The authors wish to express their appreciation to a number of people who assisted in the preparation of this study. Paul Marer of Indiana University furnished his considerable expertise on the Hungarian economy. Thanks go to Sharon Schwartz, who edited the chapters, and to Cissie Coy, who performed the final prepublication review. The index was prepared by Shirley Kessell. Malinda B. Neale of the Library of Congress Composing Unit prepared the camera-ready copy under the supervision of Peggy Pixley.
A number of members of the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress made significant contributions to the preparation of this book. Special thanks are owed to Richard F. Nyrop, who supplied help and suggestions on chapters 1 through 4, and to Sandra W. Meditz, who reviewed Chapter 5. The authors are also grateful to Raymond E. Zickel, who assisted in research and writing. Martha E. Hopkins ably oversaw editing, and Marilyn Majeska managed production of the book. Elizabeth A. Yates, Barbara Edgerton, and Izella Watson assisted on numerous phases of manuscript preparation. Helen R. Fedor gathered and helped select the photographs, and Walter R. Iwaskiw assembled the materials for the maps. Invaluable graphics support was given by David P. Cabitto, assisted by Sandra K. Ferrell (who did the cover and chapter illustrations) and Kimberly A. Lord. Stanley M. Sciora furnished information on the ranks and insignia of the Hungarian armed forces.
Finally, the authors wish to note the generosity of those individuals who provided photographs for this book. All photographs are original work not previously published.
Since the mid-1970s, few countries in the world have experienced such rapid and extensive change as Hungary. The political system has moved from an authoritarian regime dominated by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP) to a multiparty republic. The HSWP itself split, in October 1989, and most of its leaders organized a new party, the Hungarian Socialist Party. In the late 1980s, relations with Western countries improved dramatically, and the Hungarians also received significant support for their reform efforts from the Soviet Union. By contrast, until late 1989 tensions between Hungary and Romania were rising over the latter's treatment of its Hungarian minority, but, after the December 1989 revolution in Romania, the chances for the resolution of that problem improved. Although sporadic efforts had been undertaken since the late 1960s to introduce elements of a market economy into a socialist command economy, Hungarian leaders in 1989 declared their intention to create a full-fledged capitalist economy. The government has also reduced the defense budget, and it has taken steps to make the police apparatus accountable to the people and to their elected representatives. Yet, the discontent that emerged from pressures stemming from the economy's precipitous decline continued. This discontent, coupled with the regime's need to widen its support to sustain the transition from a state socialist to capitalist economy, led the Hungarian regime to undertake political reform efforts.
These changes have necessitated a new edition of Hungary: A Country Study, which supersedes the edition published in 1973. Virtually everything discussed in the previous edition has been overtaken by events. Like the earlier edition, this study attempts to present the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and national security aspects of Hungary. Sources of information included books and scholarly journals, official reports of governments and international organizations, foreign and domestic newspapers, and numerous periodicals.
The Hungarian people are descendants of the Magyars, an Asiatic tribe whose origins lie in what is today central Russia. The word Hungary appears to derive from a Slavicized form of the Turkic words on ogur, meaning "ten arrows," which may have referred to the number of Magyar tribes. Unlike most Europeans, Hungarians do not speak an Indo-European language. Hungarian is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family, which also includes such languages as Estonian and Finnish.
THE HUNGARIAN PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC emerged in 1949 after the Hungarian Workers' Party eliminated its rivals and assumed control of the state. Soviet control of Eastern Europe after World War II had enabled a minuscule communist party lacking popular support to gain power in the country and gradually eliminate its political rivals. Under Matyas Rakosi, the party consolidated its control and radically transformed the country economically, socially, and politically.
In the mid-1950s, after the Soviet Union had somewhat relaxed its control of Eastern Europe, Hungarian society began to mobilize against the regime, culminating in the Revolution of 1956. Soviet troops crushed the rebellion, leaving power in the hands of Janos Kadar. After consolidating his authority, Kadar embarked on a program of economic reform in the mid-1960s.
Like other countries of Eastern Europe, Hungary has a history of class, religious, and ethnic conflicts that were intensified and sometimes decided by the actions of larger, more powerful neighbors. Beginning in the tenth century, German and Bohemian missionaries converted the Magyars. In the early eleventh century, Bavarian knights helped Stephen I eliminate rivals and quash peasant revolts. Suleyman the Magnificent's Ottoman armies conquered and partitioned the country with the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century, expediting the spread of Protestant faiths. Habsburg rulers colonized Hungary with non-Magyars, repressed its Protestants, stifled its economic development, and attempted to Germanize its people. The Entente powers carved up Hungary after World War I and distributed most of the land to new nation-states. Finally, dictator Joseph Stalin enforced Soviet domination over postwar Hungary.
Despite internal divisions, strong foreign influence, and outright attempts to force the Hungarians to assimilate into other cultures, Hungarian nationalism has thrived throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nationalism drove Hungary to ally itself with Nazi Germany to regain territories lost after World War I. Nationalism also inspired Hungarians to revolt against the Stalinist political order in October 1956.
The Hungarian nation traces its history to the Magyars, a pagan Finno-Ugric tribe that arose in central Russia and spoke a language that evolved into modern Hungarian. Historians dispute the exact location of the early Magyars' original homeland, but it is likely to be an area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. In ancient times, the Magyars probably lived as nomadic tent-dwelling hunters and fishers. Some scholars argue that they engaged in agriculture beginning in the second millennium B.C.
Before the fifth century A.D., the Magyars' ancestors gradually migrated southward onto the Russian steppes, where they wandered into the lands near the Volga River bend, at present-day Kazan, as nomadic herders. Later, probably under pressure from hostile tribes to the east, they migrated to the area between the Don and lower Dnepr rivers. There they lived close to, and perhaps were dominated by, the Bulgar-Turks from about the fifth to the seventh century. During this period, the Magyars became a semisedentary people who lived by raising cattle and sheep, planting crops, and fishing. The Bulgar-Turkish influence on the Magyars was significant, especially in agriculture. Most Hungarian words dealing with agriculture and animal husbandry have Turkic roots. By contrast, the etymology of the word Hungary has been traced to a Slavicized form of the Turkic words on ogur, meaning "ten arrows," which may have referred to the number of Magyar tribes.
The Magyars lived on lands controlled by the Khazars (a Turkish people whose realm stretched from the lower Volga and the lower Don rivers to the Caucasus) from about the seventh to the ninth century, when they freed themselves from Khazar rule. The Khazars attempted to reconquer the Magyars both by themselves and with the help of the Pechenegs, another Turkish tribe. This tribe drove the Magyars from their homes westward to lands between the Dnepr and lower Danube rivers in 889. In 895 the Magyars joined Byzantine armies under Emperor Leo VI in a war against the Bulgars. However, the Bulgars emerged victorious. Their allies, the Pechenegs, attacked the weakened Magyars and forced them westward yet again in 895 or 896. This migration took the Magyars over the Carpathian Mountains and into the basin drained by the Danube and Tisza rivers, a region that corresponds roughly to present-day Hungary. Romans, Goths, Huns, Slavs, and other peoples had previously occupied the region, but at the time of the Magyar migration, the land was inhabited only by a sparse population of Slavs, numbering about 200,000.
Tradition holds that the Magyar clan chiefs chose a chieftain named Árpad to lead the migration and that they swore by sipping from a cup of their commingled blood to accept Árpad's male descendants as the Magyars' hereditary chieftains. The Magyars probably knew of the lands in the Carpathian Basin because from 892 to 894 Magyar mercenaries had fought there for King Arnulph of East Francia in a struggle with the duke of Moravia. Estimates are that about 400,000 people made up the exodus, in seven Magyar, one Kabar, and other smaller tribes.
The Carpathian Basin and parts of Transylvania southsouthwest of the basin had been settled for thousands of years before the Magyars' arrival. A rich Bronze Age culture thrived there until horsemen from the steppes destroyed it in the middle of the thirteenth century B.C. Celts later occupied parts of the land, and in the first century A.D. the Romans conquered and divided it between the imperial provinces of Pannonia and Dacia. In the fourth century, the Goths ousted the Romans, and Attila the Hun later made the Carpathian Basin the hub of his short-lived empire. Thereafter, Avars, Bulgars, Germans, and Slavs settled the region. In the late ninth century A.D., only scattered settlements of Slavs occupied the Carpathian Basin. The Magyar forces, light cavalrymen who used Central Asian-style bows, quickly conquered the Slavs, whom they either assimilated or enslaved.
Romanian and Hungarian historians disagree about the ethnicity of Transylvania's population before the Magyars' arrival. The Romanians establish their claims to Transylvania by arguing that their Latin ancestors inhabited Transylvania and survived there through the Dark Ages. The Hungarians, by contrast, maintain that Transylvania was inhabited not by the ancestors of the Romanians but by Slavs and point out that the first mention of the Romanians' ancestors in Hungarian records, which appeared in the thirteenth century, described them as drifting herders.
In the four centuries after their migration into the Carpathian Basin, the Magyars gradually developed from a loose confederation of pagan marauders into a recognized kingdom. This kingdom, which became known as Hungary, was led by the Árpad Dynsaty and was firmly allied to the Christian West. Eventually the Árpad line died out, however, and Hungary again descended into anarchy, with the most powerful nobels vying for control.
Christianization of the MagyarsThe bonds linking the seven Magyar tribes grew frail soon after the migration into the Carpathian Basin. At that time, Europe was weak and disunited, and for more than half a century Magyar bands raided Bavaria, Moravia, Italy, Constantinople, and lands as far away as the Pyrenees. Sometimes fighting as mercenaries and sometimes lured by spoils alone, the Magyar bands looted towns and took captives for labor, ransom, or sale on the slave market. The Byzantine emperor and European princes paid the Magyars annual tribute. In 955, however, German and Czech armies under the Holy Roman Empire's King Otto I destroyed a Magyar force near Augsburg. The defeat effectively ended Magyar raids on the West, and in 970 the Byzantines halted Magyar incursions toward the East.
Fearing a war of extermination, Chieftain Geza (972-97), Árpad's great-grandson, assured Otto II that the Magyars had ceased their raids and asked him to send missionaries. Otto complied, and in 975 Geza and a few of his kinsmen were baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. Geza consented to baptism more out of political necessity than conviction. He continued to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods and reportedly bragged that he "was rich enough for two gods." From this time, however, missionaries began the gradual process of converting and simultaneously westernizing the Magyar tribes. Geza used German knights and his position as chief of the Magyars' largest clan to restore strong central authority over the other clans. Hungary's ties with the West were strengthened in 996 when Geza's son, Stephen, who was baptized as a child and educated by Saint Adalbert of Prague, married Gisela, a Bavarian princess and sister of Emperor Henry II.
Stephen (997-1038) became chieftain when Geza died, and he consolidated his rule by ousting rival clan chiefs and confiscating their lands. Stephen then asked Pope Sylvester II to recognize him as king of Hungary. The pope agreed, and legend says Stephen was crowned on Christmas Day in the year 1000. The crowning legitimized Hungary as a Western kingdom independent of the Holy Roman and Byzantine empires. It also gave Stephen virtually absolute power, which he used to strengthen the Roman Catholic Church and Hungary. Stephen ordered the people to pay tithes and required every tenth village to construct a church and support a priest. Stephen donated land to support bishoprics and monasteries, required all persons except the clergy to marry, and barred marriages between Christians and pagans. Foreign monks worked as teachers and introduced Western agricultural methods. A Latin alphabet was devised for the Magyar (Hungarian) language.
Stephen administered his kingdom through a system of counties, each governed by an ispan, or magistrate, appointed by the king. In Stephen's time, Magyar society had two classes: the freemen nobles and the unfree. The nobles were descended in the male line from the Magyars who had either migrated into the Carpathian Basin or had received their title of nobility from the king. Only nobles could hold office or present grievances to the king. They paid tithes and owed the crown military service but were exempt from taxes. The unfree--who had no political voice--were slaves, freed slaves, immigrants, or nobles stripped of their privileges. Most were serfs who paid taxes to the king and a part of each harvest to their lord for use of his land. The king had direct control of the unfree, thus checking the nobles' power.
Clan lands, crown lands, and former crown lands made up the realm. Clan lands belonged to nobles, who could will the lands to family members or the church; if a noble died without an heir, his land reverted to his clan. Crown lands consisted of Stephen's patrimony, lands seized from disloyal nobles, conquered lands, and unoccupied parts of the kingdom. Former crown lands were properties granted by the king to the church or to individuals.
Stephen died in 1038 and was canonized in 1083. Despite pagan revolts and a series of succession struggles after his death, Hungary grew stronger and expanded. Transylvania was conquered and colonized with Magyars, Szekels (a tribe related to the Magyars), and German Saxons in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In 1090 Laszlo I (1077-95) occupied Slavonia, and in 1103 Kalman I (1095-1116) assumed the title of king of Croatia. Croatia was never assimilated into Hungary; rather, it became an associate kingdom administered by a ban, or civil governor.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries were relatively peaceful, and Hungary slowly developed a feudal economy. Crop production gradually supplemented stock breeding, but until the twelfth century planting methods remained crude because tillers farmed each plot until it was exhausted, then moved on to fresh land. Gold, silver, and salt mining boosted the king's revenues. Despite the minting of coins, cattle remained the principal medium of exchange. Towns began developing when an improvement in agricultural methods and the clearing of additional land produced enough surplus to support a class of full-time craftsmen. By the reign of Bela III (1173-96), Hungary was one of the leading powers in southeastern Europe, and in the thirteenth century Hungary's nobles were trading gold, silver, copper, and iron with western Europe for luxury goods.
Until the end of the twelfth century, the king's power remained paramount in Hungary. He was the largest landowner, and income from the crown lands nearly equaled the revenues generated from mines, customs, tolls, and the mint. In the thirteenth century, however, the social structure changed, and the crown's absolute power began to wane. As the crown lands became a less important source of royal revenues, the king found it expedient to make land grants to nobles to ensure their loyalty. King Andrew II (1205-35), a profligate spender on foreign military adventures and domestic luxury, made huge land grants to nobles who fought for him. These nobles, many of whom were foreign knights, soon made up a class of magnates whose wealth and power far outstripped that of the more numerous, and predominantly Magyar, lesser nobles. When Andrew tried to meet burgeoning expenses by raising the serfs' taxes, thereby indirectly slashing the lesser nobles' incomes, the lesser nobles rebelled. In 1222 they forced Andrew to sign the Golden Bull, which limited the king's power, declared the lesser nobles (all free men not included among the great Barons or magnates) legally equal to the magnates and gave them the right to resist the king's illegal acts. The lesser nobles also began to present Andrew with grievances, a practice that evolved into the institution of the parliament, or Diet.
Andrew II's son Bela IV (1235-79) tried with little success to reestablish royal preeminence by reacquiring lost crown lands. His efforts, however, created a deep rift between the crown and the magnates just as the Mongols were sweeping westward across Russia toward Europe. Aware of the danger, Bela ordered the magnates and lesser nobles to mobilize. Few responded, and the Mongols routed Bela's army at Mohi on April 11, 1241. Bela fled first to Austria, where Duke Frederick of Babenberg held him for ransom, then to Dalmatia. The Mongols reduced Hungary's towns and villages to ashes and slaughtered half the population before news arrived in 1242 that the Great Khan Ogotai had died in Karakorum. The Mongols withdrew, sparing Bela and what remained of his kingdom.
Bela realized that reconstruction would require the magnates' support, so he abandoned his attempts to recover former crown lands. Instead, he granted crown lands to his supporters, reorganized the army by replacing light archers with heavy cavalry, and granted the magnates concessions to redevelop their lands and construct stone-and-mortar castles that would withstand enemy sieges. Bela repopulated the country with a wave of immigrants, transforming royal castles into towns and populating them with Germans, Italians, and Jews. Mining began anew, farming methods improved, and crafts and commerce developed in the towns. After Bela's reconstruction program, the magnates, with their new fortifications, emerged as Hungary's most powerful political force. However, by the end of the thirteenth century, they were fighting each other and carving out petty principalities.
King Bela IV died in 1270, and the Árpad line expired in 1301 when Andrew III, who strove with some success to limit the magnates' power, unexpectedly died without a male heir. Anarchy characterized Hungary as factions of magnates vied for control.
After the Árpad Dynasty ended, Hungary's nobles chose a series of foreign kings who reestablished strong royal authority. Hungary and the adjacent countries prospered for several centuries as Central Europe experienced an era of peace interrupted only by succession struggles. But over time, the onslaughts of the Turks and the strife of the Reformation weakened Hungary, and the country was eventually partitioned by the Turks and the Habsburgs. Golden Era
Hungary's first two foreign kings, Charles Robert and Louis I of the House of Anjou, ruled during one of the most glorious periods in the country's history. Central Europe was at peace, and Hungary and its neighbors prospered. Charles Robert (1308-42) won the protracted succession struggle after Andrew III's death. An Árpad descendant in the female line, Charles Robert was crowned as a child and raised in Hungary. He reestablished the crown's authority by ousting disloyal magnates and distributing their estates to his supporters. Charles Robert then ordered the magnates to recruit and equip small private armies called banderia. Charles Robert ruled by decree and convened the Diet only to announce his decisions. Dynastic marriages linked his family with the ruling families of Naples and Poland and heightened Hungary's standing abroad. Under Charles Robert, the crown regained control of Hungary's mines, and in the next two centuries the mines produced more than a third of Europe's gold and a quarter of its silver. Charles Robert also introduced tax reforms and a stable currency. Charles Robert's son and successor Louis I (1342-82) maintained the strong central authority Charles Robert had amassed. In 1351 Louis issued a decree that reconfirmed the Golden Bull, erased all legal distinctions between the lesser nobles and the magnates, standardized the serfs' obligations, and barred the serfs from leaving the lesser nobles' farms to seek better opportunities on the magnates' estates. The decree also established the entail system. Hungary's economy continued to flourish during Louis's reign. Gold and other precious metals poured from the country's mines and enriched the royal treasury, foreign trade increased, new towns and villages arose, and craftsmen formed guilds. The prosperity fueled a surge in cultural activity, and Louis promoted the illumination of manuscripts and in 1367 founded Hungary's first university. Abroad, however, Louis fought several costly wars and wasted time, funds, and lives in failed attempts to gain for his nephew the throne of Naples. While Louis was engaged in these activates, the Turks made their initial inroads into the Balkans. Louis became king of Poland in 1370 and ruled the two countries for twelve years.
Sigismund (1387-37), Louis's son-in-law, won a bitter struggle for the throne after Louis died in 1382. Under Sigismund, Hungary's fortunes began to decline. Many Hungarian nobles despised Sigismund for his cruelty during the succession struggle, his long absences, and his costly foreign wars. In 1401 disgruntled nobles temporarily imprisoned the king. In 1403 another group crowned an anti-king, who failed to solidify his power but succeeded in selling Dalmatia to Venice. Sigismund failed to reclaim the territory. Sigismund became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410 and king of Bohemia in 1419, thus requiring him to spend long periods abroad and enabling Hungary's magnates to acquire unprecedented power. In response, Sigismund created the office of palatine to rule the country in his stead. Like earlier Hungarian kings, Sigismund elevated his supporters to magnate status and sold off crown lands to meet burgeoning expenses. Although Hungary's economy continued to flourish, Sigismund's expenses outstripped his income. He bolstered royal revenues by increasing the serfs' taxes and requiring cash payment. Social turmoil erupted late in Sigismund's reign as a result of the heavier taxes and renewed magnate pressure on the lesser nobles. Hungary's first peasant revolt erupted when a Transylvanian bishop ordered peasants to pay tithes in coin rather than in kind. The revolt was quickly checked, but it prompted Transylvania's Szekel, Magyar, and German nobles to form the Union of Three Nations, which was an effort to defend their privileges against any power except that of the king.
Additional turmoil erupted when the Ottoman Turks expanded their empire into the Balkans. They crossed the Bosporus Straits in 1352, subdued Bulgaria in 1388, and defeated the Serbs at Kosovo Polje in 1389. Sigismund led a crusade against them in 1396, but the Ottomans routed his forces at Nicopolis, and he barely escaped with his life. Tamerlane's invasion of Anatolia in 1402-03 slowed the Turks' progress for several decades, but in 1437 Sultan Murad prepared to invade Hungary. Sigismund died the same year, and Hungary's next two kings, Albrecht V of Austria (1437-39) and Wladyslaw III of Poland (1439-44), who was known in Hungary as Ulaszlo I, both died during campaigns against the Turks.
After Ulaszlo, Hungary's nobles chose an infant king, Laszlo V, and a regent, Janos Hunyadi, to rule the country until Laszlo V came of age. The son of a lesser nobleman of the Vlach tribe, Hunyadi rose to become a general, Transylvania's military governor, one of Hungary's largest landowners, and a war hero. He used his personal wealth and the support of the lesser nobles to win the regency and overcome the opposition of the magnates. Hunyadi then established a mercenary army funded by the first tax ever imposed on Hungary's nobles. He defeated the Ottoman forces in Transylvania in 1442 and broke their hold on Serbia in 1443, only to be routed at Varna (where Laszlo V himself perished) a year later. In 1456, when the Turkish army besieged Belgrade, Hunyadi defeated it in his greatest and final victory. Hunyadi died of the plague soon after.
