István Tisza and the National Party of Work revived

On Monday, on the newly reconstructed Kossuth Square another old/new statue of István Tisza (1861-1918) was unveiled by Viktor Orbán. Few people were curious enough to stand in 40ºC (104ºF) heat to witness the great moment but Viktor Orbán, about half an hour later, delivered another ringing speech.

Tisza, who was prime minister of Hungary twice, once between 1903 and 1905 and again between 1913 and 1917) was not a popular man while he was alive. Already before he became prime minister, Endre Ady as a young newspaperman in Nagyvárad/Oradea, wrote an article in which he described Tisza as the most unpopular politician in Bihar/Bihor County. Tisza was assassinated on October 31, 1918 by roaming armed soldiers, and prior to that time there were three other attempts on his life. Ady, in one of his famous poems, called Tisza “the madman of Geszt,” Geszt being the center of the Tisza family’s landholdings in Bihar.

The Tisza statue that now graces Kossuth Square is a reproduction of the statue that was erected on April 22, 1934 and that was damaged during World War II. (The 5m tall István Tisza was not damaged, but his later “admirers” toppled it and not surprisingly the new regime after 1945 did not restore it.) The statue is monumental, and here the word “monumental” does not imply greatness. On the contrary, artistically speaking the general consensus is that it is a singularly worthless, if not outright hideous, work of overwhelming size–17 m tall with a huge lion on top. It is the work of  György Zala, who created the original Archangel Gabriel statue on Heroes’ Square.

The original statue / Source: Magyar Hírlap

Since István Tisza was murdered on the very first day of the 1918 revolution, the “counterrevolutionaries” soon came to adulate him. István Deák, the well-known American-Hungarian historian, described him as “steadfast, cunning, intelligent, cautious, and tolerant if necessary, but just as often ruthless. A pessimist by temperament, he was nevertheless imbued with a fanatical belief in the divine mission of the nobility which, in his eyes, was identical with the nation.” Others have viewed him as a social reactionary who stubbornly opposed the breakup of the large landed estates as well as even the most modest reform proposals–for instance, one that would have granted suffrage to soldiers fighting at the front. At this time approximately 10% of the population was eligible to vote in Hungary as opposed to the Austrian part of the Monarchy where there was practically universal male suffrage.

Today István Tisza is regaining the popularity he enjoyed during the Horthy period. I discovered a hospital named after him, and there is an István Tisza Association whose members describe him as a great liberal. His admirers usually point out that he was the only politician of the Dual Monarchy who initially opposed the war. What they neglect to tell is that once he decided that the Monarchy must take part in the conflict, he became its strongest supporter until, in 1917, he announced in parliament: “Gentlemen, we have lost this war.”

And in living color today / Source: temesvarihirek.ro

So, let’s see what Viktor Orbán had to say about István Tisza and his “message” for our own age. (Politicians always discover messages sent from bygone days to the present!) Well, Tisza’s message seems to be that after a disastrous liberal period, Hungarians can now build a successful “national period” which has been prepared for by Viktor Orbán’s government in the last four years. The toppling of statues usually signals the end of a regime, while the erection of new statues signifies a regime’s beginning.

Orbán often finds a fleeting theme in the life of a historical figure and out of it creates an entire political philosophy for the man. In this case, it occurred to him that the name of the party István Tisza established might come in handy to help define his connection with Tisza. Tisza’s party was called the National Party of Work. As we know, one of Orbán’s favorite themes is that society should be based on work as opposed to financial speculation; moreover, he stands solidly on a national platform. He emphasized in his speech that a party that stands for work does not have to be communist or socialist, it can also be national. According to Orbán, Tisza knew and fought against liberalism and socialism in the name of the nation. Just as he himself had to rebuild the country after a disastrous liberal period.

Oh yes, those liberals and socialists. They gave the Hungarian political elite of Tisza’s time a lot of trouble, and today these “self-appointed democrats attack us in the name of some foggy notion of European identity.” But he can tell them what Tisza told his liberals and socialists. “We admit that we stand on a national basis. According to some super modern critics we are nationalists … and they talk about nationalist prejudices. We don’t care about the flourishing of mankind if it is not connected to the progress, flowering, greatness of the Hungarian nation.” Tisza explained that the destiny of the Hungarian nation was assured by taking over only certain “healthy buds of western culture” which were then stamped with the Hungarian national character and the special conditions existing in the Carpathian Basin.

