The Hungarian Tragedy
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Dissent Spring 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/1/2011 6:41 AM Page 5 POLITICS ABROAD The Hungarian Tragedy JAN-WERNER MÜLLER that twenty years later Hungary might be the first postcommunist country west of Minsk— and the first member state of the European A nationalist conservative revolution has Union—to slide back into authoritarianism. In triumphed in Budapest; its leaders are busy April 2010, the conservative-nationalist Fidesz dismantling constitutionalism and the rule of Party won more than two-thirds of parlia - law. How could this have happened? And can mentary seats, replacing a socialist the Western Left do anything about it? government that had been in power for eight There was a time when Hungary seemed years. Under the leadership of the highly the best hope for a liberal postcommunism. charismatic Viktor Orbán, the party has begun The country had produced some of the leading systematically to remove checks and balances, dissidents of the region in the 1970s and to undermine the rule of law and effectively 1980s (such as ex-Marxist philosopher János curtail the media. A new constitution this year Kis); civil society had developed rapidly even is to top off a process that the Economist has before the official end of state socialism in called “Putinization.” 1989. After the revolt of 1956 (which the How could this have happened, after two Soviet Union brutally suppressed), the decades of what seemed like fairly stable Hungarian government had slowly liberalized, democratic rule? The immediate answer is that introducing “goulash communism” and the Socialists not only led the country to the inverting the old totalitarian maxim to read: brink of financial disaster in 2009, but that the “who is not against us, is with us.” To be sure, party was also morally discredited in a way state socialism was discredited—but not ideals that has few parallels in Europe. The prime of social justice. minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, admitted in a The transition from state socialism was not secret speech to a party meeting in 2006 that only gradual—it was to a significant degree he had been lying to the electorate about the initiated by the old regime. Even the old dire financial situation of the country, that no Stalinist constitution remained nominally European country had “done anything as intact, amended beyond recognition through boneheaded” as Hungary, and that it was time carefully crafted compromises. Fundamental to tell citizens that their belts needed to be changes were made, but it was, in the words tightened—even if at the risk of losing the of the political scientist Andrew Arato, very next election. Like all secret speeches, much a revolution against The Revolution— Gyurcsány’s remarks—littered with obscen - that is to say, against the idea of revolution as ities, to boot—became public. They provoked a violent rupture with the past. For some time, huge and violent demonstrations against the it even seemed as if the mild-mannered Kis government, even if in retrospect they look might be the first postcommunist prime like an admirable attempt at honesty (at least minister. He was beaten by a Christian within his own party). Rather than resigning, Democrat, but, typically, one who had been the prime minister held on, implementing an trained as a historian and who in a different austerity program, only effectively to hand world probably would have been a university over power to a “government of experts” (in professor. As in other Central and East fact, technocrats who were Socialists or all European countries, it was the hour of the closely associated with the Socialists) in early intellectuals. 2009, after the country had to be bailed out by Hardly anyone could have imagined, then, other European Union members. The experts SPRING 2011 DISSENT 5 Dissent Spring 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/1/2011 6:41 AM Page 6 POLITICS ABROAD then pursued an even harsher economic Politics Can Be Different policy. All this explains why the Left imploded in More problematic still was what is widely last year’s elections. But it does not explain perceived as years of Socialist corruption and Putinization. For this we need to ask what clientelism. In the very same years, Socialist Fidesz is and what makes it different from politicians were seen as mainly advancing the other conservative nationalist forces in Central interests of major multinational corporations— and Eastern Europe. And we need to ask who and working hand in hand with neoliberal Viktor Orbán is. Brussels bureaucrats. Entry to the European It’s here that the Hungarian story has a Union in 2004 under Socialist auspices was truly tragic twist. For Orbán was once a fiery widely perceived as having destroyed many young liberal (though more in the European local businesses. Gyurcsány