June 2012 • v. 52, n. 3 NewsNet News of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Goulash Post-Communism Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton University By the time the Soviet empire ended, Hungary system showed, those two pieces could come apart. was well known for having its own brand of commu- Goulash communism kept the ideology of commu- nism. Hungary proclaimed its communist commit- nism while moving to liberal tactics. The Hungarian ments while introducing a number of liberal elements, government is repeating its earlier performance, only including some aspects of a market economy, a gen- backwards. Now, goulash post-communism has kept eral loosening of repression and a changed burden of the ideology of anti-communism while restoring some proof for dissenters expressed in the Kádárist slogan: communist tactics. “Those who are not against us are with us.” The end result was liberal adaptation to Soviet rule that made The Fidesz government came to power ad- Hungary the “merriest barrack in the camp.” Goulash vertising itself as fiercely anti-communist. It sought to communism – as it was called – invoked the mixture of put an end to the lingering effects of communism in ingredients in the common Hungarian stew. Hungary by getting rid of the constitution that was still called Law XX of 1949 (even though its content had The current Hungarian government was elected changed completely in 1989). In its place, the govern- in 2010 and has a 2/3 supermajority in the parliament ment pushed through a new constitution of its own that dominated by the political party Fidesz. It is busily openly condemns the Soviet period.1 The government cooking up goulash post-communism, using a similar has also extended the statute of limitation for crimes recipe. Fidesz leaders proclaim unwavering anti-com- munism while they steadily introduce elements that are 1 For the new constitution, see http://lapa.princeton.edu/ familiar from the communist period. The result is a hosteddocs/hungary/Hungarian%20Constitution%20English%20 mixed system of ingredients, put together in a distinctly final%20version.pdf . The harshest anti-Soviet parts of the Hungarian way. constitution can be found in the Preamble. For an analysis of the new constitutional order, see Kim Lane Scheppele, “Hungary’s Across most of the Soviet space, the ideology Constitutional Revolution” on Paul Krugman’s “Conscience of a of communism was generally associated with specif- Liberal” blog at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/ ic tactics for its maintenance. But as the Hungarian hungarys-constitutional-revolution/. Inside This Issue • June 2012 • v. 52, n. 3 Goulash Post Communism 1 Publications 16 The Ural Working-Class Movement In Memoriam 23 Seen Through the Discourse of Russian Mass Media 6 Institutional Member News 24 Rampaging Through RuNet 8Affiliate Member News 28 Bturn Magazine: Reinventing the Balkans 10 ASEEES News 30 Building Niche Communities Online 11 Calendar 31 Personages 15 June 2012 • NewsNet 1 committed under communism,2 and has persistently of the democratic opposition believe that the axes have refused to deal with the Socialist opposition on the come down disproportionately on them. Some also grounds that the Socialists now constitute the succes- believe that the economic campaign against those op- sor party to the communists. Fidesz has justified what posed to the government now extends to private busi- it has done as finally closing the books on the commu- nesses that rely on government contracts. Private nist era (as if no one else had attempted to do so in the businesses are thought to be firing people with opposi- last 20 years).3 tion ties, either because the government is telling them to or because the business believes that it has better In the meantime, the government has steadily chances of getting government contracts if it fire dis- introduced elements that recall the old system of Soviet senters first. Everyone in the democratic opposition control. Among other things, the government appears has examples of those fired, they say, because of their to be punishing political dissent. While, of course, opposition to Fidesz. figures are impossible to produce because no one is keeping official statistics, there are signs that all is not In the Soviet time, the government was famous well with the “democratic opposition” (the title used by for bringing pressures to bear not on the dissidents – those who oppose Fidesz from the political center and who were often willing to take the harsh consequences left to distinguish themselves from the neo-Nazi Jobbik for their bravery – but on their family members. In the party which is in opposition as well). Fidesz time, stories of such pressures are starting to reappear. On a recent trip to Budapest, I was told of family members of critical journalists being fired for simply being the mother or spouse of a government critic. I heard about spouses, working parents and adult children fired from jobs, told that the reason was because they were closely related to someone critical of the government. Again, it’s impossible to tell how common this is – or whether, in a time of sharp auster- ity measures, the firings are really politically random. As I write (April 2012), the Hungarian govern- ment is carrying out radical education reform. The new The government is firing those affiliated with constitution that went into effect on 1 January 2012 the democratic opposition from their state-sector jobs, centralized government control over all primary and or at least so they believe. Surely the law provided an secondary schools in the country. Suddenly all school opportunity to do that, if such were the government’s teachers, administrators and principals, who had been goal. As one of its first acts in office in May 2010, the the employees of regional governments, are now the Fidesz government changed the law on the civil service employees of the national (Fidesz) government. All so that state workers could be fired without reasoned principals were told that they had to reapply for their decisions. In February 2011, the Hungarian Consti- jobs by March 2012. While the results have not been tutional Court found this change unconstitutional, but announced yet, the worry is that the grounds for re- it nullified the law “prospectively” – which meant that appointment will be political. Since there have been the government got an additional three months to fire no performance assessments conducted to determine people before having to modify the law. As a result, which schools were functioning well and which were the government had one year with no legal constraints not, on what other basis will the jobs be decided? on whom they fired. The new law adopted in May 2011 permits the government to fire anyone whose work- It is difficult to prove political discrimination sys- place must undergo austerity cuts. Since almost all tematically, of course, because the economic crisis has parts of the government are undergoing such cuts, this caused so many people to be fired from their jobs. But too provides no protection. in any event, sometimes belief is reality. If people be- lieve that they will lose their jobs for public disagree- There have been more than 10,000 people fired ment with the governing party or if private businesses from public payrolls as part of government austerity pro- believe that the government cares whom they hire, grams in the first two years of the Fidesz government. then this very belief will have a chilling effect on dis- That is plenty of pain to go around, but many members sent. As everyone who lived through the Soviet pe- riod will recall, the Kádár government often didn’t have 2 For the law that did this, see Transitional Provisions to to enforce (or even acknowledge) the crucial rules; the Hungarian Basic Law 3 Eva Balogh, “Fidesz’s Attitude Toward the Communist people eager to please (or eager to avoid problems) Past” enforced the rules instead, often on themselves. June 2012 • NewsNet 2 In another tactic familiar from the Soviet period, In the Soviet time, real political power was not the government is clearly putting the squeeze on the held in ministries and parliaments; it was held in the critical media. And the method is familiar: govern- party which set policy and then directed the organs of ment is passing vague laws and then putting people state to carry it out. In Hungary too, there are many closely allied with their own party in charge of enforcing signs that the Hungarian government is again becom- them. A new raft of media regulations brings control ing a country in which the party seem to trump the gov- over all media – public and private, broadcast online ernment. The thousands of pages of new laws passed and print – under the control of a single state media in the first two years of the Fidesz government were council filled entirely with Fidesz loyalists who can stay not written in the ministries and public agencies of the in office for nine years or more.4 The media council not state. Instead, they were written by private law firms only awards broadcast frequencies but also monitors at the behest of the party, pushed through the parlia- media content in a potentially intrusive way, and can ment on strict party line votes where it was evident that issue large fines if a media outlet fails to achieve “bal- the MPs who voted for the laws had no idea what they ance” in political coverage. Of course what may look were voting on. Party discipline was so strict that there like balance to journalists may not appear to be bal- were only a few cases out of nearly 400 laws where a ance to the government.