Some magnates resented Hunyadi for his popularity as well as for the taxes he imposed, and they feared that his sons might seize the throne from Laszlo. They coaxed the sons to return to Laszlo's court, where Hunyadi's elder son was beheaded. His younger son, Matyas, was imprisoned in Bohemia. However, lesser nobles loyal to Matyas soon expelled Laszlo. After Laszlo's death abroad, they paid ransom for Matyas, met him on the frozen Danube River, and proclaimed him king. Known as Matyas Corvinus (1458-90), he was, with one possible exception (Janos Zapolyai), the last Hungarian king to rule the country.
Although Matyas regularly convened the Diet and expanded the lesser nobles' powers in the counties, he exercised absolute rule over Hungary by means of a secular bureaucracy. Matyas enlisted 30,000 foreign mercenaries in his standing army and built a network of fortresses along Hungary's southern frontier, but he did not pursue his father's aggressive anti-Turkish policy. Instead, Matyas launched unpopular attacks on Bohemia, Poland, and Austria, pursuing an ambition to become Holy Roman Emperor and arguing that he was trying to forge a unified Western alliance strong enough to expel the Turks from Europe. He eliminated tax exemptions and raised the serfs' obligations to the crown to fund his court and the military. The magnates complained that these measures reduced their incomes, but despite the stiffer obligations, the serfs considered Matyas a just ruler because he protected them from excessive demands and other abuses by the magnates. He also reformed Hungary's legal system and promoted the growth of Hungary's towns. Matyas was a true renaissance man and made his court a center of humanist culture; under his rule, Hungary's first books were printed and its second university was established. Matyas' library, the Corvina, was famous throughout Europe. In his quest for the imperial throne, Matyas eventually moved to Vienna, where he died in 1490.
Matyas's reforms did not survive the turbulent decades that followed his reign. An oligarchy of quarrelsome magnates gained control of Hungary. They crowned a docile king, Vladislav Jagiello (the Jagiellonian king of Bohemia, who was known in Hungary as Ulaszlo II, 1490-1516), only on condition that he abolish the taxes that had supported Matyas's mercenary army. As a result, the king's army dispersed just as the Turks were threatening Hungary. The magnates also dismantled Matyas's administration and antagonized the lesser nobles. In 1492 the Diet limited the serfs' freedom of movement and expanded their obligations. Rural discontent boiled over in 1514 when well-armed peasants (if they are in rebellion they are not really acting as serfs) under Gyorgy Dozsa rose up and attacked estates across Hungary. United by a common threat, the magnates and lesser nobles eventually crushed the rebels. Dozsa and other rebel leaders were executed in a most brutal manner.
Shocked by the peasant revolt, the Diet of 1514 passed laws that condemned the serfs to eternal bondage and increased their work obligations. Corporal punishment became widespread, and one noble even branded his serfs like livestock. The legal scholar Stephen Werboczy included the new laws in his Tripartitum of 1514, which made up Hungary's legal corpus until the revolution of 1848. The Tripartitum gave Hungary's king and nobles, or magnates, equal shares of power: the nobles recognized the king as superior, but in turn the nobles had the power to elect the king. The Tripartitum also freed the nobles from taxation, obligated them to serve in the military only in a defensive war, and made them immune from arbitrary arrest. The new laws weakened Hungary by deepening the rift between the nobles and the peasantry just as the Turks prepared to invade the country.
When Ulaszlo II died in 1516, his ten-year-old son Louis II (1516-26) became king, but a royal council appointed by the Diet ruled the country. Hungary was in a state of near anarchy under the magnates' rule. The king's finances were a shambles; he borrowed to meet his household expenses despite the fact that they totaled about one-third of the national income. The country's defenses sagged as border guards went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled. In 1521 Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent recognized Hungary's weakness and seized Belgrade in preparation for an attack on Hungary. In August 1526, he marched more than 100,000 troops into Hungary's heartland, and at Mohacs they cut down all but several hundred of the 25,000 ill-equipped soldiers whom Louis II had been able to muster for the country's defense. Louis himself died, thrown from a horse into a bog.
After Louis's death, rival factions of Hungarian nobles simultaneously elected two kings, Janos Zapolyai (1526-40) and Ferdinand (1526-64). Each claimed sovereignty over the entire country but lacked sufficient forces to eliminate his rival. Zapolyai, a Hungarian and the military governor of Transylvania, was recognized by the sultan and was supported mostly by lesser nobles opposed to new foreign kings. Ferdinand, the first Habsburg to occupy the Hungarian throne, drew support from magnates in western Hungary who hoped he could convince his brother, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to expel the Turks. In 1538 George Martinuzzi, Zapolyai's adviser, arranged a treaty between the rivals that would have made Ferdinand sole monarch upon the death of the then-childless Zapolyai. The deal collapsed when Zapolyai married and fathered a son. Violence erupted, and the Turks seized the opportunity, conquering the city of Buda and then partitioning the country in 1541.
The partition of Hungary between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires lasted more than 150 years. Habsburg Austria controlled Royal Hungary, which consisted of counties along the Austrian border and some of northwestern Croatia. The Ottomans annexed central and southern Hungary. Transylvania became an Ottoman vassal state, where native princes, who paid the Turks tribute, ruled with considerable autonomy. After the Hungarian defeat at Mohacs, the Protestant Reformation took hold in Hungary. Initially, German burghers in Transylvania and Royal Hungary adopted Lutheranism; later, John Calvin's works converted many Magyars in Transylvania and central Hungary. The Reformation spread quickly, and by the early seventeenth century hardly any noble families remained Catholic. Archbishop Peter Pazmany reorganized Royal Hungary's Roman Catholic Church and led a Counter-Reformation that reversed the Protestants' gains in Royal Hungary, using persuasion rather than intimidation. Transylvania, however, remained a Protestant stronghold. The Reformation caused rifts between Catholic Magyars, who often sided with the Habsburgs, and Protestant Magyars, who developed a strong national identity and became rebels in Austrian eyes. Chasms also developed between Royal Hungary and Transylvania and between the mostly Catholic magnates and the mainly Protestant lesser nobles.
Royal Hungary became a small part of the Habsburg Empire and enjoyed little influence in Vienna. The Habsburg king directly controlled Royal Hungary's financial, military, and foreign affairs, and imperial troops guarded its borders. The Habsburgs avoided filling the office of palatine to prevent the holder's amassing too much power. In addition, the so-called Turkish question divided the Habsburgs and the Hungarians: Vienna wanted to maintain peace with the Turks; the Hungarians wanted the Ottomans ousted. As the Hungarians recognized the weakness of their position, many became anti-Habsburg. They complained about foreign rule, the behavior of foreign garrisons, and the Habsburgs' recognition of Turkish sovereignty in Transylvania. Protestants, who were persecuted in Royal Hungary, considered the Counter-Reformation a greater menace than the Turks, however.
Central Hungary became a province of the Ottoman Empire ruled by pashas living in Buda. The Turks' only interest was to secure their hold on the territory. The Sublime Porte (a term used to designate the Ottoman rulers) became the sole landowner and managed about 20 percent of the land for its own benefit, apportioning the rest among soldiers and civil servants. The new landlords were interested mainly in squeezing as much wealth from the land as quickly as possible. Wars, slave-taking, and the emigration of nobles who lost their land depopulated much of the countryside. However, the Turks practiced religious tolerance and allowed the Hungarians living within the empire significant autonomy in internal affairs. Towns maintained some selfgovernment , and a prosperous middle class developed through artisanry and trade.
Transylvania, an Ottoman vassal state, functioned for many years as an independent country. In 1542 Martinuzzi revived the 1437 Union of Three Nations to govern the land, and the Transylvanian nobles regularly met in their own Diet. In 1572 the Diet created freedom of worship and equal political rights for members of Transylvania's four "established" religions: Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Unitarian, and Calvinist. The Eastern Orthodox Romanian serfs were permitted to worship, but the Orthodox Church was not recognized as an "established" religion, and the Romanians did not share political equality.
In 1591 the Habsburgs invaded Transylvania under George Basta, who persecuted Protestants and expropriated estates illegally until Istvan Bocskay, a former Habsburg supporter, mustered an army that expelled Basta's forces in 1604-05. In 1606 Bocskay concluded the Peace of Vienna with the Habsburgs and the Peace of Zsitvatorok with the Turks. The treaties secured his position as prince of Transylvania, guaranteed rights for Royal Hungary's Protestants, broadened Transylvania's independence, and freed the emperor of his obligation to pay tribute to the Ottomans. After Bocskay's death, the Ottomans compelled the Transylvanians to accept Gabor Bethlen as prince. Transylvania prospered under Bethlen's enlightened despotism. He stimulated agriculture, trade, and industry; sank new mines; sent students to Protestant universities abroad; and prohibited landlords from barring children of serfs from an education. Unfortunately, when Bethlen died in 1629, the Transylvanian Diet abolished most of his reforms. After a short succession struggle, Gyorgy Rakoczi I (1648-60) became prince. Under Rakoczi, Transylvania fought with the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) and was mentioned as a sovereign state in the Peace of Westphalia. Transylvania's golden age ended after Gyorgy Rakoczi II (1648-60) launched an attack on Poland without the prior approval of the Ottomans or Transylvania's Diet. The campaign was a disaster, and the Turks used the opportunity to rout Rakoczi's army and take control of Transylvania.
The Ottoman Empire gradually weakened after Suleyman's death in 1559. Soon, the Ottoman occupation of Hungary continued not so much because of the Turk strength but because of the West's disunity and lack of resolve. Hungarian nobles grew impatient with the Habsburgs' persecution of Protestants and reluctance to take steps to drive out the Turks. Their discontent exploded after the Habsburg imperial army routed a Turkish force at St. Gotthard in 1664. Instead of pressing for concessions, Emperor Leopold I (1657-1705) concluded the Treaty of Vasvar in which he conceded to the Turks more Hungarian territory than they had ever possessed. After Vasvar, even many Catholic magnates turned against the Habsburgs.
After a failed Hungarian plot to throw off Habsburg rule, Leopold suppressed the Hungarian constitution, subjected Royal Hungary to direct absolute rule from Vienna, and harshly repressed Hungarian Protestants, handing over Protestant ministers who refused to deny their faith to work as galley slaves. Hungarian discontent deepened. In 1681 Imre Thokoly, a Transylvanian nobleman, led a rebellion against the Habsburgs and forced Leopold I to convoke the Diet and restore Hungary's constitution and the office of palatine. Sensing weakness, the Turks made their strike against Austria, but Polish forces routed them near Vienna in 1683. A Western campaign then gradually drove the Turks from Hungary, and the sultan surrendered almost all of his Hungarian and Croatian possessions in the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699.
The Habsburgs ruled autocratically on almost all questions except taxation and relegated Hungary to the status of a colony, a factor that, together with other factors, stifled economic development. After more than a century of stagnation, the lesser nobles, under increasing economic pressure and prompted by nascent Hungarian nationalism, pressed for reform. The crescendo of discontent climaxed in the March 1948 revolution. Russian troops quashed the rebellion, enabling Austrian emperor Franz Joseph to impose absolute control for almost two decades.
As the Habsburgs gained control of the country, the ministers of Leopold I argued that he should rule Hungary as conquered territory. One even said Vienna should first make the Hungarians beggars, then Catholics, and then Germans. At the Diet of Pressburg in 1687, the emperor promised to observe all of Hungary's laws and privileges. Hereditary succession of the Habsburgs was recognized, however, and the nobles' right of resistance was abrogated. In 1690 Leopold began redistributing lands freed from the Turks. Protestant nobles and all other Hungarians thought disloyal by the Habsburgs lost their estates, which were given to foreigners. Vienna controlled Hungary's foreign affairs, defense, tariffs, and other functions, and it separated Tranyslvania from Hungary, treating it as a separate imperial territory.
The repression of Protestants and the land seizures embittered the Hungarians, and in 1703 a peasant uprising sparked an eight-year national rebellion aimed at casting off the Habsburg yoke. Disgruntled Protestants, peasants, and soldiers united under Ferenc Rakoczi, a Roman Catholic magnate who could hardly speak Hungarian. Most of Hungary soon supported Rakoczi, and the joint Hungarian-Transylvanian Diet voted to annul the Habsburgs' right to the throne. Fortunes turned against the rebels, however, when the Habsburgs made peace in the West and turned their full force against Hungary. The rebellion ended in 1711, when moderate rebel leaders concluded the Treaty of Szatmar, in which the Hungarians gained little except the emperor's agreement to reconvene the Diet and to grant an amnesty for the rebels.
Leopold's successor, Charles VI (1711-40), began building a workable relationship with Hungary after the Treaty of Szatmar. Charles needed the Hungarian Diet's approval for the Pragmatic Sanction, under which the Habsburg monarch was to rule Hungary not as emperor but as a king subject to the restraints of Hungary's constitution and laws. He hoped that the Pragmatic Sanction would keep the Habsburg Empire intact if his daughter, Maria Theresa, succeeded him. The Diet approved the Pragmatic Sanction in 1723, and Hungary thus agreed to became a hereditary monarchy under the Habsburgs for as long as their dynasty existed. In practice, however, Charles and his successors governed almost autocratically, controlling Hungary's foreign affairs, defense, and finance but lacking the power to tax the nobles without their approval. The Habsburgs also maintained Transylvania's separation from Hungary.
Charles organized Hungary's first modern, centralized administration and in 1715 established a standing army under his command, which was entirely funded and manned by the nonnoble population. This policy reduced the nobles' military obligation without abrogating their exemption from taxation. Charles also banned conversion to Protestantism, required civil servants to profess Catholicism, and forbade Protestant students to study abroad.
Maria Theresa (1740-80) faced an immediate challenge from Prussia's Frederick II when she became head of the House of Habsburg. In 1741 she appeared before the Hungarian Diet holding her newborn son and entreated Hungary's nobles to support her. They stood behind her and helped secure her rule. Maria Theresa later took measures to reinforce links with Hungary's magnates. She established special schools to attract Hungarian nobles to Vienna. During her reign, the members of the magnate class lost their Hungarian national identity, including their knowledge of the Hungarian language.
Under Charles and Maria Theresa, Hungary experienced further economic decline. Centuries of Ottoman occupation, rebellion, and war had reduced Hungary's population drastically, and large parts of the country's southern half were almost deserted. A labor shortage developed as landowners restored their estates. In response, the Habsburgs began to colonize Hungary with large numbers of peasants from all over Europe, especially Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, and Germans. Many Jews also immigrated from Vienna and the empire's Polish lands near the end of the century. Hungary's population more than tripled to 8 million between 1720 and 1787. However, only 39 percent of its people were Magyars, who lived mainly in the center of the country.
A complex patchwork of minority peoples emerged in the lands along Hungary's periphery. Droves of Romanians entered Transylvania during the same period. The Protestant and Catholic Hungarians and Germans who had been there for years had considered the Orthodox Romanians inferior and relegated them to serfdom. In the eighteenth century, leaders of the Orthodox Church began arguing that Romanians were descendants of the Roman Dacians and thus Transylvania's original inhabitants. The Orthodox leaders demanded, without success, that the Romanians be recognized as Transylvania's fourth "nation" and the Orthodox Church as its fifth "established" religion.
In the early to mid-eighteenth century, Hungary had a primitive agricultural economy that employed 90 percent of the population. The nobles failed to use fertilizers, roads were poor and rivers blocked, and crude storage methods caused huge losses of grain. Barter had replaced money transactions, and little trade existed between towns and the serfs. After 1760 a labor surplus developed. The serf population grew, pressure on the land increased, and the serfs' standard of living declined. Landowners began making greater demands on new tenants and began violating existing agreements. In response, Maria Theresa issued her Urbarium of 1767 to protect the serfs by restoring their freedom of movement and limiting the corvee. Despite her efforts and several periods of strong demand for grain, the situation worsened. Between 1767 and 1848, many serfs left their holdings. Most became landless farm workers because a lack of industrial development meant few opportunities for work in the towns.
Joseph II (1780-90), a dynamic leader strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, shook Hungary from its malaise when he inherited the throne from his mother, Maria Theresa. Joseph sought to centralize control of the empire and to rule it by decree as an enlightened despot. He refused to take the Hungarian coronation oath to avoid being constrained by Hungary's constitution. In 1781 Joseph issued the Patent of Toleration, which granted Protestants and Orthodox Christians full civil rights and Jews freedom of worship. He decreed that German replace Latin as the empire's official language and granted the peasants the freedom to leave their holdings, to marry, and to place their children in trades. Hungary, Croatia, and Transylvania became a single imperial territory under one administration. When the Hungarian nobles again refused to waive their exemption from taxation, Joseph banned imports of Hungarian manufactured goods into Austria and began a survey to prepare for imposition of a general land tax.
Joseph's reforms outraged Hungary's nobles and clergy, and the country's peasants grew dissatisfied with taxes, conscription, and requisitions of supplies. Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Magyar language and culture, and a cult of national dance and costume flourished. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Magyars, and even those had become French- and German-speaking courtiers. The Magyar national reawakening subsequently triggered national revivals among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, and Croatian minorities within Hungary and Transylvania, who felt threatened by both German and Magyar cultural hegemony. These national revivals later blossomed into the nationalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that contributed to the empire's ultimate collapse.
Late in his reign, Joseph led a costly, ill-fated campaign against the Turks that weakened his empire. On January 28, 1790, three weeks before his death, the emperor issued a decree canceling all of his reforms except the Patent of Toleration, peasant reforms, and abolition of the religious orders.
Joseph's successor, Leopold II (1790-92), recognized Hungary again as a separate country under a Habsburg king and reestablished Croatia and Transylvania as separate territorial entities. In 1791 the Diet passed Law X, which stressed Hungary's status as an independent kingdom ruled only by a king legally crowned according to Hungarian laws. Law X later became the basis for demands by Hungarian reformers for statehood in the period from 1825 to 1849. New laws again required approval of both the Habsburg king and the Diet, and Latin was restored as the official language. The peasant reforms remained in effect, however, and Protestants remained equal before the law. Leopold died in March 1792 just as the French Revolution was about to degenerate into the Reign of Terror and send shock waves through the royal houses of Europe.
Enlightened absolutism ended in Hungary under Leopold's successor, Francis I (1792-1835), who developed an almost abnormal aversion to change, bringing Hungary decades of political stagnation. In 1795 the Hungarian police arrested an abbot and several of the country's leading thinkers for plotting a Jacobin kind of revolution to install a radical democratic, egalitarian political system in Hungary. Thereafter, Francis resolved to extinguish any spark of reform that might ignite revolution. The execution of the alleged plotters silenced any reform advocates among the nobles, and for about three decades reform ideas remained confined to poetry and philosophy. The magnates, who also feared that the influx of revolutionary ideas might precipitate a popular uprising, became a tool of the crown and seized the chance to further burden the peasants.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, the aim of Hungary's agricultural producers had shifted from subsistence farming and small-scale production for local trade to cash-generating, large-scale production for a wider market. Road and waterway improvements cut transportation costs, while urbanization in Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia and the need for supplies for the Napoleonic wars boosted demand for foodstuffs and clothing. Hungary became a major grain and wool exporter. New lands were cleared, and yields rose as farming methods improved. Hungary did not reap the full benefit of the boom, however, because most of the profits went to the magnates, who considered them not as capital for investment but as a means of adding luxury to their lives. As expectations rose, goods such as linen and silverware, once considered luxuries, became necessities. The wealthy magnates had little trouble balancing their earnings and expenditures, but many lesser nobles, fearful of losing their social standing, went into debt to finance their spending.
Napoleon's final defeat brought recession. Grain prices collapsed as demand dropped, and debt ensnared much of Hungary's lesser nobility. Poverty forced many lesser nobles to work to earn a livelihood, and their sons entered education institutions to train for civil service or professional careers. The decline of the lesser nobility continued despite the fact that by 1820 Hungary's exports had surpassed wartime levels. As more lesser nobles earned diplomas, the bureaucracy and professions became saturated, leaving a host of disgruntled graduates without jobs. Members of this new intelligentsia quickly became enamored of radical political ideologies emanating from Western Europe and organized themselves to effect changes in Hungary's political system.
Francis rarely called the Diet into session (usually only to request men and supplies for war) without hearing complaints. Economic hardship brought the lesser nobles' discontent to a head by 1825, when Francis finally convoked the Diet after a fourteen-year hiatus. Grievances were voiced, and open calls for reform were made, including demands for less royal interference in the nobles' affairs and for wider use of the Hungarian language.
The first great figure of the reform era came to the fore during the 1825 convocation of the Diet. Count Istvan Szechenyi, a magnate from one of Hungary's most powerful families, shocked the Diet when he delivered the first speech in Hungarian ever uttered in the upper chamber and backed a proposal for the creation of a Hungarian academy of arts and sciences by pledging a year's income to support it. In 1831 angry nobles burned Szechenyi's book Hitel (Credit), in which he argued that the nobles' privileges were both morally indefensible and economically detrimental to the nobles themselves. Szechenyi called for an economic revolution and argued that only the magnates were capable of implementing reforms. Szechenyi favored a strong link with the Habsburg Empire and called for abolition of entail and serfdom, taxation of landowners, financing of development with foreign capital, establishment of a national bank, and introduction of wage labor. He inspired such project as the construction of the suspension bridge linking Buda and Pest. Szechenyi's reform initiatives ultimately failed because they were targeted at the magnates, who were not inclined to support change, and because the pace of his program was too slow to attract disgruntled lesser nobles.