himself is a sense, shading into libertarianism). He had co- millionaire who made his fortune in business founded the Fidesz movement in the late before entering politics (or by mixing 1980s—with Fidesz standing for “Alliance of business and politics all along, as critics Young Democrats.” When the founders said charge). “young,” they meant it: nobody over thirty- This disastrous combination—a left-wing five was to be a party member. Orbán had party doing capitalism’s bidding, while appar - studied in the dissidents’ “invisible college”; ently helping party leaders enrich them - he first made a name for himself nationally selves—was not exclusive to the Socialists. when he appeared at the public reburial of The Free Democrats—once the party of the Imre Nagy—the Socialist prime minister in dissidents, which had nominated Kis for power in October–November 1956, later prime minister—governed with the Socialists executed—long-haired and looking rather until 2008 and were tarred with the same Byronesque, called for the withdrawal of the brush: capitalism and corruption. As one of its Russians. One can debate how daring such a leaders later admitted, “We had to pay the call was in the summer of 1989. But it price of capitalism to put an end to the dicta - certainly was a bravura performance. torship. At first we were saying that it was a Yet, this budding politician got nowhere price that had to be paid, and then it was, alas, with a liberal agenda. So Orbán changed love for it.” course and reinvented Fidesz as a nationalist, Intellectuals like the writer István Eörsi, morally conservative, and religious party. He who thought that their ideals had found a resented being treated as a student movement reliable advocate in what—to be sure—was leader by the established liberals in the Free always a minority party, turned their backs in Democratic Alliance. And he also seems to disgust. Others never forgave the Free have concluded that in Hungary only control Democrats for forming a coalition with the of all the levers of state power can yield Socialists, the successor party to the lasting political success. Many of his former Communists who had persecuted the dissi - allies left and joined the Free Democrats, dents. The Free Democrats dissolved before while Fidesz withdrew from the Liberal the 2010 election; a new party—called International. Orbán appeared to be vindi - “Politics can be different,” mixing a green and cated in 1998 when Fidesz replaced a Socialist a liberal agenda—appealed to those who had government (which had done more for marke - once voted for them. But it was also suspected tization and privatization than the nominally of being amateurish and too idealistic. To be right-wing parties). It came as a shock to the sure, politics could be different, but in a way Fidesz leader when his party was defeated in directly opposed to liberalism—both in the 2002 and the Socialists took over once again. classical European and the contemporary Orbán explained that “the nation” could not American sense. be in opposition and formed “civic committees” that were to mobilize civil society against the state. In a twisted way, he seemed to be using a dissident strategy in what had become a fairly stable liberal democracy. 6 DISSENT SPRING 2011 Dissent Spring 2011:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/1/2011 6:41 AM Page 7 POLITICS ABROAD Equating Fidesz with the nation as such the extreme Right—after all, it’s in the party’s foreshadowed what Orbán has been doing own electoral interest. But in many ways the since his election victory last year: a “national seemingly respectable nationalism that Fidesz revolution” in the name of “national values,” represents keeps legitimating the beliefs of namely “work, home, family, health, and Jobbik supporters. One of the first things order.” The election, according to the Fidesz Orbán did in power was to establish a Trianon leader, had signaled the formation of a memorial day; he also created a new kind of “national center” and given a mandate for a citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living in “system of national cooperation.” neighboring states, thereby stoking conflict All the nation-talk reveals a profoundly with Slovakia in particular. In fact, he started problematic characteristic of Hungarian nothing less than a comprehensive political culture: a deep-seated nationalism Kulturkampf , arguing that Fidesz had a and a feeling of resentment and victimization mandate to reshape the political system that goes back at least to the post–First World according to the true values of the “national War Treaty of Trianon and the huge losses of center” (and, to use a distinction prominent on territory imposed by the Allies in 1920. the Hungarian Right, the “well-rooted” Arguably, there has never been anything like Hungarians, as opposed to the “foreign- a public “coming-to-terms with the past” that hearted”).