Hungarologische Beiträge 18, 2006
HUNGAROLOGISCHE BEITRÄGE 18 BRIDGE BUILDING AND POLITICAL CULTURES Political Cultures in Urho Kekkonen’s Finland and János Kádár’s Hungary Heino NYYSSÖNEN 1 Introduction Comparing Finland and Hungary is a fruitful task despite the ap- parent historical differences: after the Second World War the for- mer remained a democracy whilst the latter became a dictatorship. Also their relation to their greatest and most powerful neighbour, Soviet Union, seems to be different. Hungary belonged to the same military pact as the Soviet Union, but Finland’s foreign pol- icy was based on the idea of neutrality. However, the difference between the most eastern country of the West and the most west- ern country of the East is not that evident. According to an old standpoint Finns and Hungarians are re- latives and with special relationship. We can, however, doubt that the structural similarities in language and common roots 6,000 years ago hardly make sense, when we study recent po- litical culture. Rather than ‘kinship’ the concept of national in- terest gained a more important role in mutual co-operation af- ter 1945. Nevertheless, maintaining the old idea of a relation- ship, defined as ‘scientific truth’, made communication easier between these two nations. Already in the end of the 1960s Hungary had most connections with Finland among capitalist countries. In Europe Finland became a forerunner also in the 1970s, when visa between the two countries was abolished. The purpose of this article is to compare political cultures in Finland and Hungary during the Urho Kekkonen and János Kádár era. The critical question is, what kind of results we can get, 13 HEINO NYYSSÖNEN when we compare these two countries to each other and not to their ‘traditional’ frames i.e.
[Show full text]