hungary was part of a European phenomenon associated with the “culture of defeat” (Schivelbusch 2003; Gerwarth 2008; Gerwarth and Horne 2013). However, it also displayed unique features: for example, after Ukraine and the Soviet Union, anti-Semitic violence demanded the highest number of casualties in Hungary in the late 1910s and early 1920s (Stone and Glenny 1991; Dekel-Chen 2011; Klier and Lambroza 1992; Robbers 1986; Abramson 1999).1 The police and the paramilitary groups arrested, imprisoned, or threw into hastily constructed internment camps about 70,000 individuals, which included la- bor leaders, political activists, the functionaries of the Council Republic, and 1 Historians estimate the number of Jews killed during the Civil War in the Soviet Union between 50,000 and 200,000. east central europe 44 (2017) 186-215 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:45:39AM via free access <UN> 188 Bodó innocent bystanders denounced by their jealous neighbors and colleagues. Some 100,000 people, including some of Hungary’s best minds, were forced into exile or left in desperation over their country’s fate. By the end of 1921, the political and military elite had been able to reign in the militias; however, isolated attacks on Jews, as well as social democratic organizations and politi- cians, continued well into the mid-1920s. This essay examines memory practices after 1989 as they relate to the vio- lent aspects, described by the contemporaries as the Red and White terrors, of the Hungarian civil war between 1918 and 1921. There is, fortunately, a grow- ing literature on civic violence in Hungary in the modern era (Freifeld 2000; Kádár and Vági 2005, 2008). Because of its emphasis on the memory of violent events, rather than of regimes or historical epochs, such as the Council Repub- lic and the October Revolution of 1918, this study represents a minor departure in Hungarian historiography on the interwar period (Apor 2010, 2014; Ungvári and Tabajdi 2013). For lack of space, the essay focuses the readers’ attention on a narrow selection of objects, such as statues and commemorative plaques, as well as the unveiling ceremonies and yearly rituals that gave these objects meaning, and in public conscience permanence.2 The study is concerned pri- marily with the fate of monuments erected to commemorate atrocities, and honor the memory of their victims who lost their lives during the Red and White terrors. Thus it does not discuss, unless they also functioned as mourn- ing monuments, the fate of other types of memorials, such as the statues of major politicians and the memorials built to celebrate the achievements of the Council Republic. Statues, reliefs, and plaques, as we know, are parts of our physical environment; more “durable than the fleeting moments that memory is often striving to recover,” they not only mark, and remind us of, the past, but also provide aesthetic pleasure (Cubitt 2008: 79). However, for lack of space, this essay pays only marginal attention to the relationship between aesthet- ics and politics (Reichel 2006). Similarly, it provides only a short description of some of the yearly rituals evolved around the statues and other types of monuments associated with the counterrevolution and the right-wing mi- litias. The detailed analysis of these yearly rituals, their anthropological and sociological aspects, such as the social background, motives, and mindsets of ordinary participants—i.e., analysis of the social world and cultural milieu of “new nationalism”—is beyond the scope of this paper (Feischmidt 2014). 2 This short essay is part of a comprehensive study on the memory of paramilitary and mob violence in Hungary from 1921 to 2017. This larger work is going to be based on a wide variety of primary sources, such as police reports, trial documents, history texts, memoirs, newspa- pers, parliamentary speeches, novels, theater plays, songs, films, and documentaries, as well as statues, plaques, street signs, national holidays, and an analysis of private and state rituals. east centralDownloaded europe from 44 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 186-215 05:45:39AM via free access <UN> Memory Practices 189 In his seminal study on memory politics in Central and Eastern Europe after 1990, James Mark has challenged one of the basic tenets of modern German national identity: the possibility of “overcoming,” and “mastering” of the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) through objective research and open public discussions. Since we are all part of history, Mark argues, no one can gain an external perspective on the past, especially on historical events whose effects continue to reverberate through our daily lives. Mark asks the question of why the public in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe has paid so much attention to historical debates about the recent past, and why the memory of war has taken such vicious forms. He finds his answer in the peaceful nature of the Revolution of 1989 and the intense political struggles in its aftermath. The “unfinished revolution” of 1989, he argues, failed to mark a clear break with the past. By leaving old power bases and traditional networks virtually intact, the peaceful transition to democracy allowed the old elites to survive, compete on a more-than-equal footing with the new political parties for power, and sab- otaged any attempt to provide justice for the victims of the dictatorship. But the collective memory of the one-party state continues to evoke strong emotions, Mark contends, for a more prosaic reason. After 1989, the new political parties have instrumentalized, and even weaponized, the memory of the recent past, in order to increase the popularity and enhance the power of their organiza- tions. The memory of communism has been frequently evoked to achieve neg- ative ends: to smear public figures and discredit political opponents, who had started their career in the ruling party or the apparatus of the one-party state.
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