The most popular of Hungary's great reform leaders, Lajos Kossuth, addressed passionate calls for change to the lesser nobles. Kossuth was the son of a landless, lesser nobleman of Protestant background. He practiced law with his father before moving to Pest. There he published commentaries on the Diet's activities, which made him popular with young, reform-minded people. Kossuth was imprisoned in 1836 for treason. After his release in 1840, he gained quick notoriety as the editor of a liberal party newspaper. Kossuth argued that only political and economic separation from Austria would improve Hungary's plight. He called for broader parliamentary democracy, industrialization, general taxation, economic expansion through exports, and abolition of privileges and serfdom. But Kossuth was also a Magyar chauvinist whose rhetoric provoked the strong resentment of Hungary's minority ethnic groups. Kossuth gained support among liberal lesser nobles, who constituted an opposition minority in the Diet. They sought reforms with increasing success after Francis's death in 1835 and the succession of Ferdinand V (1835-48). In 1843 a law was enacted making Hungarian the country's official language over the strong objections of the Croats, Slovaks, Serbs, and Romanians.
In March 1848, revolution erupted in Vienna, forcing Austria's Chancellor Klemens von Metternich to flee the capital. Unrest broke out in Hungary on March 15, when radicals and students stormed the Buda fortress to release political prisoners. A day later, the Diet's liberal-dominated lower house demanded establishment of a national government responsible to an elected parliament, and on March 22 a new national cabinet took power with Count Louis Batthyany as chairman, Kossuth as minister of finance, and Szechenyi as minister of public works. Under duress, the Diet's upper house approved a sweeping reform package, signed by Ferdinand, that altered almost every aspect of Hungary's economic, social, and political life. These so-called April Laws created independent Hungarian ministries of defense and finance, and the new government claimed the right to issue currency through its own central bank. Guilds lost their privileges; the nobles became subject to taxation; entail, tithes, and the corvee were abolished; some peasants became freehold proprietors of the land they worked; freedom of the press and assembly were created; a Hungarian national guard was established; and Transylvania was brought under Hungarian rule.
The non-Magyar ethnic groups in Hungary feared the nationalism of the new Hungarian government, and Transylvanian Germans and Romanians opposed the incorporation of Transylvania into Hungary. The Vienna government enlisted the minorities in the first attempt to overthrow the Hungarian government. Josip Jelacic--a fanatic anti-Hungarian--became governor of Croatia on March 22 and severed relations with the Hungarian government a month later. By summer the revolution's momentum began to wane. The Austrians ordered the Hungarian diet to dissolve, but the order went unheeded. In September Jelacic led an army into Hungary. Batthyany resigned, and a mob lynched the imperial commander in Pest. A committee of national defense under Kossuth took control, authorized the establishment of a Hungarian army, and issued paper money to fund it. On October 30, 1848, imperial troops entered Vienna and suppressed a workers' uprising, effectively ending the revolution everywhere in the empire except Hungary, where Kossuth's army had overcome Jelacic's forces. In December Ferdinand abdicated in favor of Franz Joseph (1848-1916), who claimed more freedom of action because, unlike Ferdinand, he had given no pledge to respect the April Laws. The Magyars, however, refused to recognize him as their king because he was never crowned.
The imperial army captured Pest early in 1849, but the revolutionary government remained entrenched in Debrecen. In April a "rump" Diet deposed the Habsburg Dynasty in Hungary, proclaimed Hungary a republic, and named Kossuth governor with dictatorial powers. After the declaration, Austrian reinforcements were transferred to Hungary, and in June, at Franz Joseph's request, Russian troops attacked from the east and overwhelmed the Hungarians. The Hungarian army surrendered on August 13, and Kossuth escaped to the Ottoman Empire. A period of harsh repression followed. Batthyany and about 100 others were shot, several society women were publicly whipped, and the government outlawed public gatherings, theater performances, display of the national colors, and wearing of national costumes and Kossuth-style beards.
After the revolution, the emperor revoked Hungary's constitution and assumed absolute control. Franz Joseph divided the country into four distinct territories: Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia-Slavonia, and Vojvodina. German and Bohemian administrators managed the government, and German became the language of administration and higher education. The non-Magyar minorities of Hungary received little for their support of Austria during the turmoil. A Croat reportedly told a Hungarian: "We received as a reward what the Magyars got as a punishment."
Hungarian public opinion split over the country's relations with Austria. Some Hungarians held out hope for full separation from Austria; others wanted an accommodation with the Habsburgs, provided that they respected Hungary's constitution and laws. Ferencz Deak became the main advocate for accommodation. Deak upheld the legality of the April Laws and argued that their amendment required the Hungarian Diet's consent. He also held that the dethronement of the Habsburgs was invalid. As long as Austria ruled absolutely, Deak argued, Hungarians should do no more than passively resist illegal demands.
The first crack in Franz Joseph's neo-absolutist rule developed in 1859, when the forces of Sardinia and France defeated Austria at Solferno. The defeat convinced Franz Joseph that national and social opposition to his government was too strong to be managed by decree from Vienna. Gradually he recognized the necessity of concessions toward Hungary, and Austria and Hungary thus moved toward a compromise. In 1866 the Prussians defeated the Austrians, further underscoring the weakness of the Habsburg Empire. Negotiations between the emperor and the Hungarian leaders were intensified and finally resulted in the Compromise of 1867, which created the Dual Monarchy of Austra-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The Compromise of 1867, which created the Dual Monarchy, gave the Hungarian government more control of its domestic affairs than it had possessed at any time since the Battle of Mohacs. However, the new government faced severe economic problems and the growing restiveness of ethnic minorities. World War I led to the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, and in the aftermath of the war, a series of governments--including a communist regime--assumed power in Buda and Pest (in 1872 the cities of Buda and Pest united to become Budapest).
Constitutional and Legal FrameworkOnce again a Habsburg emperor became king of Hungary, but the compromise strictly limited his power over the country's internal affairs, and the Hungarian government assumed control over its domestic affairs. The Hungarian government consisted of a prime minister and cabinet appointed by the emperor but responsible to a bicameral parliament elected by a narrow franchise. Joint Austro-Hungarian affairs were managed through "common" ministries of foreign affairs, defense, and finance. The respective ministers were responsible to delegations representing separate Austrian and Hungarian parliaments. Although the "common" ministry of defense administered the imperial and royal armies, the emperor acted as their commander in chief, and German remained the language of command in the military as a whole. The compromise designated that commercial and monetary policy, tariffs, the railroad, and indirect taxation were "common" concerns to be negotiated every ten years. The compromise also returned Transylvania, Vojvodina, and the military frontier to Hungary's jurisdiction.
At Franz Joseph's insistence, Hungary and Croatia reached a similar compromise in 1868, giving the Croats a special status in Hungary. The agreement granted the Croats autonomy over their internal affairs. The Croatian ban would now be nominated by the Hungarian prime minister and appointed by the king. Areas of "common" concern to Hungarians and Croats included finance, currency matters, commercial policy, the post office, and the railroad. Croatian became the official language of Croatia's government, and Croatian representatives discussing "common" affairs before the Hungarian diet were permitted to speak Croatian.
The Nationalities Law enacted in 1868 defined Hungary as a single nation comprising different nationalities whose members enjoyed equal rights in all areas except language. Although non-Hungarian languages could be used in local government, churches, and schools, Hungarian became the official language of the central government and universities. Many Hungarians thought the act too generous, while minority-group leaders rejected it as inadequate. Slovaks in northern Hungary, Romanians in Transylvania, and Serbs in Vojvodina all wanted more autonomy, and unrest followed the act's passage. The government took no further action concerning nationalities, and discontent fermented.
Anti-Semitism appeared in Hungary early in the century as a result of fear of economic competition. In 1840 a partial emancipation of the Jews allowed them to live anywhere except certain depressed mining cities. The Jewish Emancipation Act of 1868 gave Jews equality before the law and effectively eliminated all bars to their participation in the economy; nevertheless, informal barriers kept Jews from careers in politics and public life.
Franz Joseph appointed Gyula Andrassy--a member of Deak's party--prime minister in 1867. His government strongly favored the Compromise of 1867 and followed a laissez-faire economic policy. Guilds were abolished, workers were permitted to bargain for wages, and the government attempted to improve education and construct roads and railroads. Between 1850 and 1875, Hungary's farms prospered: grain prices were high, and exports tripled. But Hungary's economy accumulated capital too slowly, and the government relied heavily on foreign credits. In addition, the national and local bureaucracies began to grow immediately after the compromise became effective. Soon the cost of the bureaucracy outpaced the country's tax revenues, and the national debt soared. After an economic downturn in the mid-1870s, Deak's party succumbed to charges of financial mismanagement and scandal.
As a result of these economic problems, Kalman Tisza's Liberal Party, created in 1875, gained power in 1875. Tisza assembled a bureaucratic political machine that maintained control through corruption and manipulation of a woefully unrepresentative electoral system. In addition, Tisza's government had to withstand both dissatisfied nationalities and Hungarians who thought Tisza too submissive to the Austrians. The Liberals argued that the Dual Monarchy improved Hungary's economic position and enhanced its influence in European politics.
Tisza's government raised taxes, balanced the budget within several years of coming to power, and completed large road, railroad, and waterway projects. Commerce and industry expanded quickly. After 1880 the government abandoned its laissez-faire economic policies and encouraged industry with loans, subsidies, government contracts, tax exemptions, and other measures. The number of Hungarians who earned their living in industry doubled to 24.2 percent of the population between 1890 and 1910, while the number dependent on agriculture dropped from 82 to 62 percent. However, the 1880s and 1890s were depression years for the peasantry. Rail and steamship transport gave North American farmers access to European markets, and Europe's grain prices fell by 50 percent. Large landowners fought the downturn by seeking trade protection and other political remedies; the lesser nobles, whose farms failed in great numbers, sought positions in the still-burgeoning bureaucracy. By contrast, the peasantry resorted to subsistence farming and worked as laborers to earn money.
Hungary's population rose from 13 million to 20 million between 1850 and 1910. After 1867 Hungary's feudal society gave way to a more complex society that included the magnates, lesser nobles, middle class, working class, and peasantry. However, the magnates continued to wield great influence through several conservative parties because of their massive wealth and dominant position in the upper chamber of the diet. They fought modernization and sought both closer ties with Vienna and a restoration of Hungary's traditional social structure and institutions, arguing that agriculture should remain the mission of the nobility. They won protection from the market by reestablishment of a system of entail and also pushed for restriction of middle-class profiteering and restoration of corporal punishment. The Roman Catholic Church was a major ally of the magnates.
Some lesser-noble landowners survived the agrarian depression of the late nineteenth century and continued farming. Many others turned to the bureaucracy or to the professions.
In the mid-1800s, Hungary's middle class consisted of a small number of German and Jewish merchants and workshop owners who employed a few craftsmen. By the turn of the century, however, the middle class had grown in size and complexity and had become predominantly Jewish. In fact, Jews created the modern economy that supported Tisza's bureaucratic machine. In return, Tisza not only denounced anti-Semitism but also used his political machine to check the growth of an anti-Semitic party. In 1896 his successors passed legislation securing the Jews' final emancipation. By 1910 about 900,000 Jews made up approximately 5 percent of the population and about 23 percent of Budapest's citizenry. Jews accounted for 54 percent of commercial business owners, 85 percent of financial institution directors and owners, and 62 percent of all employees in commerce.
The rise of a working class came naturally with industrial development. By 1900 Hungary's mines and industries employed nearly 1.2 million people, representing 13 percent of the population. The government favored low wages to keep Hungarian products competitive on foreign markets and to prevent impoverished peasants from flocking to the city to find work. The government recognized the right to strike in 1884, but labor came under strong political pressure. In 1890 the Social Democratic Party was established and secretly formed alliances with the trade unions. The party soon enlisted one-third of Budapest's workers. By 1900 the party and union rolls listed more than 200,000 hard-core members, making it the largest secular organization the country had ever known. The diet passed laws to improve the lives of industrial workers, including providing medical and accident insurance, but it refused to extend them voting rights, arguing that broadening the franchise would give too many non-Hungarians the vote and threaten Hungarian domination. After the Compromise of 1867, the Hungarian government also launched an education reform in an effort to create a skilled, literate labor force. As a result, the literacy rate had climbed to 80 percent by 1910. Literacy raised the expectations of workers in agriculture and industry and made them ripe for participation in movements for political and social change.
The plight of the peasantry worsened drastically during the depression at the end of the nineteenth century. The rural population grew, and the size of the peasants' farm plots shrank as land was divided up by successive generations. By 1900 almost half of the country's landowners were scratching out a living from plots too small to meet basic needs, and many farm workers had no land at all. Many peasants chose to emigrate, and their departure rate reached approximately 50,000 annually in the 1870s and about 200,000 annually by 1907. The peasantry's share of the population dropped from 72.5 percent in 1890 to 68.4 percent in 1900. The countryside also was characterized by unrest, to which the government reacted by sending in troops, banning all farm-labor organizations, and passing other repressive legislation.
In the late nineteenth century, the Liberal Party passed laws that enhanced the government's power at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church. The parliament won the right to veto clerical appointments, and it reduced the church's nearly total domination of Hungary's education institutions. Additional laws eliminated the church's authority over a number of civil matters and, in the process, introduced civil marriage and divorce procedures.
The Liberal Party also worked with some success to create a unified, Magyarized state. Ignoring the Nationalities Law, they enacted laws that required the Hungarian language to be used in local government and increased the number of school subjects taught in that language. After 1890 the government succeeded in Magyarizing educated Slovaks, Germans, Croats, and Romanians and co-opting them into the bureaucracy, thus robbing the minority nationalities of an educated elite. Most minorities never learned to speak Hungarian, but the education system made them aware of their political rights, and their discontent with Magyarization mounted. Bureaucratic pressures and heightened fears of territorial claims against Hungary after the creation of new nation-states in the Balkans forced Tisza to outlaw "national agitation" and to use electoral legerdemain to deprive the minorities of representation. Nevertheless, in 1901 Romanian and Slovak national parties emerged undaunted by incidents of electoral violence and police repression.
Tisza directed the Liberal government until 1890, and for fourteen years thereafter a number of Liberal prime ministers held office. Agricultural decline continued, and the bureaucracy could no longer absorb all of the pauperized lesser nobles and educated people who could not find work elsewhere. This group gave its political support to the Party of Independence and the Party of Forty-Eight, which became part of the "national" opposition that forced a coalition with the Liberals in 1905. The Party of Independence resigned itself to the existence of the Dual Monarchy and sought to enhance Hungary's position within it; the Party of Forty-Eight, however, deplored the Compromise of 1867, argued that Hungary remained an Austrian colony, and pushed for formation of a Hungarian national bank and an independent customs zone.
Franz Joseph refused to appoint members of the coalition to the government until they renounced their demands for concessions from Austria concerning the military. When the coalition finally gained power in 1906, the leaders retreated from their opposition to the compromise of 1867 and followed the Liberal Party's economic policies. Istvan Tisza--Kalman Tisza's son and prime minister from 1903 to 1905--formed the new Party of Work, which in 1910 won a large majority in the parliament. Tisza became prime minister for a second time in 1912 after labor strife erupted over an unsuccessful attempt to expand voting rights.
On June 28, 1914, a Bosnian Serb assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Within days AustriaHungary presented Serbia with an ultimatum that made war inevitable. Tisza initially opposed the ultimatum but changed his mind when Germany supported Austria-Hungary. By late August, all the great European powers were at war. Bands playing military music and patriotic demonstrators expecting a quick, easy victory took to Budapest's streets after the declaration of war. However, Hungary, was ill prepared to fight. The country's armaments were obsolete, and its industries were not prepared for a war economy. In 1915 and 1916, Hungary felt the full impact of the war. Inflation ran rampant, wages were frozen, food shortages developed, and the government banned export of grain even to Austria. Franz Joseph died in 1916, and Karl IV (1916-18) became Hungary's new king. Before being crowned, however, Karl insisted that Hungarians has expanded voting rights. Tisza resigned in response. By 1917 the Hungarian government was slowly losing domestic control in the face of mounting popular dissatisfaction caused by the war. Of the 3.6 million soldiers Hungary sent to war, 2.1 million became casualties. By late 1918, Hungary's farms and factories were producing only half of what they did in 1913, and the war-weary people had abandoned hope of victory.
On October 31, 1918, smoldering unrest burst into revolution in Budapest, and roving soldiers assassinated Istvan Tisza. Pressured by the popular uprising and the refusal of Hungarian troops to quell disturbances, King Karl was compelled to appoint the "Red Count," Mihaly Karolyi, a pro-Entente liberal and leader of the Party of Independence, to the post of prime minister. Chrysanthemum-waving crowds poured into the streets shouting their approval. Karolyi formed a new cabinet, whose members were drawn from the new National Council, composed of representatives of the Party of Independence, the Social Democratic Party, and a group of bourgeoisie radicals. After suing for a separate peace, the new government dissolved the parliament, pronounced Hungary an independent republic with Karolyi as provisional president, and proclaimed universal suffrage and freedom of the press and assembly. The government launched preparations for land reform and promised elections, but neither goal was carried out. On November 13, 1918, Karl IV surrendered his powers as king of Hungary; however, he did not abdicate, a technicality that made a return to the throne possible.
The Karolyi government's measures failed to stem popular discontent, especially when the Entente powers began distributing slices of Hungary's traditional territory to Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. The new government and its supporters had pinned their hopes for maintaining Hungary's territorial integrity on abandoning Austria and Germany, securing a separate peace, and exploiting Karolyi's close connections in France. The Entente, however, chose to consider Hungary a partner in the defeated Dual Monarchy and dashed the Hungarians' hopes with the delivery of each new diplomatic note demanding surrender of more land. On March 19, 1919, the French head of the Entente mission in Budapest handed Karolyi a note delineating final postwar boundaries, which were unacceptable to all Hungarians. Karolyi resigned and turned power over to a coalition of Social Democrats and communists, who promised that Soviet Russia would help Hungary restore its original borders. Although the Social Democrats held a majority in the coalition, the communists under Bela Kun immediately seized control and announced the establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
The rise of the Hungarian Communist Party (HCP) to power was swift. The party was organized in a Moscow hotel on November 4, 1918, when a group of Hungarian prisoners of war and communist sympathizers formed a Central Committee and dispatched members to Hungary to recruit new members, propagate the party's ideas, and radicalize Karolyi's government. By February 1919, the party numbered 30,000 to 40,000 members, including many unemployed ex-soldiers, young intellectuals, and Jews. In the same month, Kun was imprisoned for incitement to riot, but his popularity skyrocketed when a journalist reported that he had been beaten by the police. Kun emerged from jail triumphant when the Social Democrats handed power to a government of "People's Commissars," who proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic on March 21, 1919.
The communists wrote a temporary constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and assembly; free education, language and cultural rights to minorities; and other rights. It also provided for suffrage for people over eighteen years of age except clergy, "former exploiters," and certain others. Single-list elections took place in April, but members of the parliament were selected indirectly by popularly elected committees. On June 25, Kun's government proclaimed a dictatorship of the proletariat, nationalized industrial and commercial enterprises, and socialized housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural institutions, and all landholdings of more than 40.5 hectares. Kun undertook these measures even though the Hungarian communists were relatively few, and the support they enjoyed was based far more on their program to restore Hungary's borders than on their revolutionary agenda. Kun hoped that the Soviet Russian government would intervene on Hungary's behalf and that a worldwide workers' revolution was imminent. In an effort to secure its rule in the interim, the communist government resorted to arbitrary violence. Revolutionary tribunals ordered about 590 executions, including some for "crimes against the revolution." The government also used "red terror" to expropriate grain from peasants. This violence and the regime's moves against the clergy also shocked many Hungarians.
In late May, Kun attempted to fulfill his promise to restore Hungary's borders. The Hungarian Red Army marched northward and reoccupied part of Slovakia. Despite initial military success, however, Kun withdrew his troops about three weeks later when the French threatened to intervene. This concession shook his popular support. Kun then unsuccessfully turned the Hungarian Red Army on the Romanians, who broke through Hungarian lines on July 30, occupied and looted Budapest, and ousted Kun's Soviet Republic on August 1, 1919. Kun fled first to Vienna and then to Soviet Russia, where he was executed during Stalin's purge of foreign communists in the late 1930s.
A militantly anticommunist authoritarian government composed of military officers entered Budapest on the heels of the Romanians. A "white terror" ensued that led to the imprisonment, torture, and execution without trial of communists, socialists, Jews, leftist intellectuals, sympathizers with the Karolyi and Kun regimes, and others who threatened the traditional Hungarian political order that the officers sought to reestablish. Estimates placed the number of executions at approximately 5,000. In addition, about 75,000 people were jailed. In particular, the Hungarian right wing and the Romanian forces targeted Jews for retribution. Ultimately, the white terror forced nearly 100,000 people to leave the country, most of them socialists, intellectuals, and middle-class Jews.
After World War I, a conservative government ruled Hungary and made some progress toward economic modernization. The Great Depression, however, brought economic collapse, and the country's mood shifted to the far right. An alliance with Nazi Germany resulted, and Hungary fought on the Axis side in World War II. Again Hungary experienced defeat, and the country was occupied by the Soviet Red Army.