As usual, Orbán’s speechwriters culled the writings of István Tisza to find the perfect quotations. But there is a serious problem with all that gazing at the past. Getting inspiration from a bygone day and quoting nationalistic speeches uttered a hundred years ago does not justify an anachronistic worldview. And it certainly does not justify an attempt to recreate a one-party system. As Freedom House correctly noted, another year of Viktor Orbán’s rule and Hungary will no longer be considered a democracy.

A one-party system is a one-party system quite independently of its ideology. Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, the countries of the Soviet bloc after World War II were all dictatorships of various degrees of harshness. Viktor Orbán is now building a “national” dictatorship and unveiling the appropriate statues to mark his new regime.

Difficult passage: Orbán’s ferrying between Moscow and Brussels

Endre Ady (1877-1919), one of Hungary’s greatest poets, also wrote an enormous number of political essays during his lifetime. After all, he made his living as a journalist. He was a sharp-eyed observer of Hungarian politics from an angle conservative Hungary considered to be radical. His criticism of his country, which he loved dearly but also feared for, could be harsh and often prophetic.

Some of his descriptions of Hungary at the turn of the nineteenth century are applicable even today. One of these is the famous label he stuck on Hungary: “a ferryboat country.” Like a ferry, the country keeps crossing the river back and forth. With every crossing it ends up not on the side of progress  and democracy but its opposite, stultifying reaction and with it tyranny. It cannot decide whether it belongs to the East or to the West.

Today Hungary has a prime minister for whom this disturbing aspect of Hungarian reality that Ady wrote about causes no sleepless nights. On the contrary, he considers it a plus that will allow his country to become a negotiator of sorts between East and West. He is convinced that Hungary will reap enormous benefits from his ferrying between the two worlds.

It seems, however, that Viktor Orbán’s ferry is drifting farther and farther toward destinations like Putin’s Russia, Lukashenko’s Belarus, and Yanukovych’s Ukraine.

Observers often comment on Viktor Orbán’s incredible luck. In the past four years political and economic analysts predicted that Hungary’s unorthodox policies would bring certain collapse, and yet he managed to keep his head above water. People admire his skill in playing a double game with the European Union. One day, people predict, the European Union will have had enough of him. And yet, even though he compares Brussels to the Moscow of the Soviet Union, money continues to pour in from Brussels.

Occasionally, however, things can go wrong. Only a couple of months ago he decided to strike a deal with Vladimir Putin that put Hungary solidly in Russia’s economic sphere. Moreover, the enormous loan that Putin made available to enlarge the nuclear power plant in Paks can be used by Putin as leverage against Hungary if need be. According to people close to Orbán, Putin made a good impression on him. Yet Putin is a foxy fellow who is most likely using Hungary to move Russian money and power into the European Union. As one Orbán critic put it, the ferry set anchor in Putin’s harbor.

Yes, Orbán has been lucky so far, but this Ukrainian revolution came at the very wrong time for him. There are serious questions at home over the wisdom of such a long-term commitment with Putin’s Russia. It is dangerous to get too friendly with Putin, whose Russia is increasingly harking back to Soviet times. People ask how ferocious anti-communists like Orbán and László Kövér, president of the Hungarian parliament, can get so chummy with a former KGB agent. Fear of Putin’s intentions in Hungary is real. Perhaps this is the most serious complaint in Hungary when it comes to the Putin-Orbán agreement.

And now comes the upheaval in Kiev. Yanukovych hitched his wagon to the Russian troika for a few billion dollars. Ukraine received just a little more money than what Putin promised to Orbán. But there was a price: giving up the idea of Ukraine ever belonging to the European Union. A lot of Ukrainians, however, didn’t want to be part of the Eurasian Economic Union Putin has been dreaming of for some time. He himself stated in November 2011 at a conference organized by his United Russia party that this Eurasian Union would be built upon “the best values of the Soviet Union.” During the same conference a Russian political scientist said that not just former Soviet states but also countries which “have been historically or culturally close to the former Soviet Union” would belong to this union. Hungary was one of them.  As for Ukraine, Russians always looked upon this territory as their very own. After all, Kiev was where Russia was born in the late ninth century. The former Czech president Václav Klaus, calling himself a realist, announced just today that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia; this is where it belongs. Those hot heads in Kiev shouldn’t be encouraged by the politicians of the European Union that it should be otherwise.

Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Orbán in March 2012 during a short visit to Kiev

So, here is Viktor Orbán’s predicament. As the prime minister of one of Ukraine’s neighboring countries, he should take an active part in the negotiations initiated by his friend Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland. The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has been instrumental in brokering an agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition which at least for the time being has resulted in a restoration of the 2004 constitution and the promise of early elections. If the truce holds, it looks as if Putin’s attempt at gaining a foothold in Ukraine will have failed.

But Orbán doesn’t want to offend Putin and therefore he is keeping a low profile. Although leading politicians all over Europe have condemned Yanukovych’s bloody efforts to suppress the revolt, Orbán remains quiet. As he said today in his regular Friday morning radio address, “We are watching the events from the background.” In fact, they are remaining so far in the background that Foreign Minister János Martonyi suddenly became too ill to attend the extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels. Hungary was represented by Undersecretary Zsolt Németh.

Well, I’m not quite correct in saying that Orbán did nothing in connection with the Ukrainian crisis. He hopped on a helicopter and visited the Hungarian-Ukrainian border at Záhony. And he made sure that his activities were videoed. As usual, he kept a few pieces of paper in front of him which he studied intently for a few seconds. He looked at the snow-covered Ukrainian terrain where he spotted a couple of deer. Then he rushed to a hospital where he was told that there are plenty of doctors and beds to take care of the wounded. And finally he gave a little pep talk to the border guards for doing their best. I might add that there is nothing in Zaparttia Oblast that would warrant his presence there. But his staff immediately placed the video on Facebook. One blogger described him as “a man who is trying to reap political benefit from the corpse of his neighbor.”

Meanwhile the servile state media feel that they have to take a pro-Russian stance. For example, the centrally edited news called the demonstrators in Kiev terrorists. When called to explain this report, it turned out that one of their sources was the “Russia Today” television station and the other a Russian daily newspaper’s online edition. Gordon Bajnai’s reaction upon hearing the story was disbelief until he himself listened to the broadcast. He bitterly remarked that if the Orbán government keeps going in the same direction as in the last four years “Hungary might become the most western successor state of the Soviet Union.” He added that this is one good reason to vote against Orbán and his party on April 6.

The director of a new research institute on the history of the regime change in Hungary

Although I’m going to talk about a historical research institute today, this post is not really about history. Far from it. It is about politics. Dirty politics. About a government that wants to recast recent political events in the light of its own ideology. About the falsification of history, if you want.

What am I talking about? The Orbán government set up yet another research institute, this one under the direct control of the Office of the Prime Minister. Viktor Orbán himself chose its first director. The institute, with the cumbersome name Rendszerváltás Történetét Kutató Intézet és Archívum (Research Institute and Archives for the Study of the Regime Change), will have 20 associates and a budget of 360 million forints just for the next six months. According to some articles I read on the subject, there was only one application for the director’s position that was submitted according to specifications, that of Zoltán Bíró, a literary historian whose field of study is Endre Ady’s poetry.

Who is this man? Those who aren’t familiar with the cast of characters in the regime change or aren’t diligent readers of Magyar Hírlap or don’t watch Echo TV might never have heard his name. Zoltán Bíró likes to describe himself as “the first chairman of Magyar Demokrata Fórum (MDF).” Almost every article about him and his new institute describes him as such. Actually, the first chairman of MDF was József Antall, who was elected to the post in October 1989. Bíró was managing director of the party between March and October 1989.

He had another occasion to become well known in those years. In April 1988 he together with Mihály Bihari, later chief justice of the Constitutional Court, László Lengyel, economist and publicist, and Zoltán Király, a journalist, was expelled from MSZMP. The four told their sad tale in a book entitled Kizárt a párt (I was expelled from the party).

Bíró’s political views are of the far-right variety. He is also an expert on weaving elaborate conspiracy theories. He has a chip on his shoulder because after the appearance of József Antall he lost his bid for party leadership. He began circulating stories in which he intimated that perhaps József Antall “was sent by someone” and those someones might have been the communists who found in Antall a man with whom they could do business.

Contemporaries describe Bíró as a man who sowed the seeds of mistrust and later even hatred between the narodnik-populists (népi-nemzeti) and the urbanites, whom he liked to identify as Jewish intellectuals. According to Zoltán Ripp (Rendszerváltás Magyarországon, 1987-1990, 2006), Bíró accused them of disseminating false information about the gathering of men and women in Lakitelek, in the backyard of Sándor Lezsák, describing it as a meeting of anti-Semites. There were references to a New York Times article, but I couldn’t find it.

In any case, by 1991 Bíró left MDF and together with Imre Pozsgay, a high-level MSZMP politician, established the short-lived National Democratic Alliance. From the beginning it was clear that Bíró really didn’t want to dismantle the Hungarian communist party (MSZMP) but rather to forge an alliance between the “népi-nemzeti” members of MSZMP, like himself and Pozsgay, and the narodnik groups outside of the party that included such men as István Csurka, Sándor Lezsák, and Sándor Csoóri.

He remains a critic of the change of regime and the decision to work out the details of this new regime with all political forces, including the reform wing of MSZMP. Something went wrong, Bíró claims, and he thus rather forcefully rejects the whole period that resulted from that historic compromise.

Imre Pozsgay and Zoltán Bíró at the Convention of the National Democratic Alliance, 1991 / MTI

I suspect, therefore, that he and his colleagues in this new institute will reject the very idea of real regime change in 1990. He will most likely claim that the communists actually preserved their rule intact. I furthermore assume that this interpretation will meet with Viktor Orbán’s approval, since he often talked about the past twenty or so years as chaotic and ideologically confusing. The line between dictatorship and democracy was not clear. I’m sure he would like to have it in writing, the product of “serious” research by a “recognized” historical institute, that real regime change came only in 2010.

János Kenedi, a historian of this period and a member of the democratic opposition in the 1980s, summarized the task of the institute as “to show that Orbán’s view of the regime change is the correct one and that there was actually no regime change between 1987 and 1990.”

All that is bad enough, but according to Sándor Révész, Bíró is also no friend of western multi-party democracy. In his book entitled Saját utam (My own road), he makes that clear, expressing as well his hatred of liberals and liberalism. In 2009 in Magyar Hírlap he stated that Fidesz should even use “dictatorial instruments because one should honor and consider sacred the existence of the nation and not the doctrine of democracy and freedom.” So, concludes Révész, “the official history of the change of regime will be in the hands of someone who thinks that dictatorship is a suitable instrument in the service of the nation while democracy and freedom harms it.”

Another perfect appointment of Viktor Orbán. Another blow for historiographical integrity.

Endre Ady: “Let us go back to Asia” (1902)

The young Endre Ady in Nagyvárad/Oradea

A friend called my attention to an article written by Endre Ady, the great Hungarian poet, in 1902. For those of you not familiar with Ady’s work, I ought say a few words about him. He came from an impoverished Calvinist petty noble family. The house he was born in was no different from those of the Romanian and Hungarian peasants in Érmindszent, today called Adyfalva in Hungarian and Ady Endre in Romanian. After he studied law for a while in Debrecen he became a journalist, but he left the city soon after. The town later became the symbol of backwardness in his poetry. He moved to Nagyvárad (Oradea) which in those days was considered to be a small but lively cultural center. I might add that Nagyvárad in those days had a very large Jewish population. About 15,000 out of the total population of 60,000. It was here that he met the love of his life, Adél Brüll, whom he called Léda in his poems, a rich married woman originally from Nagyvárad who was living in Paris at the time.

He became a correspondent for Nagyváradí Napló, the local daily. If one takes a look at Ady’s Összes prózai művei one must admire his prodigious output. There were days when he was able to write two or three short essays. On Christmas Day of 1901 he wrote even more. Here is the essay I received this morning. Translating it was difficult; I’m no Ady.

* * *

Let us go back to Asia

My beloved lordly [úri]  flesh and blood, the cup is full. We don’t have any right to this place here, so let’s go back to Asia!… Perhaps we will find a small territory somewhere, possibly far away where even the Asiatic people are not inclined toward culture. According to our ancient chroniclers we came here with Árpád, Álmos, and company. But now let’s go back following Stefi Rakovszky, Zoltán Lengyel, Pál Móricz, Jr.[members of parliament] and others. Let’s go while we can.