Postwar Political and Economic ConditionsIn 1920 and 1921, internal chaos racked Hungary. The white terror continued to plague Jews and leftists, unemployment and inflation soared, and penniless Hungarian refugees poured across the border from neighboring countries and burdened the floundering economy. The government offered the population little succor. In January 1920, Hungarian men and women cast the first secret ballots in the country's political history and elected a large counterrevolutionary and agrarian majority to a unicameral parliament. Two main political parties emerged: the socially conservative Christian National Union and the Independent Smallholders' Party, which advocated land reform. In March the parliament annulled both the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723 and the Compromise of 1867, and it restored the Hungarian monarchy but postponed electing a king until civil disorder had subsided. Instead, Miklos Horthy (1920-44)--a former commander in chief of the Austro-Hungarian navy--was elected regent and was empowered, among other things, to appoint Hungary's prime minister, veto legislation, convene or dissolve the parliament, and command the armed forces.
Hungary's signing of the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, ratified the country's dismemberment, limited the size of its armed forces, and required reparations payments. The territorial provisions of the treaty, which ensured continued discord between Hungary and its neighbors, required the Hungarians to surrender more than two-thirds of their prewar lands. Romania acquired Transylvania; Yugoslavia gained Croatia, Slavonia, and Vojvodina; Slovakia became a part of Czechoslovakia; and Austria also acquired a small price of prewar Hungarian territory. Hungary also lost about 60 percent of its prewar population, and about one-third of the 10 million ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the diminished homeland. The country's ethnic composition was left almost homogeneous. Hungarians constituted about 90 percent of the population, Germans made up about 6 to 8 percent, and Slovaks, Croats, Romanians, Jews, and other minorities accounted for the remainder.
New international borders separated Hungary's industrial base from its sources of raw materials and its former markets for agricultural and industrial products. Its new circumstances forced Hungary to become a trading nation. Hungary lost 84 percent of its timber resources, 43 percent of its arable land, and 83 percent of its iron ore. Because most of the country's prewar industry was concentrated near Budapest, Hungary retained about 51 percent of its industrial population, 56 percent of its industry, 82 percent of its heavy industry, and 70 percent of its banks.
Horthy appointed Pal Teleki prime minister in July 1920. His right-wing government set quotas effectively limiting admission of Jews to universities, legalized corporal punishment, and, to quiet rural discontent, took initial steps toward fulfilling a promise of major land reform by dividing about 385,000 hectares from the largest estates into smallholdings. Teleki's government resigned, however, after the former emperor, Karl IV, unsuccessfully attempted to retake Hungary's throne in March 1921. King Karl's return narhed a split parties between conservatives who favored a Habsburg restoration and nationalist right-wing radicals who supported election of a Hungarian king. Bethlen, a nonaffiliated, right-wing member of the parliament, took advantage of this rift by convincing members of the Christian National Union who opposed Karl's reenthronement to merge with the Smallholders' Party and form a new Party of Unity with Bethlen as its leader. Horthy then appointed Bethlen prime minister.
As prime minister, Bethlen dominated Hungarian politics between 1921 and 1931. He fashioned a political machine by amending the electoral law, eliminating peasants from the Party of Unity, providing jobs in the bureaucracy to his supporters, and manipulating elections in rural areas. Bethlen restored order to the country by giving the radical counterrevolutionaries payoffs and government jobs in exchange for ceasing their campaign of terror against Jews and leftists. In 1921 Bethlen made a deal with the Social Democrats and trade unions, agreeing, among other things, to legalize their activities and free political prisoners in return for their pledge to refrain from spreading anti-Hungarian propaganda, calling political strikes, and organizing the peasantry. In May 1922, the Party of Unity captured a large parliamentary majority. Karl IV's death, soon after he failed a second time to reclaim the throne in October 1921, allowed the revision of the Treaty of Trianon to rise to the top of Hungary's political agenda. Bethlen's strategy to win the treaty's revision was first to strengthen his country's economy and then to build relations with stronger nations that could further Hungary's goals. Revision of the treaty had such a broad backing in Hungary that Bethlen used it, at least in part, to deflect criticism of his economic, social, and political policies. However, Bethlen's only foreign policy success was a treaty of friendship with Italy in 1927, which had little immediate impact.
When Bethlen took office, the government was bankrupt. Tax revenues were so paltry that he turned to domestic gold and foreign-currency reserves to meet about half of the 1921-22 budget and almost 80 percent of the 1922-23 budget. To improve his country's economic circumstances, Bethlen undertook development of industry. He imposed tariffs on finished goods and earmarked the revenues to subsidize new industries. Bethlen squeezed the agricultural sector to increase cereal exports, which generated foreign currency to pay for imports critical to the industrial sector. In 1924, after the white terror had waned and Hungary had gained admission to the League of Nations (1922), the Bethlen government secured a US$50 million reconstruction loan from the league, which restored the confidence of foreign creditors. Foreign loans and domestic capital that had been removed from Hungary during the communist revolution flowed back into the country, further fueling industrial development.
By the late 1920s, Bethlen's policies had brought order to the economy. The number of factories increased by about 66 percent, inflation subsided, and the national income climbed 20 percent. However, the apparent stability was supported by a rickety framework of constantly revolving foreign credits and high world grain prices; therefore, Hungary remained undeveloped in comparison with the wealthier western European countries.
Despite economic progress, the workers' standard of living remained poor, and consequently the working class never gave Bethlen its political support. The peasants fared worse than the working class. In the 1920s, about 60 percent of the peasants were either landless or were cultivating plots too small to provide a decent living. Real wages for agricultural workers remained below prewar levels, and the peasants had practically no political voice. Moreover, once Bethlen had consolidated his power, he ignored calls for land reform. The industrial sector failed to expand fast enough to provide jobs for all the peasants and university graduates seeking work. Most peasants lingered in the villages, and in the 1930s Hungarians in rural areas were extremely dissatisfied. Hungary's foreign debt ballooned as Bethlen expanded the bureaucracy to absorb the university graduates who, if left idle, might have threatened civil order.
In 1929 the New York Stock Exchange crashed. As a result, world grain prices plummeted, and the framework supporting Hungary's economy buckled. Hungary's earnings from grain exports declined as prices and volume dropped, tax revenues fell, foreign credit sources dried up, and short-term loans were called in. Hungary sought financial relief from the League of Nations, which insisted on a program of rigid fiscal belt-tightening, resulting in increased unemployment. The peasants reverted to subsistence farming. Industrial production rapidly dropped, and businesses went bankrupt as domestic and foreign demand evaporated. Government workers lost their jobs or suffered severe pay cuts. By 1933 about 18 percent of Budapest's citizens lived in poverty. Unemployment leaped from 5 percent in 1928 to almost 36 percent by 1933.
As the standard of living dropped, the political mood of the country shifted further toward the right. Bethlen resigned without warning amid national turmoil in August 1931. His successor, Gyula Karolyi, failed to quell the crisis. Horthy then appointed a reactionary demagogue, Gyula Gombos, but only after Gombos agreed to maintain the existing political system, to refrain from calling elections before the parliament's term had expired, and to appoint several Bethlen supporters to head key ministries. Gombos publicly renounced the vehement anti-Semitism he had espoused earlier, and his party and government included some Jews.
Gombos's appointment marked the beginning of the radical right's ascendancy in Hungarian politics, which lasted with few interruptions until 1945. The radical right garnered its support from medium and small farmers, former refugees from Hungary's lost territories, and unemployed civil servants, army officers, and university graduates. Gombos advocated a one-party government, revision of the Treaty of Trianon, withdrawal from the League of Nations, anti-intellectualism, and social reform. He assembled a political machine, but his efforts to fashion a one-party state and fulfill his reform platform were frustrated by a parliament composed mostly of Bethlen's supporters and by Hungary's creditors, who forced Gombos to follow conventional policies in dealing with the economic and financial crisis. The 1935 elections gave Gombos more solid support in the parliament, and he succeeded in gaining control of the ministries of finance, industry, and defense and in replacing several key military officers with his supporters. In September 1936, Gombos informed German officials that he would establish a Nazi-like, one-party government in Hungary within two years, but he died in October without realizing this goal.
In foreign affairs, Gombos led Hungary toward close relations with Italy and Germany; in fact, Gombos coined the term Axis, which was later adopted by the German-Italian military alliance. Soon after his appointment, Gombos visited Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and gained his support for revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Later, Gombos became the first foreign head of government to visit German chancellor Adolf Hitler. For a time, Hungary profited handsomely, as Gombos signed a trade agreement with Germany that drew Hungary's economy out of depression but made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets. In 1928 Germany had accounted for 19.5 percent of Hungary's imports and 11.7 percent of its exports; by 1939 the figures were 52.5 percent and 52.2 percent, respectively. Hungary's annual rate of economic growth from 1934 to 1940 averaged 10.8 percent. The number of workers in industry doubled in the ten years after 1933, and the number of agricultural workers dropped below 50 percent for the first time in the country's history. Hungary also used its relationship with Germany to chip away at the Treaty of Trianon. In 1938 Hungary openly repudiated the treaty's restrictions on its armed forces. With German help, Hungary extended its territory four times and doubled in size from 1938 to 1941. It regained parts of southern Slovakia in 1938, Carpatho-Ukraine in 1939, northern Transylvania in 1940, and parts of Vojvodina in 1941.
Hitler's assistance did not come without a price. After 1938 the fuhrer used promises of additional territories, economic pressure, and threats of military intervention to pressure the Hungarians into supporting his policies, including those related to Europe's Jews, which encouraged Hungary's anti-Semites. The percentage of Jews in business, finance, and the professions far exceeded the percentage of Jews in the overall population. The 1930 census showed that Jews made up only 5.1 percent of the population but provided 54.5 percent of its physicians, 31.7 percent of its journalists, and 49.2 percent of its lawyers. Jews controlled an estimated 19.5 percent to 33 percent of the national income, four of the five leading banks, and 80 percent of Hungary's industry. After the depression struck, anti-Semites made the Jews scapegoats for Hungary's economic plight.
Hungary's Jews suffered the first blows of this renewed anti-Semitism during the government of Gombos's successor, Kalman Daranyi, who fashioned a coalition of conservatives and reactionaries and dismantled Gombos's political machine. After Horthy publicly dashed hopes of land reform, discontented rightwingers took to the streets denouncing the government and baiting the Jews. Daranyi's government attempted to appease the anti-Semites and the Nazis by proposing and passing the first socalled Jewish Law, which set quotas limiting Jews to 20 percent of the positions in certain businesses and professions. The law failed to satisfy Hungary's anti-Semitic radicals, however, and when Daranyi tried to appease them again, Horthy unseated him in 1938. The regent then appointed the ill-starred Bela Imredy, who drafted a second, harsher Jewish Law before political opponents forced his resignation in February 1939 by presenting documents showing that Imredy's own grandfather was a Jew.
Imredy's downfall led to Pal Teleki's return to the prime minister's office. Teleki dissolved some of the fascist parties but did not alter the fundamental policies of his predecessors. He undertook a bureaucratic reform and launched cultural and educational programs to help the rural poor. Illiteracy dropped to about 7 percent by 1941. But Teleki also oversaw passage of the second Jewish Law, which broadened the definition of "Jewishness," cut the quotas on Jews permitted in the professions and in business, and required that the quotas be attained by the hiring of Gentiles or the firing of Jews. By the June 1939 elections, Hungarian public opinion had shifted so far to the right that voters gave the Arrow Cross Party--Hungary's equivalent of Germany's National Socialist German Workers' Party (the Nazi Party)--the second highest number of votes. In September 1940, the Hungarian government allowed German troops to transit the country on their way to Romania, and on November 20, 1940, Hungary signed the Tripartite Pact, which allied Germany, Italy, and Japan.
In December 1940, Teleki signed a short-lived Treaty of Eternal Friendship with Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav government, however, was overthrown on March 27, 1941, two days after it succumbed to German and Italian pressure and joined the pact. Hitler considered the overthrow a hostile act and grounds to invade. Again promising territory in exchange for cooperation, he asked Hungary to join the invasion by contributing troops and allowing the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) to march through its territory. Unable to prevent the invasion, Teleki committed suicide on April 3. Three days later, the Luftwaffe mercilessly bombed Belgrade without warning, and German troops invaded. Shortly thereafter, Horthy dispatched Hungarian military forces to occupy former Hungarian lands in Yugoslavia, and Hungary eventually annexed sections of Vojvodina.
Horthy named the right-wing radical Laszlo Bardossy to succeed Teleki. Bardossy was convinced that Germany would win the war and sought to maintain Hungary's independence by appeasing Hitler. Hitler tricked Horthy into committing Hungary to join his invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and Hungary entered the war against the Western Allies the following December. In July 1941, the government deported the first 40,000 Jews from Hungary, and six months later Hungarian troops, in reprisal for resistance activities, murdered 3,000 Serbian and Jewish hostages--near Novi Sad in Yugoslavia. By the winter of 1941-42, German hopes of a quick victory over the Soviet Union had faded. In January the German foreign minister visited Budapest asking for additional mobilization of Hungarian forces for a planned spring offensive and promising in return to hand Hungary some territory in Transylvania. Bardossy agreed and committed onethird of Hungary's military forces.
Horthy grew dissatisfied with Bardossy, who resigned in March 1942, and named Miklos Kallay, a conservative veteran of Bethlen's government, who aimed to free Hungary from the Nazis' grip. Kallay faced a terrible dilemma: if he broke with Hitler and negotiated a separate peace, the Germans would occupy Hungary immediately; but if he supported the Germans, he would encourage further pro-Nazi excesses. Kallay chose duplicity. In 1942 and 1943, pro-Western Hungarian government officials promised British and American diplomats that the Hungarians would not fire on their aircraft, sparing for a time Hungarian cities from bombardment.
In January 1943, the Soviet Red Army annihilated Hungary's Second Army during the massive counterattack on the Axis troops besieging Stalingrad. In the fighting, Soviet troops killed an estimated 40,000 Hungarians and wounded 70,000. As anti-Axis pressure in Hungary mounted, Kallay withdrew the remnants of the force into Hungary in April 1943, and only a nominal number of poorly armed troops remained of the country's military contribution to the Axis Powers. Aware of Kallay's deceit and fearing that Hungary might conclude a separate peace, Hitler ordered Nazi troops to occupy Hungary and force its government to increase its contribution to the war effort. Kallay took asylum in the Turkish legation. Dome Sztojay, a supporter of the Nazis, became the new prime minister. His government jailed political leaders, dissolved the labor unions, and resumed the deportation of Hungary's Jews.
While Kallay was prime minister, the Jews endured economic and political repression, but the government protected them from the "final solution." The government expropriated Jewish property; banned the purchase of real estate by Jews; barred Jews from working as publishers, theater directors, and editors of journals; proscribed sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews; and outlawed conversion to Judaism. But when the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944, the deportation of the Jews to the death camps in Poland began. Horthy used the confusion after the July 20, 1944, attempt to assassinate Hitler to replace Sztojay in August 1944 with General Geza Lakatos and halt the deportation of Jews from Budapest. Of the approximately 725,000 Jews residing within Hungary's expanded borders of 1941, only about 260,500, mostly from Budapest, survived.
In September, Soviet forces crossed the border, and on October 15 Horthy announced that Hungary had signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. However, the Germans abducted the regent and forced him to abrogate the armistice, depose the Lakatos government, and name Ferenc Szalasi--the leader of the Arrow Cross Party--prime minister. Horthy abdicated, and soon the country became a battlefield. Hungary was sacked first by the retreating Germans, who demolished the rail, road, and communications systems, then by the advancing Soviet Red Army, which found the country in a state of political chaos. Germans held off the Soviet troops near Budapest for seven weeks before the defenses collapsed, and on April 4, 1945, the last German troops were driven out of Hungary.
In the aftermath of World War II, a victorious Soviet Union succeeded in forcing its political, social, and economic system on Eastern Europe, including Hungary. But the Hungarians never reconciled themselves to Soviet hegemony over their country and rebelled against the Soviet Union and its Hungarian vassals in 1956. That revolution was crushed by Soviet tanks, but it brought to power Janos Kadar, who then attempted to institute a milder form of communist rule.
Coalition Government and Communist TakeoverThe Hungarian Communist Party (HCP) enjoyed scant popular support after the toppling of Bela Kun's short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and the subsequent white terror. During World War II, a communist cell headed by Laszlo Rajk, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and a former student communist leader, operated underground within the country. Matyas Rakosi led a second, Moscow-based group whose members were later called the "Muscovites." After the Soviet Red Army invaded Hungary in September 1944, Rajk's organization emerged from hiding, and the Muscovites returned to their homeland. Rakosi's close ties with the Soviet occupiers enhanced his influence within the party, and a rivalry developed between the Muscovites and Rajk's followers. Between the invasion and the end of the war, party membership rose significantly. Although party rolls listed only about 3,000 names in November 1944, membership had swelled to about 500,000 by October 1945.
Hungary's postwar political order began to take shape even before Germany's surrender. In October 1944, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Minister Anthony Eden agreed with Stalin that after the war the Soviet Union would enjoy a 75 percent to 80 percent influence in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, while the British would have a 20 percent to 25 percent share. On December 22, 1944, a provisional government emerged in Debrecen that was made up of the Provisional National Assembly, in which communist representatives outnumbered those of the other "antifascist" parties, and a cabinet, whose members included a general and two other military officers of the old regime, two communists, two Social Democrats, two members of the Independent Smallholders' Party, one member of the National Peasant Party, and one unaffiliated member. The provisional government concluded an armistice with the Soviet Union on January 20, 1945, while fighting still raged in the western part of the country. The armistice established the Allied Control Commission, with Soviet, American, and British representatives, which held complete sovereignty over the country. The commission's chairman, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, a member of Stalin's inner circle, exercised absolute control.
Stalin decided against an immediate communist seizure of power in Hungary; rather, he instructed HCP leaders to take a gradualist approach and share power with other parties in freely elected coalition governments. Stalin informed Rakosi that a communist takeover would be delayed ten to fifteen years in order to deflect Western criticism of rapid communist takeovers in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Soviet zone of Germany. Stalin desired a quick return to normal economic activity to rebuild the Soviet Union and sought to avoid a confrontation with the Allies, who still had troops in Europe. The members of the HCP who had worked underground during the war opposed Stalin's gradualist approach and argued for immediate establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
In April 1945, after Soviet troops had rid Hungary of the Nazis, the government moved from Debreceu to Budapest, and a second, expanded Provisional National Assembly was chosen. With the support of representatives of the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party, the HCP enjoyed an absolute majority of the assembly's 495 seats. The provisional government remained in power until November 15, 1945, when voters dealt the HCP an unexpected setback in a free election. The Independent Smallholders' Party won 245 seats in the National Assembly; the HCP, 70; the Social Democratic Party, 69; the National Peasant Party, 21; and the Civic Democratic Party, 2. The National Assembly proclaimed the Hungarian Republic on February 1, 1946, and two Smallholder-led coalitions under Zoltan Tildy and Ferenc Nagy governed the country until May 1947.
The HCP soon formed a leftist alliance with the Social Democratic Party and the National Peasant Party and gained control of several key offices, including the leadership of the security police and the army general staff. Voroshilov vetoed an agreement reached by the coalition members to name a member of the Independent Smallholders' Party to head the Ministry of Interior. A National Peasant Party member loyal to the HCP won the post and made the police a powerful tool of the communists. The National Assembly undermined freedoms guaranteed in Hungary's constitution when it banned statements that could be interpreted as hostile to the democratic order or the country's international esteem. Later, as Hungary's democratic order became identified with HCP policies, the law was used to silence legitimate opponents.
In the immediate postwar period, the government pursued economic reconstruction and land reform. Hungary had been devastated in the last years of World War II. About 24 percent of its industrial base was destroyed. Many of the large landowners and industrialists fled Hungary in advance of the Soviet Red Army. Reconstruction proceeded rapidly, expedited by gradual nationalization of mines, electric plants, the four largest concerns in heavy industry, and the ten largest banks. In 1945 the government also carried out a radical land reform, expropriating all holdings larger than fifty-seven hectares and distributing them to the country's poorest peasants. Nevertheless, the peasants received portions barely large enough for self-sufficiency. Finally, the government introduced a new currency--the forint--to help curb high inflation.
Using methods Rakosi later called "salami tactics," the HCP strengthened its position in the coalition by discrediting leaders of rival parties as "reactionaries" or "antidemocratic," forcing their resignation from the government and sometimes prompting their arrest. In 1945 ex-members of Horthy's regime lost their positions. A year later, members of the Smallholders' Party and the Social Democratic Party were ousted from power. In late 1946, leaders of the Smallholders' Party were arrested. In 1947 the Soviet Union ordered the arrest of Bela Kovacs, the secretary general of the Independent Smallholders' Party, on the false charge of plotting to overthrow the government. The Independent Smallholders' Party was dissolved after Ferenc Nagy resigned his position as prime minister. The leftist bloc gained a small lead over its rivals in the 1947 general elections. The HCP tallied only 22 percent of the vote, but fraud tainted the election, and suspicions arose that the party actually enjoyed less support.
The Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1947, required Hungary to pay US$200 million in reparations to the Soviet Union, US$50 million to Czechoslovakia, and US$50 million to Yugoslavia. Hungary also had to transfer a piece of territory to Czechoslovakia, leaving Hungary with slightly less territory than it had had after the Treaty of Trianon. Stalin had already returned Transylvania to the Romanians to reinforce the position of the procommunist Prime Minister Petru Groza. Thereafter, the Romanians' treatment of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania became an irritant in relations between the two countries.