This lordly crowd with its rich history yesterday managed to sink to the lowest Balkanic level. What happened in parliament yesterday was an entertaining comedy even in its baseness. For a minute I would like to be a treasonous “nationality agitator” so I would be able to fully comprehend with true sensitivity the scandal that occurred in the Hungarian parliament. For such stupidity we were not ready although we have been prepared for everything that can happen here.

Does this country need a parliament? The knout, not parliament. Pardon me, not the knout. Nursery school, kindergarten, and lots of patience if there is anything left of this virtue in the twentieth century.

Vilmos Vázsonyi, the only Hungarian member of parliament who was chosen by self-respecting people, was not allowed to speak in the Hungarian parliament. The children who didn’t allow him to speak are angry because he disturbed their game of merils; the children who play dice at the expense of 19 million people.

This scandal of this most Balkanic parliament opened our eyes. It uncovered the secret that would have been better not ever to be known. We found out that the children of the Hungarian parliament are all the same. It doesn’t matter whether they take their oath to the two-headed eagle, to the dewy pimple of Kálmán Széll, the hat of Lajos Kossuth, the slippers of the infallible Holy Father, it doesn’t matter to what. If one scratches just a little the thick lining of their abstruse cerebrum suddenly they are swarming in front of us in their pitiful similarity.

What did Vázsonyi say? Cultural beasts? In the divine name of culture let’s veto this title. For the sake of the reputation of the beasts because they always dare to show their teeth. Not only when they have something to do with a democratic member of parliament.

My beloved lordly flesh and blood. Asia roared in you yesterday. The nostalgia, the wishful desire of the nomadic, the brutish men broke into a full-fledged attack. I wasn’t there but I see the picture. In the middle there is a goaded single man of intellect. He is knowledgeable, he is ambitious, he is daring, he is determined, they hate him. And–oh, what a horror–his ancestry once-upon-a-time crossed the Jordan River. That little Jewish giant among us. This giant became famous overnight and today thousands adore him and he is knowledgeable. This indeed is the most awful part of it! This man dares to be in our ignorant crowd! And on top of it all, he is Jewish! There he stands confused in the middle of the crowd. A shrill invective can be heard. Zoltán Lengyel yelled, this young  simpleton with insufficient intelligence who in another country couldn’t even be cleaning silverware.  And Mr. Leszkay and Mr. Rakovszky, and other well known idiots. And Vázsonyi leaves this house of comedy in a one-horse buggy.

My beloved lordly flesh and blood. The game of nine-men’s merils that you lose hurts, doesn’t it? Isn’t the slothfulness of the eastern nomadic mentality came to the surface in order to annihilate  this man with instruments we brought along from the Crimea because we can’t fight with his weapons, learning and knowledge? Isn’t it so, my beloved lordly flesh and blood? Because this is the only way to excuse this scandal.

If at all. But not really. Other people are watching us. They see our inability to progress; they see that with Samoyed virtues we are sprawling and wrangling in the middle of Europe as a little piece of  the forgotten Middle Ages. They see that we are empty and they find us wanting. If we want to do something spectacular then we hit a Jew. As soon as we become sober we rush to drink the sweet drink of the colored glory of  the so-called one thousand years. We are idle and good-for-nothings. The parliament, the rock fortress of great nations, is for us good only to discredit it. Where will this lead, my beloved lordly flesh and blood? Because I’m Ur-magyar, not a Jewish peddler [handlézsidó] whom you call everybody who is superior to you. The end of it will be that we will be shown the door from here as if we had never been here before.

Let’s just once be scheming. Let’s go back to Asia. There we will not have to listen to uncomfortably truthful democrats. We will hunt, fish, play a quiet domestic card game and we can meditate about a certain beautiful one-thousand-year-old dream.

Let’s go back, my beloved lordly flesh and blood. Here the letter, the railway kill us. Moreover, there are too many Jews here who keep urging us to go forward. Down with the frills, swords, blessed rosaries, cards, flasks, greyhounds, race-horses, and ancestors! Let’s go back to Asia!

Nagyváradi Napló, January 31, 1902