In 1947 the postwar cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West collapsed, marking the beginning of the Cold War and the beginning of the end for Hungary's democratic coalition government. Having seen communist parties seize power in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia and a communist insurgency threaten Greece, the Western powers dedicated themselves to containing Soviet influence. In May communists were expelled from the governments of Italy and France, and a month later the United States promulgated the Marshall Plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe, which was appealing to the to East European governments.
Stalin feared a weakening of the Soviet Union's grip on Eastern Europe. Anticommunist forces in the region remained potent, and most of the communist governments were unpopular. In addition, East European parties began taking positions independent of Moscow; for example, communists in the Polish and Czechoslovak governments favored participation in the Marshall Plan, and Yugoslavia and Bulgaria broached the idea of a Balkan confederation. By September Stalin had abandoned gradualism and reversed his earlier advocacy of independent, "national roads to socialism." He now pushed for tighter adherence to Moscow's line and rapid establishment of Soviet-dominated communist states in Hungary and elsewhere. The policy shift was indicated in September 1947 at the founding meeting of the Cominform, an organization linking the Soviet communist party with the communist parties of Eastern Europe, France, and Italy.
The HCP proceeded swiftly to assume full control of the government. First Secretary Rakosi became the country's most powerful official and dictated major political and economic changes. In October 1947, noncommunist political figures were told to cooperate with a new coalition government or leave the country. In June 1948, the Social Democratic Party merged with the HCP, forming the Hungarian Workers' Party (HWP). In 1949 the regime held a single-list election, and on August 20 of that year the government ratified a Soviet-style constitution. The official name of the country became the Hungarian People's Republic, and the HWP's control of the government was assured. In 1952 Rakosi also became prime minister.
In 1948 Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform, and the Soviet-Yugoslav rift broke into the open. Almost overnight it became treasonous for communists to display any approval of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito or to advocate national roads to socialism. Beginning in 1949, the Soviet Union unleashed a four-year reign of terror against "Titoists" in Eastern Europe. Rakosi purged members of the party's wartime underground, potential rivals, and hundreds of others. Rajk, who continued to support a Hungarian road to socialism, "confessed" to being a Titoist and a fascist spy and was hanged in 1950. Another victim was future party chief Janos Kadar, who was jailed and tortured for three years.
Between 1948 and 1953, the Hungarian economy was reorganized according to the Soviet model. In a campaign reminiscent of the Soviet Union's forced collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s, the regime compelled most peasants to join collective farms and required them to make deliveries to the government at prices lower than the cost of production. The regime accelerated nationalization of banking, trade, and industry, and by December 1949 nearly 99 percent of the country's workers had become state employees. The trade unions lost their independence, and the government introduced Soviet-style central planning. Planners neglected the production of consumer goods to focus on investment in heavy industry, especially steel production, and economic self-sufficiency. In January 1949, Hungary joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), an organization designed to further economic cooperation between the Soviet Union's satellites. The authorities also agreed to form joint-stock companies with the Soviet Union. These companies allowed the Soviet Union to dominate Hungary's air and river transportation, as well as its bauxite, crude oil, and refining industries and other sectors.
With the opposition parties disbanded and the trade unions collared, the churches became the communists' main source of opposition. The government had expropriated the churches' property with the land reform, and in July 1948 it nationalized church schools. Protestant church leaders reached a compromise with the government, but the head of the Roman Catholic Church-- Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty--resisted. The government arrested him in December 1948 and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Shortly thereafter, the regime disbanded most Catholic religious orders, and it secularized Catholic schools.
Stalin died in March 1953. The new Soviet leadership soon permitted a more flexible policy in Eastern Europe known as the New Course. In June, Rakosi and other party leaders--among them Imre Nagy--were summoned to Moscow, where Soviet leaders harshly criticized them for Hungary's dismal economic performance. Soviet communist party Presidium member Lavrenti Beria reportedly upbraided Rakosi for naming Jews to Hungary's top party positions and accused him of seeking to make himself the "Jewish King of Hungary." (Communists of Jewish origin had dominated the party leadership and the secret police for a decade after the war, and every party leader from Bela Kun to Erno Gero had Jewish roots.) Rakosi retained his position as party chief, but the Soviet leaders forced the appointment of Nagy as prime minister. He quickly won the support of the government ministries and the intelligentsia. Nagy also ended the purges and began freeing political prisoners. In his first address to the National Assembly as prime minister, Nagy attacked Rakosi for his use of terror, and the speech was printed in the party newspaper.
Nagy charted his New Course for Hungary's drifting economy in a speech before the Central Committee, which gave the plan unanimous approval. Hungary ceased collectivization of agriculture, allowed peasants to leave the collective farms, canceled the collective farms' compulsory production quotas, and raised government prices for deliveries. Government financial support and guarantees were extended to private producers, investment in the farm sector jumped 20 percent in the 1953-54 period, and peasants were able to increase the size of their private plots. The number of peasants on collective farms thus shrank by half between October and December 1953. Nagy also slashed investment in heavy industry by 41.1 percent in 1953-54 and shifted resources to light industry and the production of consumer goods. However, Nagy failed to fundamentally alter the planning system and neglected to introduce incentives to replace compulsory plan targets, resulting in a poorer record of plan fulfillment after 1953 than before. Rakosi used his influence to disrupt Nagy's reforms and erode his political position. In 1954 Soviet leaders who favored economic policies akin to Nagy's lost a Kremlin power struggle. Rakosi seized the opportunity to attack Nagy as a right-wing deviationist and to criticize shortcomings in the economy. Nagy was forced to resign from the government in April 1955 and was later expelled from the Politburo, Central Committee, and finally the party itself. Thus, the Central Committee that had lauded the New Course in June 1953 unanimously condemned its architect less than two years later.
After Nagy's fall, collectivization and development of heavy industry again became the prime focus of Hungary's economy. The purges did not resume, however, as Rakosi did not enjoy the same amount of power or Soviet support that he did while Stalin was alive. Moreover, he now had to contend with many outspoken opponents within the party, including numerous victims of the purges who had been readmitted to the HWP on Moscow's orders. A schism soon split the party leadership from the rank and file, and the party organization within the Writers' Association became a forum for intraparty opposition. In 1955 a rapprochement between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia produced the Belgrade Declaration, in which Moscow confirmed that each nation had the right to follow its own road to socialism. One year later, Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev denounced Stalin in his "secret speech" before the Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet communist party. These external events shook Rakosi, who was a strong opponent of Titoism and the instigator of Hungary's purges.
HWP members opposed to Rakosi compelled him to admit that the purges involved abuse of power and that Rajk and others had been its innocent victims. Rakosi ordered an investigation, but it cleared him and blamed the state security police instead. This result not only inflamed the party opposition but also alienated Rakosi from the police. In June 1956, Rakosi's position became untenable. The party press printed open attacks. The Writers' Association, the newly created Petofi Circle, and student organizations clamored for Rakosi's ouster and arrest. On June 30, the Central Committee dissolved the Petofi Circle and expelled intellectuals from the party. By mid-July, however, Soviet leaders began to fear outright revolution and called for Rakosi to step down. He resigned after a meeting of the Central Committee on July 17. Gero, Rakosi's deputy, was appointed first secretary. Moscow hoped to introduce a slow liberalization, but Gero was too closely identified with Rakosi, and party discipline subsequently broke down completely.
On October 23, a Budapest student rally in support of Polish efforts to win autonomy from the Soviet Union sparked mass demonstrations. The police attacked, and the demonstrators fought back, tearing down symbols of Soviet domination and HWP rule, sacking the party newspaper's offices and shouting in favor of free elections, national independence, and the return of Imre Nagy to power. Gero called out the army, but many soldiers handed their weapons to the demonstrators and joined the uprising. Soviet officials in Budapest summoned Nagy to speak to the crowd, but the violence continued. At Gero's request, Soviet troops entered Budapest on October 24. The presence of these troops further enraged the Hungarians, who battled the troops and state security police. Crowds emptied the prisons, freed Cardinal Mindszenty, sacked police stations, and summarily hanged some member of the secret police. The Central Committee named Nagy prime minister on October 25 and selected a new Politburo and Secretariat; one day later, Kadar replaced Gero as party first secretary.
Nagy enjoyed vast support. He formed a new government consisting of both communists and noncommunists, dissolved the state security police, abolished the one-party system, and promised free elections and an end to collectivization, all with Kadar's support. But Nagy failed to harness the popular revolt. Workers' councils threatened a general strike to back demands for removal of Soviet troops, elimination of party interference in economic affairs, and renegotiation of economic treaties with the Soviet Union. On October 30, Nagy called for the formation of a new democratic, multiparty system. Noncommunist parties that had been suppressed almost a decade before began to reorganize. A coalition government emerged that included members of the Independent Smallholders' Party, Social Democratic Party, National Peasant Party, and other parties, as well as the HWP. After negotiations, Soviet officials agreed to remove their troops at the discretion of the Hungarian government, and Soviet troops began to leave Budapest. Nagy soon learned, however, that new Soviet armored divisions had crossed into Hungary.
In response, on November 1 Nagy announced Hungary's decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and to declare Hungary neutral. He then appealed to the United Nations and Western governments for protection of Hungary's neutrality. The Western powers, which were involved in the Suez crisis and were without contingency plans to deal with a revolution in Eastern Europe, did not respond.
The Soviet military responded to Hungarian events with a quick strike. On November 3, Soviet troops surrounded Budapest and closed the country's borders. Overnight they entered the capital and occupied the National Assembly building. Kadar, who had fled to the Soviet Union on November 2, assembled the Temporary Revolutionary Government of Hungary on Soviet soil just across the Hungarian border. On November 4, the formation of the new government was announced in a radiobroadcast. Kadar returned to Budapest in a Soviet armored car; by then, Nagy had fled to the Yugoslav embassy, Cardinal Mindszenty had taken refuge in the United States embassy, Rakosi was safely across the Soviet border, and about 200,000 Hungarians had escaped to the West.
With Soviet support, Kadar struck almost immediately against participants in the revolution. Over the next five years, about 2,000 individuals were executed and about 25,000 imprisoned. Kadar also reneged on a guarantee of safe conduct granted to Nagy, who was arrested on November 23 and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the Hungarian government announced that Nagy and other government officials who had played key roles in the revolution had been secretly tried and executed.
The Revolution of 1956 discredited Hungary's Stalinist political and economic system and sent a clear warning to the leadership that popular tolerance for its policies had limits, and that if these limits were exceeded, popular reaction could threaten communist control. In response, regime leaders decided to formulate economic policies leading to an improvement of the population's standard of livings. Pragmatism and reform gradually became the watchwords in economic policy-making, especially after 1960, and policymakers began relying on economists and other specialists rather than ideologists in the formation of economic policies. The result was a series of reforms that modified Hungary's rigid, centrally planned economy and eventually introduced elements of a free market, creating a concoction sometimes called "goulash communism".
In late 1956, the party named a committee of mostly reform-minded experts to examine Hungary's economic system and make proposals for its revision. The committee's report marked the first step on Hungary's road to economic reform. Its proposals presaged many of the changes implemented a decade later, including elimination of administrative direction of the economy, introduction of greater enterprise autonomy, cooperation between private and collective sectors in agriculture, economic regulation using price and credit policies, and central planning focused only on long-term objectives. However, the committee's proposals were never really implemented. Some observers suggested that the party had solidified its power so quickly that it no longer needed to enact such drastic measures; others claimed that Soviet leaders opposed such reform until they ensured that the party (on November 1, 1956, renamed the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party--HSWP) had consolidated its power and demonstrated a clear need for a fundamental economic change. During the chaos of the revolution, Hungary's collective farms lost about two-thirds of their members. Many left to become private farmers. In July 1957, Kadar appeased hard-liners in Hungary and abroad by agreeing to recollectivize agriculture, and in early 1959 the drive began in earnest. The regime combined force and economic coercion with persuasion and incentives to drive peasants back to the collective farms. The government abolished compulsory production quotas and delivery obligations and substituted voluntary contracts at good prices. It also permitted profit-sharing schemes and programs to promote technical innovation. The regime allowed peasants to retain sizable private plots and ample livestock and to choose between collective or cooperative farms. The farms also received substantial government investments. As a result, Hungary became the only country with a centrally planned economy where crop output increased as a result of collectivization. By 1962 more than 95 percent of all farmland had been collectivized either in the form of state farms or cooperatives. The collectivization drive deflected the hard-liners' criticism of Kadar for his advocacy of reform, and problems with the program's implementation, including excessive coercion of the peasants, later helped Kadar oust the hard-line agriculture minister.
By the early 1960s, Hungary was ripe for a political shakeup . Khrushchev had consolidated his position in the Kremlin and had begun a second wave of de-Stalinization, thus leading Kadar to believe that the Soviet leadership would support political changes in Hungary. Kadar replaced Ferenc Munnich as prime minister (who had served in that position since January 28, 1958), and thus assumed the top government post, as well as the leadership of the HSWP. He then dismissed other hard-line officials. Kadar's consolidation of power led to a more flexible, pragmatic atmosphere in which persuasion took on greater importance than coercion. Kadar relaxed government oppression and released most of those imprisoned for participating in the revolution. Soon Hungary became the leader of the reform movement within the Soviet alliance system. Kadar intended to provide the regime with some legitimacy and political stability based on solid economic performance. The Soviet Union demonstrated its support with its decision to withdraw its advisers to the Hungarian government.
Kadar next sought a modus vivendi with the population, summarizing the new policy with the slogan "He who is not against us is with us." As part of this "alliance policy," in 1961 he denounced the practice of making party membership a prerequisite for jobs demanding specialization and technical expertise. Kadar sought to remove opportunists who had joined the party solely for the status and economic benefits that membership conferred. Rather, Kadar wanted to open the government and economic enterprises to talented people who were prepared to cooperate without adhering to party discipline or compromising their political beliefs.
At the Eighth Party Congress of the HSWP in November 1962, Kadar supporters replaced Stalinists and incompetent officials in leading party positions. The congress also called for higher party recruitment standards, for elimination of political and class considerations in university admissions, and for allowing nonparty members to compete for leading public positions. Although the party still had influential conservative members after 1962, the Eighth Party Congress removed them from the party's policy-making core. As a result of these changes, by 1963 Kadar had acquired genuine popular support.
Plans for reforming the centrally planned economy steadily took shape after the Eighth Party Congress. Central Committee secretary Rezso Nyers, who supported a comprehensive reform rather than continued piecemeal adjustments to the economic system, took charge of economic affairs. The regime also appointed committees to prepare reform proposals. By 1964 the government had identified problems in the economy, including excessive investment, decreases in output and labor shortages in agriculture, misuse of inputs, hoarding of materials, and production of unsalable goods. Since the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary had depended on foreign trade, and in the early 1960s the government placed top priority on improving the trade with the West and the Comecon countries. Despite improving the terms of trade, however, by 1964 Hungary had accumulated a serious trade deficit, and the government could not slow imports without cutting material supplies and personal consumption. Officials realized that because Hungary had to boost exports, it would have to meet the needs, quality standards, and technological requirements of the world economy.
Khrushchev's ouster in October 1964 failed to weaken Hungary's desire for reform. Kadar responded to the change in the Kremlin by affirming that "the political attitude of the HSWP and the government of the Hungarian People's Republic has not changed one iota, nor will it change." In December 1964, a Central Committee plenum approved the basic concept of economic reform and formed a committee to provide fundamental guidelines.
Economic problems also continued to underscore the need for reform. Agricultural output fell by 5.5 percent. In addition, the government increased production quotas, cut wages, and announced price hikes. Popular discontent rose as a result.
In May 1966, the Central Committee approved a sweeping reform package known as the New Economic Mechanism (NEM). Although many of its elements could be phased in during a preparation period, the central features of the reform could be implemented only with the introduction of a new price system, which was set for January 1, 1968. With the NEM, the government sought to overcome the inefficiencies of central planning, to motivate talented and skilled people to work harder and produce more, to make Hungary's products competitive in foreign markets, especially in the West, and, above all, to create the prosperity that would ensure political stability.
The NEM decentralized decision making and made profit, rather than plan fulfillment, the enterprises' main goal. Instead of setting plan targets and allocating supplies, the government was to influence enterprise activity only through indirect financial, fiscal, and price instruments known as "economic regulators." The NEM introduced a profit tax and allowed enterprises to make their own decisions concerning output, marketing, and sales. Subsidies were eliminated for most goods except basic raw materials. The government decentralized allocation of capital and supply and partially decentralized foreign trade and investment decision making. The economy's focus moved away from heavy industry to light industry and modernization of the infrastructure. Finally, agricultural collectives gained the freedom to make investment decisions. The NEM's initial results were positive. In the 1968-70 period, plan fulfillment was more successful than in previous years. The standard of living rose as production and trade increased. Product variety broadened, sales increased faster than production, inventory backlogs declined, and the trade balance with both East and West improved. In practice, however, the reform was not as sweeping as planned. Enterprises continued to bargain with government authorities for resources from central funds and sought preferential treatment. The reform also failed to dismantle the highly concentrated industrial structure, which was originally established to facilitate central planning and which inhibited competition under the NEM.
The Kadar regime failed to understand that real economic decentralization required political reform to resolve conflicts that naturally arose between different interest groups. The government's problem was to expand "socialist democracy," that is, to build a system that would simultaneously resolve conflicts and maintain the HSWP's political monopoly. In fact, the government attempted some incremental changes. The courts gained greater independence in administering justice, and changes were introduced in parliament as deputies on committees of the National Assembly were instructed to examine and debate legislation more effectively. A 1966 electoral law created single-representative constituencies and contained a provision for elections with multiple candidates. However, the Patriotic People's Front (PPF) retained control of nominations. Even after a second electoral law in 1970 made it legal for other groups to nominate individuals, few multiple candidacies actually arose. These minimal changes quickly encountered resistance from entrenched party officials. The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and suppression of the reform program there had also discouraged the HSWP from pursuing further political changes. However, Kadar was able to work out a modus vivendi with the Soviet leadership. The Soviet Union allowed Kadar leeway to implement economic reforms, develop some economic contacts with the West, and permit Hungarians to travel abroad as long as Budapest accepted Moscow's hegemony in Eastern Europe and adhered to Soviet foreign policy positions.
The Kadar regime gave serious attention to implementing the NEM from 1968 to 1972. In 1971, however, counterreform forces were gathering strength and calling for the return of central controls. The opposition arose from government and party bureaucrats and was supported by large enterprises and some workers. The bureaucrats perceived the NEM as a threat to their privileged positions. The large enterprises saw their income drop after the introduction of the NEM and were troubled by competition for materials and labor from smaller enterprises. Disaffected workers who were on the payrolls of outdated, inefficient industries resented the higher incomes earned by workers in more modern firms. This opposition successfully reversed the reform a few months after Moscow expressed reservations about the NEM and concern about "petit bourgeois tendencies" in Hungary.
In November 1972, the Central Committee introduced a package of extraordinary measures to recentralize part of the economy, but the regime did not formally abandon the NEM. Fifty large enterprises, which produced about 50 percent of Hungary's industrial output and 60 percent of its exports, came under direct ministerial supervision, supported by special subsidies. New restrictions applied to small enterprises and agricultural producers. Wages rose, prices came under central control, and the regime introduced price supports. In the following years, the government also merged many profitable small firms with large enterprises.
The 1973 world oil crisis and the subsequent recession in the West caused a drastic deterioration of Hungary's terms of trade and strengthened opposition to the reform. Inflation threatened, and counterreformers argued for protecting the living standard of the working class from an economic shock in the capitalist world. The government intervened by raising taxes on successful firms and increasing government purchases and subsidies. Consumer prices eventually fell below the level of producer prices, and Hungary accepted credits from Western banks. Centralized material allocation was reintroduced. After the oil crisis arose, ideological opposition to the NEM and to "bourgeois attitudes" arose. A clampdown on intellectuals began, and Nyers lost his Politburo position in 1974.
By 1978 Hungary's dismal economic performance made it clear even to the counterreformers in the leadership that a "reform of the reform" was necessary. Return to central control had only rewarded inefficiency and stifled innovation and initiative. Enterprises ignored market signals, and shortages plagued producers. Large amounts were invested in poorly conceived projects, and a trade deficit accumulated. Hungary's hard-currency debt reached US$7.5 billion by 1978 and had jumped to US$9.1 billion by 1980.
In 1978 the government admitted that its attempt to shield Hungary from world economic conditions could not be continued. Hoping to improve its trade balance with the West and avoid forced rescheduling of its debt, the government announced its intention to boost exports. This policy change marked the beginning of a new wave of reforms. First, the price system was restructured to bring consumer prices gradually in line with world market prices and to ease the burden of subsidies on the state budget. Next, producer prices were reformed to bring about more rational use of energy and raw materials. Finally, the government overhauled exchange-rate and foreign-trade regulations.
In 1979 and 1980, the government implemented a number of institutional reforms. The new reforms abolished branch ministries and replaced them with a single Ministry of Industry intended to act as a policy-formulating body without direct authority over enterprises. Large enterprises were broken up into smaller firms. In 1982 the government legalized the formation of small private firms, including restaurants, small shops, and service companies, and it permitted workers to lease enterprise equipment, use it on their own time, and keep the earnings from their products. In 1984 the regime introduced new forms of enterprise management, including supervisory councils that would include worker-elected representatives. New financial institutions also emerged, and a 1983 government decree allowed enterprises, cooperatives, financial institutions, and local governments to issue bonds.
In the early and mid-1980s, Kadar had encouraged a limited amount of political liberalization. The HSWP maintained its monopoly on political power, but the norms of democratic centralism were looser than in other countries of Eastern Europe. County party secretaries acquired the freedom to make decisions of local importance, including control of personnel. The government again exhorted delegates of the National Assembly to scrutinize laws and government policies more critically. In 1983 a new electoral law required a minimum of two candidates for each national and local constituency in general elections. Trade unions began to defend workers' interests more energetically. Journalists were urged to expose low- and mid-level corruption and abuse of power, although they could not criticize the regime's basic tenets. The leadership also bolstered economic reforms of the early 1980s with a foreign policy geared to a greater degree than before on trade with the West, and it maintained this course during the deterioration of superpower relations in the early 1980s. Thus, the economic reforms of the late 1960s had also come to provoke a measure of political reform and changes in foreign policy. These new departures were inspired in large measure by Hungarian nationalism, a force that had long encouraged Hungarians to control their own destiny and to resist the hegemony of their larger, more powerful neighbors.
THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF HUNGARY lies in the central Danube Basin. With 92,103 square kilometers of territory, it is the sixteenth largest European country. The country's terrain consists largely of plains and hill country and is divided into three major geographic areas: the Great Plain, covering the central part of the country, the Transdanube in the west, and the Northern Hills along the northern border. The climate is mild and continental, although great contrasts in temperatures can occur.
Hungary is roughly the size of the state of Indiana. It measures about 250 kilometers from north to south and 524 kilometers from east to west. It has some 2,258 kilometers of boundaries, shared with Austria to the west, Yugoslavia to the south and southwest, Romania to the southeast, the Soviet Union to the northeast, and Czechoslovakia to the north.
Hungary's modern borders were first established after World War I when, by the terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, it lost more than two-thirds of what had formerly been the Kingdom of Hungary and 58.5 percent of its population. With the aid of Nazi Germany, the country secured some boundary revisions at the expense of parts of Slovakia in 1938 and Carpatho-Ukraine in 1939 and at the expense of Romania in 1940. However, Hungary lost these territories again with its defeat in World War II. After World War II, the Trianon boundaries were restored with a small revision that benefited Czechoslovakia.
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Most of the country has an elevation of fewer than 200 meters. Although Hungary has several moderately high ranges of mountains, those reaching heights of 300 meters or more cover less than 2 percent of the country. The highest point in the country is Mount Kekes (1,008 meters) in the Matra Mountains northeast of Budapest. The lowest spot is 77.6 meters above sea level, located in the Hortobagy.
The major rivers in the country are the Danube and Tisza. About one-third of the total length of the Danube River lies in Hungary; the river also flows through parts of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Austria, Yugoslavia, and Romania. It is navigable within Hungary for 418 kilometers. The Tisza River is navigable for 444 kilometers in the country. Less important rivers include the Drava along the Yugoslav border, the Raba, the Azamos, the Sio, and the Ipoly along the Czechoslovak border. Hungary has three major lakes. Lake Balaton, the largest, is 78 kilometers long and from 3 to 14 kilometers wide, with an area of 592 square kilometers. Hungarians often refer to it as the Hungarian Sea. It is Central Europe's largest freshwater lake and an important recreation area. Its shallow waters offer good summer swimming, and in winter its frozen surface provides excellent opportunities for winter sports. Smaller bodies of water are Lake Velence (26 square kilometers) in Feher County and Lake Fertö (Neusiedlersee--about 82 square kilometers within Hungary).
Hungary has three major geographic regions: the Great Plain (Nagy Alfold), lying east of the Danube River; the Transdanube, a hilly region lying west of the Danube and extending to the foothills of the Alps; and the Northern Hills, which is Austrian a mountainous and hilly country beyond the northern boundary of the Great Plain.
The Great Plain contains the basin of the Tisza River and its branches. It encompasses more than half of the country's territory. Bordered by mountains on all sides, it has a variety of terrains, including regions of fertile soil, sandy areas, wastelands, and swampy areas. Hungarians have inhabited the Great Plain for at least a millennium. Here is found the puszta, a long, and uncultivated expanse (the most famous such area still in existence is the Hortobagy), with which much Hungarian folklore is associated. In earlier centuries, the Great Plain was unsuitable for farming because of frequent flooding. Instead, it was the home of massive herds of cattle and horses. In the last half of the nineteenth century, the government sponsored programs to control the riverways and expedite inland drainage in the Great Plain. With the danger of recurrent flooding largely eliminated, much of the land was placed under cultivation, and herding ceased to be a major contributor to the area's economy.
The Transdanube region lies in the western part of the country, bounded by the Danube River, the Drava River, and the remainder of the country's border with Yugoslavia. It lies south and west of the course of the Danube. It contains Lake Fertö and Lake Balaton. The region consists mostly of rolling foothills of the Austrian Alps. However, several areas of the Transdanube are flat, most notably the Little Plain (Kis Alfold) along the lower course of the Raba River. The Transdanube is primarily an agricultural area, with flourishing crops, livestock, and viticulture. Mineral deposits and oil are found in Zala County close to the border of Yugoslavia.
The Northern Hills lie north of Budapest and run in a northeasterly direction south of the border with Czechoslovakia. The higher ridges, which are mostly forested, have rich coal and iron deposits. Minerals are a major resource of the area and have long been the basis of the industrial economies of cities in the region. Viticulture is also important, producing the famous Tokay wine.
The country's best natural resource is fertile land, although soil quality varies greatly. About 70 percent of the country's total territory is suitable for agriculture; of this portion, 72 percent is arable land. Hungary lacks extensive domestic sources of the energy and raw materials needed for industrial development.
Temperatures in Hungary vary from -28° C to 22° C. Average yearly rainfall is about sixty-four centimeters. Distribution and frequency of rainfall are unpredictable. The western part of the country usually receives more rain than the eastern part, where severe droughts may occur in summertime. Weather conditions in the Great Plain can be especially harsh, with hot summers, cold winters, and scant rainfall.
By the 1980s, the countryside was beginning to show the effects of pollution, both from herbicides used in agriculture and from industrial pollutants. Most noticeable was the gradual contamination of the country's bodies of water, endangering fish and wildlife. Although concern was mounting over these disturbing threats to the environment, no major steps had yet been taken to arrest them.
In 1988 the country had about 10.6 million inhabitants. Population had grown slowly since the late 1970s and had begun to decline in 1981. In 1986 about 19.2 percent of the population lived in Budapest, the country's cultural, political, and economic center. Beginning in 1978, for the first time in the country's history, more people lived in urban centers than in rural areas. By 1988 about 62 percent of the populace lived in urban centers with populations exceeding 10,000.
In the late 1980s, more than 96 percent of the people were ethnic Magyars. The minority, or non-Magyar, population was small and included Germans, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Romanians, Jews, Gypsies, and Greeks. Most non-Magyars were bilingual, speaking both their own languages and Hungarian.
The combined impact of World War II and the communist takeover in 1947 brought about great changes in the social structure. For more than a decade, the new communist government sought to create a classless society through various forms of social engineering. Beginning in the 1960s, these efforts gave way to more indirect methods of social and economic control. The pace of change slowed, and a social structure took shape that once again contained clearly stratified groups. In its new form, society did not display the extremes of wealth and poverty characteristic of the interwar period. However, as the country's economic difficulties increased in the 1980s, tensions appeared to build between the wealthy elites and the sizable disadvantaged groups in society. Public discussion acknowledged these growing tensions and debated methods for overcoming them.
The family remained the basic social unit. The state recognized marriage as a secular institution and held the stability of families to be a desirable social goal. However, observers in the 1980s identified a number of sources of family stress that appeared to contribute to a high rate of divorce.
After the communist assumption of power in the late 1940s, several mass organizations--official trade unions, the National Council of Hungarian Women, and the Communist Youth League--were established to interpret for various segments of the population the social and political goals of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, to mobilize support for it, and to serve as centers of a collective social life. But in the late 1980s, these organizations were losing members, and they faced growing competition from new unofficial groups that emerged in the relaxed political atmosphere.
According to Western estimates, in the late 1980s about 67.5 percent of the population was Roman Catholic, 20 percent was Reformed (Calvinist), 5 percent was Lutheran, and 5 percent was unaffiliated. The country also contained smaller groups of Uniates (Catholics of the Eastern Rite), Greek Orthodox, various small Protestant sects, and Jews. In 1989 the government abolished the State Office for Church Affairs, which had supervised the churches. A proposal for new law submitted for public discussion in 1989 was intended to eliminate almost all restrictions on the churches.
The country's education system provided free, compulsory schooling for young people from six to sixteen years of age. About half of all students attended general schools (also known as elementary schools) for eight years and then completed their education through vocational training. The remainder continued their studies in a four-year gymnasium (a secondary school for university preparation) or trade school. The general schools curriculum stressed technical and vocational training. In the 1980s, almost 10 percent of the population aged eighteen to twenty-two was enrolled in regular daytime courses of study at institutions of higher learning.
In the late 1980s, the state health care and pension systems were highly centralized. Medical care was free to all citizens. However, many physicians maintained private practices, and people who could afford to receive care on a private basis often preferred to do so. Availability of medical personnel and hospital beds was high by international standards. The country's pension system, although extensive, was the object of considerable criticism in the 1980s because of the low levels of support provided to many retirees.
In the late 1980s, the bounds of permissible expression in Hungary suddenly had become wide by East European standards. Authorities had lifted most traditional prohibitions. Opposition groups were able to function legally. Consequently, the country experienced a quickening and enlivening of cultural and intellectual life.
Since World War II, Hungary has exhibited several population trends that parallel those in other advanced societies. Population leveled off after the war and even began to decline. The birth rate fell, and people flocked from the countryside to the cities, especially to the major urban areas. Historical Trends
Trianon Hungary emerged from World War I with reduced borders roughly coterminous with Hungary's present-day borders. In 1920 Hungary had about 8 million inhabitants, and by 1941 the population had grown to approximately 9.3 million. But the country lost about 5 percent of its population in World War II, so as of 1949 the population was only about 8.8 million. Thereafter, the growth rate of the population fluctuated substantially. Until the mid-1950s, high fertility and declining mortality caused rapid population growth. In 1954 the highest postwar live-birth rate was reached, at 23 births per 1,000 population. Subsequently, until the mid-1960s the birth rate declined, but the mortality rate was also low. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the birth rate again rose, partly because of demographic measures introduced by the government in 1967 and 1973. Because the overall population had begun to age, the mortality rate also increased during this period, but it was counterbalanced by the higher rate of live births.
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Marriage and Death
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Beginning in the late 1970s, the birth rate declined and mortality increased. By the early 1980s, Hungary's growth rate had become one of the lowest in the world. More ominously, beginning in 1981, deaths outnumbered births. Over the 1980s, population decreased absolutely after peaking at a post-World War II high of 10.7 million in 1980. Thus, the 1988 census reported that about 10.6 million people lived in the country.
In 1986 the birth rate was 12.1 per 1,000 population, up slightly from the postwar low of 11.8 per 1,000 in 1984. However, as recently as 1975 the birth rate had been 18.4 per 1,000, and in 1948 the birth rate had been 21 per 1,000. One major reason for the overall decline of the birth rate appeared to be the increasing number of highly educated and economically active women who, as in other countries, tended to have fewer children. Age appeared to play no role in the declining birth rate. In 1986 women married at an average age of 24.6 years, a figure only slightly higher than in 1948, when the average age was 24.5. In the 1980s, the typical family had only two children (reflecting a dramatic decrease from the final decades of the nineteenth century, when the average number of children per family had been five).
Overall the population of the country was aging. A growing proportion of the population was aged fifty-five or older, increasing from 19.6 percent of the population in 1960 to 24.5 percent in 1988. By contrast, in 1988 the proportion of the population under fifteen was about 21 percent, which reflected a decrease of about 4 percent since 1949 and resulted from the declining birth rate.
Marriage rates fell steadily from the mid-970s to the mid1980s. In 1975 the marriage rate was 9.9 per 1,000. By 1986 that number had declined to 6.8 per 1,000. Moreover, in 1980 for the first time, the number of marriages that ended because of death or divorce outnumbered the number of marriages that took place. In 1980 the number of "marriages ceased" because of death and divorce was 9.2 per 1,000 population. That number rose to 9.3 by 1983, then fell slightly back to 9.2 by 1986.
Death rates were relatively high, and they were rising. In 1986 the death rate was 13.8 per 1,000, as compared with 12.4 per 1,000 in 1975. In 1986 life expectancy averaged sixty-eight years, up from about sixty-six years in 1975. For women in 1986, the average life span was almost seventy-two years; for men, it was just under sixty-five years.
In 1945 only 35 percent of the population lived in urban areas. After 1945 much of the population moved from the country's less developed counties to Budapest and later to its suburbs and to the industrial counties of Hajdú-Bihar and Borsod-Abaúj- Zemplen. The number of urban dwellers grew by more than 50 percent from 1949 to 1984. In 1978, for the first time in the country's history, more people lived in urban centers than in rural areas. In 1949 the population density was about 100 persons per square kilometer. By the 1980s, that figure had climbed to about 117 persons per square kilometer.
In the late 1980s, nine cities had populations greater than 100,000. Budapest, the country's focal point for government, culture, industry, trade, and transport, was by far the largest city, with 2.1 million inhabitants, or 19.2 percent of the country's population. Other major population centers were Debrecen, with 217,000 inhabitants; Miskolc, with 210,000; Szeged, with 188,000; Pecs, with 182,000; Györ, with 131,000; Nyiregyhaza, with 119,000; Szekesfehervar, with 113,000; and Kecskemet, with 105,000. In 1988 the country had a total of 143 urban centers with more than 10,000 inhabitants, where about 62 percent of the population lived.
As of 1988, the country had 2,915 settlements with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, where 38 percent of the people made their homes. Beginning in the 1950s, the smallest villages, or those with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, tended to lose their residents. However, the number of people leaving the villages decreased every year after 1960. Whereas in 1960 about 259,000 people left the villages permanently, that number declined to about 129,000 in 1986. The number of people leaving the villages exceeded the number coming to the countryside by approximately 52,000 people in 1960. That number had declined to 37,769 in 1980 and 20,814 in 1986.
In the 1980s, a substantial number of persons of Hungarian origin lived outside the country. Many of these lived in neighboring countries. Others had moved even farther from their homeland. In the three decades before World War I, some 3 million ethnic Hungarian peasants had fled to the United States to escape rural poverty. During and after the Revolution of 1956, about 250,000 people left the country, traveling first to Austria and Yugoslavia and eventually emigrating to Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Switzerland, the United States, and West Germany. In the late 1980s, about 40 percent of all persons of Hungarian origin were living outside Hungary.
As a result of population transfers after World War II, Hungary became one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in Eastern Europe. Unlike most Europeans, Hungarians trace their lineage to the Finno-Ugric people--an Asiatic tribe. For this reason, Hungarians have long felt themselves to be distinct from the other peoples who live in their midst.
Ethnic discrimination--except toward the Gypsies--was almost nonexistent in Hungary in the 1980s. Particularly after the late 1960s, the government had made great efforts to ensure fair and equal treatment for minority nationalities. Foreign policy considerations partially explained this liberal policy toward minorities. The Romanian and, to a lesser extent, the Czechoslovak governments subjected Hungarians in their countries to many kinds of discrimination. To provide these governments with incentives to relax their pressure against Hungarian minorities, Budapest pursued very liberal policies toward its own national minorities and sought to make its minority policies a model for other countries in Eastern Europe.
<>Origins and
Language
<>Minority Groups
The Hungarian people are thought to have originated in an ancient Finno-Ugric population that originally inhabited the forested area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. Sometime between the first and fifth centuries A.D., after the Ugric and Finnic peoples had split, Ugric tribes in the eastern portion of the territory moved farther south, intermingling with nomadic Bulgar-Turkish peoples. Some of these tribes settled in the Carpathian Basin in the ninth century A.D. and became the direct ancestors of today's inhabitants of Hungary. The proper name for the largest ethnic group in Hungary is Magyar. The word is a derivative of Megyeri, supposedly the name of one of the original ten Magyar tribes. Magyar refers specifically to both the language and the ethnic group. The words Hungary and Hungarian are derivatives of a Slavicized form of the Turkic words on ogur, meaning "ten arrows," which may have referred to the number of Magyar tribes.
Hungarian is the country's only official language. It is a member of the Finno-Ugric family of languages, unrelated to the Indo-European language family, which contains the major European languages. Within Europe, Hungarian is related to Finnish, Estonian, Komi, and several lesser-known languages spoken in parts of the Ural Mountain region in the Soviet Union. It has a heavy admixture of Turkish, Slavic, German, Latin, and French words. Hungarian is written in Latin characters. The various dialects are intelligible to all Hungarians throughout the country.
In the 1980s, more than 96 percent of the population consisted of ethnic Magyars. Major transfers of population had occurred after World War II. Substantial numbers of Germans, Czechs, and Slovaks were resettled in neighboring countries, and many Hungarians outside the country's borders moved to Hungary. Today Hungary has few ethnic minority inhabitants. In the 1980s, the population included roughly 230,000 Germans; slightly more than 100,000 Slovaks; about 100,000 Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (often grouped together as South Slavs); and about 30,000 Romanians. In the late 1980s, the Romanian population in the country increased significantly as thousands of Romanians fled conditions in their homeland and sought refuge in Hungary. About one-third of these emigres were ethnic Romanians, and the remainder were Hungarian-speaking Romanians. In addition, about 500,000 Gypsies, 150,000 Jews, and 4,000 Greeks lived in Hungary. The Jewish community was a mere remnant of the Jewish population that had lived in the country before World War II. During the war, as many as 540,000 Jews and 60,000 Gypsies were deported to Nazi extermination camps.
Most of the non-Magyar nationalities were bilingual, speaking both their own languages and Hungarian. In the 1980 census, less than 1 percent of the population actually registered as members of national minorities, although a far greater number expressed interest in aspects of their ethnic culture. National minorities did not usually form separate communities but lived interspersed among the entire population.
The Constitution, as well as a sizable body of law, guarantees the cultural rights of recognized national minorities. The Constitution promises them equal rights as citizens, protection against discrimination, and access to education in their own languages from kindergarten to university level. Minorities have been able to promote their national cultures through freedom of association in federations, ethnic clubs, and artistic endeavors. They have been able to use their own language in official procedures and could publish newspapers and periodicals, and broadcast radio and television programs in their own tongue. Actual government policy in the 1980s was fairly consistent with these promises. In 1984 approximately 55,000 minority students were receiving instruction in their mother tongue in elementary and secondary schools, up from 21,615 students in 1968. When ethnic students did not find the requisite opportunities at domestic institutions of higher education, they could study at appropriate foreign universities. All national minorities had weekly newspapers and other publications and sponsored various cultural activities. As public discussion in the late 1980s noted, however, the minorities had not shared equally in the economic advances of recent decades.
Jews and Gypsies were not officially recognized as national minorities, being defined rather as a "religious community" and an "ethnic community," respectively. However, the Jews occupied a more favorable position in Hungary than they did in other states in Eastern Europe. The country's 150,000 Jews formed the third largest Jewish community on the European continent, being smaller than the Jewish communities in the Soviet Union and France. They maintained a high school, library, museum, kosher butcher shops, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a rabbinical seminary, a factory producing matzo, and about thirty synagogues. Several publications, including newspapers, served the Jewish population.
The situation of the half million Gypsies, traditionally a poor and marginal element in society and subject to discrimination, was far less favorable. In 1987 about 75 percent of the Gypsies were living at or below the poverty level. About half of them lived in settled conditions, holding down jobs. Most spoke Hungarian. The Gypsy population had a birth rate that was more than twice as high as that of the rest of the population. This circumstance, and the fact that the Gypsy crime rate was disproportionately high, contributed to an apparently growing hostility to Gypsies among the Hungarian population. Many citizens perceived the government's special programs for Gypsies as undeserved favoritism that deprived the rest of the population of needed resources.
In the mid-1980s, in contrast to its earlier policy of encouraging cultural assimilation, the government began to foster a Gypsy ethnic and cultural identity and a sense of community and tradition to enhance the self-esteem of the Gypsy population. In mid-1985 the government established the National Gypsy Council to represent Gypsy concerns to the government and to assist in carrying out measures involving the Gypsies. In 1986 the Cultural Association of Gypsies in Hungary was founded to help preserve and foster Gypsy culture. In 1987 a Gypsy newspaper was established. Despite these signs of progress, Gypsies remained particularly vulnerable as the economic climate deteriorated in the 1980s. With minimal skills, education, and training, they were among the first to lose their jobs as unemployment increased. Their health and living standard remained well below the national average.
Before World War II, Hungarian society was characterized by striking inequalities in economic and social status. Landownership was the principal source of wealth, because the country was still predominantly rural and agricultural. The poverty of millions of landless laborers stood in stark contrast to the wealth of a small elite of landowners, bankers, and prominent businessmen. Early efforts at industrialization provided few alternative employment opportunities for the impoverished agricultural labor force.
The destruction and turmoil of World War II greatly disrupted the traditional social structure. After the communists assumed power in 1947, society was in flux for almost two decades. The aim of the new government was to replace the old order with a new social structure that was in line with Marxist-Leninist ideology. The pace of change slowed in the early 1960s as the government reduced its efforts at social engineering. By the early 1970s, society had settled into a discernible pattern in which clear-cut social strata were beginning to reemerge. Changes that continued to affect the social system during the 1970s and 1980s resulted largely from economic growth and urbanization rather than from the efforts of communist social planners.
<>Interwar Period
<>Postwar Societal
Transformation
<>Social Relations in
the 1980s
<>The Elite
<>The Disadvantaged
Until World War II, striking inequalities distinguished the distribution of wealth, power, privilege, and opportunity among social groups. The various social strata had different codes of behavior and distinctive dress, speech, and manners. Respect showed to persons varied according to the source of their wealth. Wealth derived from possession of land was valued more highly than that coming from trade or banking. The country was predominantly rural, and landownership was the central factor in determining the status and prestige of most families. In some of the middle and upper strata of society, noble birth was also an important criterion as was, in some cases, the holding of certain occupations. An intricate system of ranks and titles distinguished the various social stations. Hereditary titles designated the aristocracy and gentry. Persons who had achieved positions of eminence, whether or not they were of noble birth, often received nonhereditary titles from the state. The gradations of rank derived from titles had great significance in social intercourse and in the relations between the individual and the state. Among the rural population, which consisted largely of peasants and which made up the overwhelming majority of the country's people, distinctions derived from such factors as the size of a family's landholding; whether the family owned the land and hired help to work it, owned and worked the land itself, or worked for others; and family reputation. The prestige and respect accompanying landownership were evident in many facets of life in the countryside, from finely shaded modes of polite address, to special church seating, to selection of landed peasants to fill public offices.
On the eve of World War II, about 4 percent of the population owned more than half the country's wealth. Landowners, wealthy bankers, aristocrats and gentry, and various commercial leaders made up the elite. Together, these groups accounted for only 13 percent of the population. Between 10 and 18 percent of the population consisted of the petite bourgeoisie and the petty gentry, various government officials, intellectuals, retail store owners, and well-to-do professionals. More than two-thirds of the remaining population lived in varying degrees of poverty. Their only real chance for upward mobility lay in becoming civil servants, but such advancement was difficult because of the exclusive nature of the education system. The industrial working class was growing, but the largest group remained the peasantry, most of whom had too little land or none at all.
Although the interwar years witnessed considerable cultural and economic progress in the country, the social structure changed little. A great chasm remained between the gentry, both social and intellectual, and the rural "people." Jews held a place of prominence in the country's economic, social, and political life. They constituted the bulk of the middle class. During the first four decades of the twentieth century, Jews made up more than one-fifth of the population of Budapest. They were well assimilated, worked in a variety of professions, and were of various political persuasions.
Even before the communists came to power in 1947, the turbulent years of World War II had weakened or eliminated much of the old stratified society. Devastation from the fighting in 1944 and 1945, land reforms instituted by the government in 1945, and the nationalization of commerce and industry between 1948 and 1953 destroyed the economic base of the old social system. The country lost about 300,000 Jews, including much of the Jewish business community, to various war-related causes--deportation, massacre, disease, and hunger. Only about 260,500, mostly from Budapest, survived.
After the communist takeover, the traditional ruling class was virtually eliminated. More extensive land reform undertaken by the new regime eventually collectivized the majority of the peasantry. In the countryside, anti-kulak measures and compulsory deliveries of produce to the state at extremely low prices destroyed the prosperous peasant class. (In 1948 the term kulak came to be defined officially as anyone who owned more than seven hectares of land or had a landed income roughly approximating such ownership. Political conditions caused many with less property also to feel threatened.) Rampant inflation disrupted all aspects of economic life.
In keeping with Marxist-Leninist ideology, during the first decade of communist rule the government sought to create a classless society through policies such as equalization of incomes, collectivization of agriculture, expropriation of property, and tight control over educational opportunities. On the remaining peasants with average incomes and on prosperous peasants, the government imposed steeply progressive income taxes and requisitioned large amounts of produce. Collectivization in the early 1950s caused many peasants to seek alternatives to agriculture. Many retained their rural residences but commuted daily or weekly to other jobs, leaving part of the family to continue some agricultural work. Others moved to entirely new jobs, as government policies promoted rapid development of heavy industry.
The social and economic changes that took place after World War II promoted social mobility. During the early years of forced industrialization and continuing to a lesser extent until the early 1960s, the prewar worker strata and peasant strata had enhanced opportunities to rise into white-collar positions. Large numbers of peasants entered the industrial labor force, and the bureaucracy, which grew as a result of centralized planning, was open to persons from all social groups.
Some downward mobility also occurred. Disincentives for formerly independent professionals, crafts people, and merchants were overwhelming. Opportunities also dwindled for prewar executives and managers. Members of the old elite lost property and political power and were forced into the middle or lower class. A large percentage of the prewar elite left the country.
Despite such mobility in the early 1950s, an inegalitarian social system remained in place. The new political elite enjoyed material and symbolic privileges, such as access to special stores containing scarce goods or the free use of secluded and well-guarded villas, that separated it from the rest of the population. A second stratum of the elite consisted of valuable persons such as directors of large enterprises and of the best collective farms. They too lived in comparative luxury. The new elite also included intellectuals who endorsed the party and its interests. Their task was to provide legitimacy for the new regime. In return, they enjoyed living standards superior to those of the working class.
In the aftermath of the Revolution of 1956, career restrictions on the prewar middle class and intellectuals began to ease somewhat as the government ceased most of its social engineering efforts. Among workers and peasants, political loyalty, although important, could no longer serve as a vehicle for upward mobility in the absence of other qualifications; a person also needed to have appropriate educational credentials or skills. However, political considerations remained paramount for persons who wanted to be part of the ruling political elite.
As the economic reforms introduced in the 1960s increasingly affected all aspects of society, stratified social groups again made their appearance. By the mid-1970s, the regime's objective of a classless society appeared to be increasingly unattainable. To reconcile ideology with these realities, ideologists began modifying Marxist theory. The regime all but abandoned the goal of a classless society, ideologists arguing that in a socialist industrial society certain skills and occupations were more necessary than others. Thus, those persons with greater skills and responsibilities should receive more compensation than those making less valuable contributions. Ideologists rationalized society's inequalities by maintaining that socioeconomic distinctions that evolved under a communist system were qualitatively different from those found in capitalist countries.
In the 1980s, society was complex and highly differentiated. Social scientists agreed that the traditional Marxist-Leninist description of the workers, peasants, and intellectuals all cooperating to build socialism did not accurately depict modern society. They actively sought new categories to account for the great diversity of life-styles and income sources but as of the late 1980s had not reached a consensus concerning modifications in traditional theories.
Most sociologists spoke of the existence of three major strata in society: white-collar workers engaged in mental labor; manual laborers; and peasants. The white-collar category comprised everyone not involved in physical labor--party and government leaders, intellectuals, professionals and teachers, collective farm managers, artists, business persons, traders, shop owners and specialists such as building contractors. This category constituted 30.3 percent of active earners in 1987, with 14.5 percent classified as professionals. The manual labor category encompassed 61.4 percent of the work force and included skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled blue-collar workers of all ranks and degrees of training and prosperity. The peasantry working on both cooperative and state farms made up 8.3 percent of earners. About 4.6 percent of the work force were also "smallscale producers" of various types.
A survey taken in 1981 revealed the surprisingly widespread nature of small-scale agricultural production among virtually all social categories and occupations; 62.7 percent of active earners lived in households that cultivated at least small gardens of fruit trees or vegetables. A smaller but still substantial number of active earners were involved in animal husbandry. Sociologists were uncertain about whether or not this phenomenon was a temporary phase in industrial development or a new category of agricultural worker.
Persons with some claim to elite status made up no more than 15 percent of the population in the early 1980s. The elite consisted of three identifiable groups in the 1980s: political, technocratic, and intellectual. The political elite consisted of top party and government leaders. Although some members of this group flaunted their status and privileges, most were not highly visible and did not advertise their special status. Members appeared to be relatively sensitive to their public image and did not indulge in conspicuous consumption. The technocrats included managers, directors, economists, and researchers who supported the regime. The benefits they derived from the system were more visible, in the form of bonuses and salaries and of the autombiles, villas, apartments, and other special advantages that these financial windfalls made possible. The intellectual elite, composed of academicians, scientists, musicians, artists, writers, journalists, and actors, included many persons who were comfortably placed, although others lived in relatively humble circumstances. They were leaders in setting both social and political trends. Members of these favored groups often possessed, in addition to relative wealth, the important commodity of influence or "connections." This form of influence gave them and their families access to scarce items and limited opportunities, such as quality higher education.
Additional occupations that were likely to be financially rewarding included medicine, engineering, and, in some cases, skilled technicial jobs, such as electricial work, house painting, plumbing, and building contracting. These technicians might have several income sources from their private work in addition to salaried work. Intellectuals who lacked high salaries but supplemented their income through various types of consulting work, such as editing, translating, and so forth, were also financially secure.
Prosperous individuals enjoyed a very comfortable standard of living. Families who could afford private holiday and weekend houses built them on the shores of Lake Balaton, along rivers, and in mountain areas. From 1981 through 1987, a total of 30,397 private "holiday houses" were built. As more people owned their own automobiles, weekend trips became increasingly popular. During the 1970s, more people, even those in relatively modest circumstances, began to travel abroad. In 1981 a record 5.5 million Hungarians traveled outside Hungary. Of these, about 477,000 traveled to capitalist countries, in Europe or overseas. As a result of financial constraints, the number of travelers dropped somewhat in the mid-1980s. Regulations concerning the exchange of foreign currency permitted travel to capitalist countries no more than once a year on organized tours or once every three years on an individual basis. If a traveler had access to additional sources of foreign currency, however, he or she could travel more frequently.
To achieve an acceptable living standard or to improve their modest circumstances, most Hungarians had to work hard; often they held more than one job. Continuing inflation in the 1980s created additional pressures on families with moderate income. Although the government introduced the five-day workweek throughout the economy between 1980 and 1985, more persons worked extended workdays to increase household income. It was estimated that three families in four had some source of additional income not resulting from work in state or collective sources. Many families were thus able to achieve a comfortable, if still modest, life-style.
A number of disadvantaged groups also tried to make ends meet. Western analysts estimated that between 25 and 40 percent of the population lived below the poverty level, which, in the mid-1980s, was defined as a monthly income below 5,200 forints. Average monthly wages (6,000 forints) were only 10 to 15 percent above this level. In 1988, according to data issued by the Central Statistical Office, between 1.5 million and 3 million people qualified as "socially poor" (out of population of 10.6 million). These figures included 40 to 50 percent of all retired persons on pensions, about half of families with two children, and from 70 to 90 percent of families with three or more children. Other poor groups were lowpaid employees of the state and industry, such as postal employees, various semiskilled and unskilled workers, and minor bureaucrats. Some of these people supplemented their income through second jobs. Single heads of households were often poor. In addition, persons working on less productive collective farms and those living on isolated homesteads (tanyas) far from rural centers and even villages, were likely to have scanty incomes.
Although Hungary's living standard was higher than that found in neighboring socialist states in the 1980s, the sharp disparities became the subject of investigative reports, letters to newspaper editors, and various radio and television talk shows. Economic problems were clearly causing concern and some demoralization among the people. The government adopted a variety of austerity measures in response to the country's economic stagnation and staggering foreign debt. These measures included increases in the prices of basic items, such as flour, bread, gasoline, and household energy, and various consumer items such as cigarettes. A new value-added tax on most goods and services and a stricter income tax law were also introduced. In 1988 official sources reported an inflation rate of 17 percent. Western analysts estimated that the inflation rate could be as high as 25 to 30 percent. By 1989 the average real wage had dropped to its 1973 level.
Since the mid-1970s, considerable tension has emerged between the rich and the poor, partially because of the long-professed egalitarian views of the regime. During the immediate postwar period, the leadership had advocated (although it had never fully practiced) a general egalitarianism that, combined with the prevailing scarcity, led people to elevate self-denial as a socialist virtue. When conditions subsequently improved, the leadership and the population both were confused about what form the proper socialist way of life should take. The younger generation in particular took pleasure in the increasing comforts of life, but some members of the older generation feared a resurgence of a "bourgeois" life-style and "consumerism." Although poverty remained widespread, socialism's sponsorship of rapid economic development had offered many persons a chance to change their way of life and socioeconomic position in a manner that was unimaginable before the war. As living standards improved, the conviction had grown among significant segments of the population that economic growth and rising standards were inevitable and that ongoing problems--poverty and unequal opportunity--were remnants of the old order, certain to be overcome. Then in the mid-1970s, economic growth had slowed. Although inequalities were much reduced from the prewar scale, they still existed. They were less pronounced in salary differences than they were in working conditions, working hours (including their flexibility), housing conditions, possession of durable consumer items, and, most of all, general life-style. Even more troubling was the appearance of new inequalities, with favored groups consolidating their advantageous positions. The regime had few concrete answers for these problems. Leaders could only point out that the country had no models to follow in developing a socialist system to meet its needs.
In the late 1980s, the worsening economic conditions were a disappointing contrast to the successes and significant improvements in living standards achieved in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1987 the official news agency estimated the number of unemployed persons to be 30,000 to 40,000. In 1988 the press began reporting frankly on the noticeable numbers of beggars and homeless persons on the streets of Budapest. The media also noted that squatters were becoming a problem, especially families coming from the countryside seeking employment and moving into vacant apartments.
In the 1980s, severe social and economic problems took their toll on the family. Harsh economic conditions meant that most women had to work and most men had to hold second and even third jobs. These factors, combined with a housing shortage, subjected the family to considerable stress. Yet the harsh economic conditions also forced many people to turn inward, and they found in their families a refuge from the difficult economic realities.
In the postwar period, the regime had designed its mass organizations to take over some of the traditional socialization functions of the family. Thus, the mass organizations served as "transmission belts," attempting to inculcate regime values, and relaying and interpreting the policies of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP) to rank-and-file members and to the general public. In the late 1980s, some Western observers considered the mass organizations sponsored by the regime to be in a moribund state, hopelessly outclassed by newer, more spontaneous collective efforts. In response, some mass organizations liberalized their programs and distanced themselves from the regime.
Early in its history, the communist party considered the churches as competitors for the allegiance of the people. Therefore, the regime actively persecuted the churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church. After the Revolution of 1956, the regime relaxed its pressure on the churches, viewing them more as partners than as adversaries. By the late 1980s, the government allowed the churches wide latitude and eliminated virtually all legal and institutional restrictions on church activities.
<>The Family
<>Mass Organizations
<>Trade Unions
<>Women
<>Youth
<>Religion
In traditional Hungary, the family served as the basic social unit. It had multiple functions, providing security and identity to individuals and reinforcing social values. In rural areas, it was also the basic economic unit--all members worked together for the material well-being of the whole family. Even before World War II, however, family cohesion began to decrease as members became increasingly mobile. But the process of change quickened after the communist takeover. Intensive industrialization and forced collectivization prompted many of the younger peasants to leave agriculture for industrial work or other jobs in the cities, some commuting long distances between home and work. Patterns of family life changed. A growing number of women worked outside the home, and children spent much of their time in school or in youth organization activities. Family members spent less time together. The emphasis in daily life shifted from the family to the outside world. Most members of the extended family came together only for important ceremonies, such as weddings or funerals, and other special occasions.
Changes in the traditional roles of family members were dramatic. The dominance of the male head of the family diminished. The remaining family members had greater independence. Most notably, the role of women changed. By 1987 about 75 percent of working-age women were gainfully employed. Even peasant women became wage earners on the collective farms. This fact altered women's status in the family and the community. However, most observers agreed that in the 1980s males were still viewed as the head of most households, if only because of their generally higher incomes.
As women increasingly worked outside the home, their husbands and children assumed some domestic functions, helping with household chores more than they had before. Outside institutions such as schools and nurseries also took over tasks formerly carried out by women within the home. Nevertheless, time budget studies indicated that women were still responsible for most of the child rearing and housework despite their employment outside the home. Women usually worked longer hours than men. Working women spent an average of more than four hours each day on household chores, including child care, while men averaged ninety-seven minutes in such activities. However, the time spent by women in outside employment was not correspondingly shorter than that of men, averaging only 1.5 hours less than men. Women devoted less time than men to leisure activities, such as watching television, socializing, and engaging in sports. (According to the same studies, women did read approximately as many books as men but spent much less time on newspapers and periodicals.)
The state viewed marriage as a secular matter, governed by civil law. A civil marriage was mandatory, but couples were allowed to supplement the procedure with a religious ceremony. The greatest number of both men and women married between the ages of twenty and twenty-four (44.6 percent of all men and 41.3 percent of all women for those marrying in 1987). The law assigned equal rights and obligations to both partners in a marriage.
In the 1980s, social analysts considered the family to be an institution under considerable stress. Statistics supported this contention. From 1975 to 1986, the divorce rate increased from 2.5 to 2.8 per 1,000 population. In the 1980s, every third marriage ended in divorce. The rate of remarriage also dropped significantly. In 1987 about 66,000 marriages were performed, and about 95,600 marriages were terminated as a result of death or divorce. Almost 12 percent of all families were headed by a single parent.
A primary source of stress within families, according to many observers, was the scarcity of adequate housing, especially for young families. In many families, members faced the pressures and exhaustion of trying to hold down multiple jobs. Another source of tension within families was the prevalence of commuting. Although in 1960 one in every eight workers commuted, in the 1980s one in every four commuted. One million or more villagers commuted to the cities to work. This figure did not include long-distance commuters who lived in temporary quarters near their workplaces and returned home weekly or more infrequently. In 1980 such workers numbered about 270,000, bringing the total number of commuters to about 1.5 million.
Despite the statistics, most observers found that the cohesive force of the family remained relatively strong in the 1980s. For many people, the family continued to be a source of personal comfort and reassurance in the face of worsening economic conditions. The traditional sense of family loyalty and responsibility also seemed to survive. Family members continued to help each other in finding jobs or housing, in gaining admission to schools, and in providing for each other in times of need.
Until the late 1980s, the law contained no provision for voluntary, independent associations of people interested in influencing social or political policy. Potential independent groups had no concrete channels by which to gain regime approval. During four decades of communist rule, clear legal status belonged only to such mass organizations as the Communist Youth League, official trade unions, the National Council of Hungarian Women, and a variety of nonpolitical associations catering to narrow, special interests of the population. Until the late 1980s, authorities actively discouraged the formation of unofficial groups.
In the mid-1980s, official trade unions had almost 4.4 million members, or about 96 percent of all persons living on wages and salaries. The growth of trade unions was mainly a postWorld War II phenomenon; before the war, unions had a total membership of only about 100,000 (mostly crafts people). After the communist takeover, the unions were supervised by the National Council of Trade Unions (Szakszervezetek Orszagos Tanacsa--SZOT), elected by a national congress. SZOT had nineteen officially recognized unions, organized by industrial branch. Trade unions theoretically had great powers, but they traditionally had made little use of them. For example, SZOT had a legal right to veto decisions made by the government concerning the workers. In practice, the unions' historic inability to strike made this authority meaningless. The government specified overall policy concerning work requirements and wages. Most dayto -day decisions about hiring and firing were made by the management staffs of enterprises and collective farms. Unions did have great influence in the use of the social and cultural funds of enterprises and in industrial safety issues. Trade unions also controlled the administration of health care and holiday resorts. However, in the 1980s subsidies from the central government for these purposes were diminishing, so that maintaining even the existing level of services and amenities was difficult.
In 1985, in a move to increase its appeal to the country's youth, SZOT set up its own organization to represent young people, separate from the Communist Youth League. This organization was the first, other than the Communist Youth League itself, to officially represent young people. According to the authorities, the Communist Youth League was to remain the only political mass organization for youth, while the trade union youth would focus on issues of the workplace, social and cultural programs, and other traditional concerns of trade unions. Trade union members under thirty years of age could be members of the unions' new youth sections.
In the late 1980s, Western analysts detected a significant easing of restrictions on trade union activity in general. The official unions became increasingly outspoken, criticizing such practices as the requirement for overtime work and other austerity measures. In public discussions, both critics and union representatives openly admitted that the unions as constituted inspired little confidence in workers. In 1988 the press began reporting some brief strikes among workers in officially recognized unions, revealing that the outcomes of the strikes had been favorable to the workers. At the same time, some professionals and blue-collar workers made efforts to form independent unions that were not subordinate to SZOT. In May 1988, the Democratic Union of Scientific Workers, the first independent trade union established in Eastern Europe since Poland's Solidarity, was founded. Social scientists at research institutes of the Academy of Sciences, the country's premier research organization, were the first members of the new union. The union's program included a call for the end of discrimination against professionals based on their political views. Additional researchers and teachers from other institutions soon joined, raising the number of members to more than 4,000 by December 1988. Several smaller unions also came into existence. Initially, the membership of such independent organizations appeared to be limited to white-collar workers. The success of these fledgling attempts was uncertain, but after initial hostility from authorities, the groups were permitted to function.
In the 1980s, the principal women's organization was the National Council of Hungarian Women. Its official role was to educate women socially and politically and to participate in devising new laws and regulations that affected women. The organization had a network of local and regional committees, whose members engaged in voluntary social work. In 1985 the council had about 32,000 designated female "stewards," and about 160,000 women were said to be active in the organization.
The Communist Youth League (Kommunista Ifjúsagi Szovetseg-- KISZ) catered to young people. KISZ was the HSWP's official youth organization. It claimed to represent all the country's youth and sought to educate young people politically and to supervise political as well as some social activities for them. KISZ was the most important source of new members for the party. Its organizational framework paralleled that of the HSWP and included a congress, central committee, secretariat, and regional and local committees. Membership was open to youth from the ages of fourteen to twenty-six years, but most of the full-time leaders of the organization were well over the age limit. In the 1980s, KISZ had about 800,000 members. Membership was common, if rather pro forma, among university students (96 percent of whom were members) but was lower among young people already working (31 percent).
In the late 1980s, KISZ undertook sweeping reforms of its own organizational structure. In April 1989 delegates to the organization's national congress voted to change the name of the organization to the Democratic Youth Federation. According to declarations adopted by the congress, the newly refashioned federation would be a voluntary league of independent youth organizations and would not accept direction from any single party, including the HSWP.
A separate organization within KISZ, the Association of Young Pioneers, was formed for youngsters in elementary school. Membership was open to children from six to fourteen years of age. The Young Pioneers served many of the same functions as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the West. The organization also attempted to explain to children the basic tenets of the MarxistLeninist worldview. Joining the Young Pioneers was a matter of course for most youngsters in elementary school. Most meetings took place in classrooms of primary schools. Bands of Young Pioneers could be seen on many ceremonial occasions, dressed in the organization's characteristic white shirts and red ties. The summer camps sponsored by the organization were a highlight of the year for many children.
Particularly during the early years of communist rule, the churches had faced extensive harassment and persecution by the regime. Many clergy had been openly hostile to the new government at its inception. The new secular authorities, for their part, denounced such attitudes as traitorous, and they mistrusted the churches as a source of opposition.
The most protracted case of tension and open conflict involved the Roman Catholic Church. In 1945 the church lost its landed property in the first postwar land reform, which occurred before the communist takeover. Most Catholic religious orders (fifty-nine of a total of sixty-three groups) were dissolved in 1948, when religious schools were also taken over by the state. Most Catholic associations and clubs, which numbered about 4,000, were forced to disband. Imprisoned and prosecuted for political resistance to the communist regime were a number of clergy, most notably Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, primate of the Catholic Church in Hungary. In 1950 about 2,500 monks and nuns, about one-quarter of the total in Hungary, were deported. Authorities banned sixty-four of sixty-eight functioning religious newspapers and journals. Although in 1950 the Catholic Church accepted an agreement with the state that forced church officials to take a loyalty oath to the Constitution, relations between the church and the state remained strained throughout the decade.
During the 1960s, the two sides gradually reached an accommodation. In 1964 the state concluded a major agreement with the Vatican, the first of its kind involving a communist state. The document ratified certain episcopal appointments already made by the church, although it did not settle Mindszenty's long- standing case. As before, the agreement mandated that certain individuals in positions in the church were obliged to take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of the country. But this oath was to be binding only to the extent that the country's laws were not in opposition to the tenets of the Catholic faith. The church conceded the state's right to approve selection of high church officials. Under the agreement, the Hungarian Roman Catholic Church could staff its Papal Institute in Rome with priests endorsed by the government, and each year every diocese in the country would send a priest to Rome to attend the institute. For its part, the government promised not to interfere with the institute's work.
Following the agreement, many vacant church posts were filled. Gradually, the organizational structure of the church was reestablished, and congregations became active again. The church began to take a role in the ceremonial life of the country. Relations between church and state warmed particularly after 1974, when the Vatican removed Mindszenty from his office (in 1971 Mindszenty had received permission to leave the country after spending many years in the American embassy in Budapest, where he had fled to escape detention by the authorities). The new primate, Cardinal Laszlo Lekai, who held office from 1976 to 1986, sponsored a policy of "small steps," through which he sought to reconcile differences between church and state and enhance relations between the two through "quiet, peaceful dialogue." He urged Catholics to be loyal citizens of the state and simultaneously to seek personal and communal salvation through the church.
Evidence suggests that a serious falling away from religion among Catholics (especially a drop in attendance at church services) occurred only during the 1960s and 1970s, ironically during the period when the government no longer energetically persecuted the church. Some observers have suggested that in the 1950s the church earned popularity as an anticommunist institution because of widespread dissatisfaction with material, political, and cultural trends within the country. As conditions improved, the church no longer served as a focal point for the disaffected. Some Catholics, both lay and clerical, felt that Lekai, in his eagerness to smooth relations between church and state, went too far in compromising the church's position.
The Catholic Church of the 1980s had difficulty providing adequate services to all communities. Its clergymen were aging and decreasing in number. Whereas in 1950 the church had had 3,583 priests and 11,538 monks and nuns, in 1986 it had only about 2,600 priests and a mere 250 monks and nuns. It was clear by this time, however, that the church was reaping tangible benefits from its relationship with the state. For example, in the 1980s the Catholic orders of the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Piarists, and Our Lady's School Sisters were again functioning in limited numbers. A new order of nuns, the Sisters of Our Lady of Hungary, received permission to organize in 1986. In the 1980s, the church had six seminaries for training priests and a theological academy in Budapest.
After the communist takeover, the historic Protestant churches became even more thoroughly integrated into the new state system than did the Catholic Church. They were not a source of organized dissent. The Reformed (Calvinist), Unitarian, and the Lutheran churches all reached accommodation with the government in the late 1940s (as did the small Greek Orthodox and the Jewish communities). These agreements guaranteed the Protestants the right to worship and brought about some financial support (contingent after 1949 on the loyalty oath). Some Protestant leaders praised the agreements as heralding a new era in which all religions would be treated equally. However, a number of Reformed clergy and followers became active supporters of the Revolution of 1956. After the Revolution failed, many of these people joined "free churches" (including the Baptist, Methodist, and Seventh-Day Adventist churches), which functioned apart from the historic Protestant churches.
In 1986, according to Western estimates, about 67.5 percent of the population was Roman Catholic, 20 percent was Reformed (Calvinist), 5 percent was unaffiliated, and 5 percent was Lutheran (its members were in particular the German and Slovak minorities but also included many ethnic Magyars). Other Christian denominations included Uniates, Orthodox, and various small Protestant groups, such as Baptists, Methodists, Seventh- Day Adventists, and Mormons. Most of these smaller groups were affiliated with the national Council of Free Churches and were dubbed free churches as a group. The country also had 65,000 to 100,000 practicing Jews. The remainder of the population did not subscribe to any religious creed or organization. Nor was any single church or religion particularly associated with the national identity in the popular mind, as was the Catholic Church in Poland.
Western observers concluded that although the country possessed about 5 million practicing believers, religion did not provide a viable alternative value system that could compete with the predominant secularism and materialism promoted both by the government and by trends within an increasingly modern society. Thus, religion was unlikely to become a vehicle for dissent as in Poland or, in a more limited way, in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
A noteworthy phenomenon of the early 1980s was the appearance of thousands of intensely active prayer and meditation groups within Catholic and Protestant congregations. Some of these groups came into conflict with the church hierarchies over military service and other aspects of cooperation with the government.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and religion. Until 1989, however, these guarantees were severely circumscribed by the State Office for Church Affairs, which regulated the activities of the churches. On June 15, 1989, the government abolished this office. In its place, the government planned to establish a "National Church Council" that would act as a "consultative organization," not as an instrument for the control of the churches. In addition, the Ministry of Culture assumed responsibility for church affairs. Also in 1989, the government submitted for public debate new "Principles of a Law on Freedom of Conscience, the Right of Free Exercise of Religion, and Church Affairs." The document, prepared by representatives of the churches, banned discrimination against believers, acknowledged the churches as legal entities, and recognized their equality before the law. Yet in the late 1980s, the state's financial support of all major churches continued to give it considerable leverage in influencing church affairs.
Between 1945 and 1986, religious communities erected or repaired 306 Roman Catholic, 46 Calvinist (Reformed), 33 Lutheran, and 23 Uniate churches. Congregations of the free churches built 185 new structures, and the Jewish community built a new synagogue. The various denominations maintained their own modest publishing organs that produced newspapers, periodicals, and books. Occasionally, religious services were broadcast over radio. The various churches and denominations each supported (collectively, in the case of the free churches) at least one theological academy or college for the training of clergy. However, the number of students was small; 75 students graduated out of a total of 648 students enrolled in such institutions in 1987.
Before the communist assumption of power in 1947, religion was the primary influence on education. The Roman Catholic Church sponsored and controlled most schools, although some other religious denominations (Reformed, Lutheran, and Unitarian) as well as the government ran some schools. The social and material status of students strongly influenced the type and extent of schooling they received. Education above the elementary level was generally available only to the social elite of the country. In secondary and higher-level schools, a mere 5 percent of the students came from worker or peasant families. Only about 1 or 2 percent of all students entered higher education.
Before the communist educational reforms, secondary education was traditional. The curriculum stressed the humanities, often at the expense of the sciences. Technical education received relatively little attention, despite the existence of technical and vocational schools.
In 1946 the government established the principle of free education as a right of all citizens, even before the communist assumption of power. In 1948 the new communist government secularized almost all schools and placed them under state control, giving oversight to the Ministry of Education. The churches retained only a few institutions to train their clergy.
The Marxist-Leninist government made major changes in the education system. Its goal was to mold citizens to work for the benefit of society. The reforms stressed technical and vocational training. Political education also became a high priority. Young people were to receive a thoroughly Marxist-Leninist education both within and outside the school framework. Education also sought to promote a thorough understanding of the political system, an understanding fostered also by youth organizations functioning outside the formal educational process. Russian-language study became compulsory from the upper levels of the general school (also known as the elementary school) through the university. Many Soviet professors taught at Hungarian universities, many textbooks were adaptations of the work of Soviet authors, and Russian-language clubs were established.
Marxism-Leninism had become the backbone of the curriculum by the early 1950s. A brief period of liberalization followed the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953. After the failure of the Revolution of 1956, authorities reverted to their former emphasis on Marxist-Leninist indoctrination. However, they did modify the earlier policy of Sovietization in favor of a more Hungarian orientation.
The regime's ideology also dictated the need to increase the total number of students enrolled in higher education, primarily through recruitment from the working class and the peasantry. Whereas in 1939 only 13,000 students were enrolled in higher education, by 1970 this number had grown to 86,000. To be sure, some of these students were participating in correspondence or evening courses rather than regular daytime classwork. Adults were encouraged to study through schools at the workplace and correspondence courses. Authorities also tried to expand the proportion of students from lower social strata by setting a worker and peasant quota of about 60 percent at all places available in higher education. Students seeking admission to these institutions were assessed according not only to their abilities but also to their social origins; the children of families belonging to the formerly privileged classes rarely were given the opportunity to study. When students from modest socioeconomic backgrounds lacked the requisite academic training, one-year remedial courses were available to assist them. In 1963 this class-oriented system of recruitment was abandoned. Nevertheless, political considerations continued to play a role in admissions procedures at secondary schools and universities.
In 1986 the country had 3,540 elementary schools, 587 secondary schools, 278 apprentice schools, and 54 institutions of higher education, of which 18 were universities with several faculties and programs extending five or more years. Of the latter, four were general universities, three were technical universities, six were agricultural universities, four were medical universities, and one was a university of economics. The country had five specialized university-level institutes for the arts and physical education.
Attendance at school was mandatory from age six to sixteen. All students attended general schools for at least eight years. Tuition was free for all students from age six up to the university level. Most students actually began their schooling at five years of age; in 1986 approximately 92 percent of all children of kindergarten age attended one of the country's 4,804 kindergartens. By 1980 every town and two-thirds of the villages had kindergartens. Parents paid a fee for preschool services that was based on income, but such institutions were heavily subsidized by the local councils or enterprises that sponsored them.
By 1980 only 29 percent of males aged fifteen years or older and 38 percent of females aged fifteen years and older had not completed eight years of general school, compared with 78 percent of such males and 80 percent of such females in 1949. About half of the students who completed the general schools subsequently completed their education in two years, through vocational and technical training. The remaining students continued their studies in a four-year gymnasium or trade school.
In 1985 about 98,500 undergraduate students attended the country's higher educational institutions. Almost 10 percent of the population aged eighteen to twenty-two was enrolled in regular daytime courses at institutions of higher education. In the 1980s, about 40 percent of regular students came from worker or peasant families. Most of these students either were exempt from tuition payments or, more often, received financial assistance. In the 1980s, applicants outnumbered places available in the colleges and universities. As a result, many persons enrolled in evening and correspondence courses, although these courses were not considered to be equal in quality to regular day instruction.
In the 1985-86 academic year, about 2,500 foreign students studied full time in Hungary. About half were European students; the remainder came from developing countries. In the same year, about 1,300 Hungarian students were studying in foreign institutions of higher education, most of them in neighboring countries.
In the 1980s, the average educational attainments of Hungarians ranked in the middle, in comparison with those of citizens of other European countries. The quality of Hungary's education system was substantially inferior to those of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Sweden and was somewhat lower than those of Austria, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Poland, and West Germany. Many Hungarians voiced concerns about the quality of their schools. Critics noted, among other things, that although Switzerland spent 18.8 percent of its national budget on education, Brazil 18.4 percent, and Japan 19.2 percent, Hungary allotted only 6.6 percent of its state budget to education. In the 1980s, the country experienced shortages of both classrooms and teachers, so that primary-school classes sometimes contained up to forty children. In many areas, schools had alternate morning and afternoon school shifts in order to stretch facilities and staff. Moreover, not all teachers received proper training.
At the university level, in the late 1980s some students and faculty were calling for greater autonomy for institutions of higher education and were demanding freedom from ideological control by both the government and the party. They decried the prominence given to the study of Marxism-Leninism and the Russian language in university curricula. The public was also distressed over the fact that, despite the government's remedial measures during previous decades, in the 1980s children of the intelligentsia had a far greater chance of entering institutions of higher learning than did the children of agricultural workers and unskilled industrial workers.
After the communist government assumed power in Hungary, it devoted much attention to meeting the specific health care and social security needs of the population. In comparison with prewar standards, the average citizen received far better health care and social assistance as a result of the government's policy. Such improvements did not extend to housing; like other countries in Eastern Europe, Hungary has faced a severe housing shortage since the late 1940s. However, unlike most other countries in Eastern Europe, since the mid-1970s the government has encouraged citizens to build their own housing. This policy has eased the shortage somewhat, but as of 1989 the lack of adequate housing remained a serious problem.
HealthThe modern social welfare system was largely a product of the 1970s and 1980s, although setting of goals, initial planning, and more modest coverage for citizens began in previous decades. Amendments to the Constitution in 1972 guaranteed universal assistance for the ill, the aged, and the disabled. The Public Health Act of 1972 specifically guaranteed that beginning in 1975 all persons would have free medical care as a right of citizenship. The Social Insurance Act of 1975 provided that insurance conditions and benefits, which had been different for various occupational groups, become uniformly applied to all citizens. In 1982 even those persons involved in private economic activity became eligible for full social insurance coverage (including generous sickness and disability pay), instead of being limited to pension and accident coverage.
The social welfare system expanded steadily. According to official statistics, the percentage of the population's income represented by social benefits in cash (including social insurance payments) and kind (including free health care) was 17.4 percent in 1960, 22.8 percent in 1970, 27.3 percent in 1975, and 32 percent in 1980.
The state health care system was highly centralized. Increasingly specialized and sophisticated services were available at the level of the district (the country had 4,374 districts in 1984), municipality, county, region, and nation. Each district had a designated physician to whom its inhabitants first turned for care under the public health system. If an ailing person required a specialist, the district physician made the appropriate referral. In the 1980s, the availability of physicians, nurses, and hospital beds was high by international standards. In 1986 the country had 31,154 physicians, or about one physician per 299 inhabitants (up from one physician per 909 inhabitants in 1950, one per 637 inhabitants in 1960, one per 439 inhabitants in 1970, and one per 398 inhabitants in 1974). The country had 100 hospital beds per 10,000 inhabitants (up from 55.8 beds per 10,000 inhabitants in 1950, 71.1 in 1960, and 85.5 in 1974). The country had 3,801 dentists and dental surgeons, 43,579 nurses, 57,277 other health personnel, and 4,506 pharmacists.
Although by the 1980s about 99 percent of the population participated in the social insurance system and could receive free medical services and hospital care, much private practice was allowed. In 1984 more than 3,600 health service doctors engaged in private practice, treating private patients during their free time. Many of them had very lucrative private practices. Many persons in upper-income groups, who could afford the high price of private medical care, chose to use the services of a private physician rather than one assigned to them by the health service. Public opinion considered the care given by private physicians to be of higher quality than that provided by the health service.
In the 1980s, the public engaged in much frank and apparently uncensored discussion about serious shortcomings in health care. Complaints concerned the aging of hospital facilities, the disrepair of their equipment, the shortages of basic medications, and the inadequate training of low-paid medical personnel. Western analysts estimated that Hungary spent only 3.3 percent of its gross national product specifically on health service (the 6 percent figure listed in most statistical data actually included some social services). This percentage was the lowest of any East European country except Romania (in comparison, the United States spent 11 percent of GNP on health care). Critics judged the health system to be substandard, unreliable, and increasingly tainted by the practice of offering gratuities to medical personnel to ensure quality care. They warned that the achievements of past years were jeopardized by the current neglect.
Certain trends in the general health of the population indeed gave health authorities reason for concern in the 1980s. Life expectancy at birth was the lowest among thirty-three developed countries rated by the World Health Organization. In 1986 the infant mortality rate was 19 per 1,000 live births. This figure showed an improvement over the 1970 rate of 35.9 per 1,000. However, the infant mortality rate remained among the highest for industrialized countries with developed health systems. In 1985, according to Minister of Defense Ferenc Karpati, 10 to 11 percent of young males were unfit for military service, and another 4 to 5 percent could not undergo strenuous physical training. Among conscripts accepted for service, 3 to 4 percent were discharged before the end of their training for health reasons, primarily because of physical or nervous disorders.
Health authorities had other special concerns less directly related to the health care system. One such problem was the country's high suicide rate. In the mid-1980s, the suicide rate was 44 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest suicide rate in the world. (The country with the second highest suicide rate, Austria, reported 26.9 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 1984.) The very high suicide rate had a lengthy history, confirmed by statistics dating back more than a century. Since the late 1960s, however, the rate had risen noticeably. Hungarian experts cited as factors contributing to the troubling situation alcoholism, mental illness, the growing number of elderly people, the disorienting effect of urban life, stress, and the weakening of family and community bonds as a result of rapid modernization. The high suicide rate among people over age sixty was thought to result from the economic stagnation and inflation of the 1980s, which made it difficult for people to subsist on small pensions.
In the mid-1980s, the authorities were also discussing the growing incidence of substance abuse. The incidence of alcoholism had increased during the previous generation, and a high percentage of suicide victims were alcoholics. As of 1986, consumption of alcohol per person per year was 11.7 liters; consumption of hard liquor (4.8 liters per person) was the second highest in the world. Authorities had increased the price of hard liquor five times between 1973 and 1986, but despite these measures, excessive alcohol consumption remained a problem. Although less salient than alcoholism, drug addiction was also becoming a source of some concern and was discussed in the press. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a serious health threat associated with drug use in many countries, was not a major health concern in Hungary in the late 1980s. According to government statistics released in early 1989, the first AIDS patient entered a Budapest hospital in 1985. During the following four years, the country had twelve AIDS-related deaths.
In the 1980s, another source of anxiety for both health authorities and the general public was the downward trend projected for the country's population. As early as 1973, concern about the slowdown in population growth had led to the introduction of a comprehensive population policy. Supplemental provisions had broadened the coverage in subsequent years. The policy mandated generous pregnancy and maternity allowances. Working mothers enjoyed a twenty-week maternity leave with full pay. After the twenty weeks had elapsed, the mother could receive an allowance to enable her to raise the child at home until it reached the age of three; the amount of the allowance varied according to the number of children and amounted to about 25 to 40 percent of national average earnings per month. In addition, working mothers had access to unpaid days off (prorated according to the number and ages of the children involved) or other benefits to enable them to take care of a sick child. Additional ongoing family allowances were available for families with two or more children. In spite of this assistance, child rearing was a large expense to families. The various forms of assistance, while clearly beneficial to young families, actually amounted to only 15 to 20 percent of child-rearing costs.
WelfareIn the late 1980s, the country's pension system covered about 85 percent of the population falling within pensionable ages. Male workers could qualify for pensions at the age of sixty, female workers at the age of fifty-five. The number of pensioners had increased rapidly since the end of World War II as people lived longer and as pension coverage expanded to include additional segments of the population. In the early 1950s, the country had had only 12 to 13 pensioners for every 100 active workers. In the late 1980s, however, the country had 50 pensioners for every 100 active workers. This trend placed a heavy burden on the government, the main source of pension funds.
The amount of a person's pension depended upon earnings and number of years of employment. In 1989 the minimum monthly pension was 3,340 forints (about US$54). Yearly cost-of-living increases had failed to keep up with inflation. In 1979 the government introduced major pension increases for the lowest-paid pensioners in an effort to improve the situation. The most vulnerable pensioners tended to be women, whose pensions averaged 25 percent less than men's pensions. More women had small pensions than men because women generally had worked fewer years and earned lower salaries. About 20 percent of all pensioners, or about 400,000 persons, worked to bring in additional income, usually undertaking part-time or seasonal work. In the 1980s, pensioners constituted a significant segment of the country's poor. The unfortunate circumstances of many elderly citizens and the need to reform the pension system were the subjects of considerable press commentary.
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