What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

Percentage in Poverty: 10% (2003 estimate of UNDP/MTA)3

  EU Status: Entered May 2004

  Currency: Hungarian forint

  Quick Tour

  From sailboats whipping across Lake Balaton, Hungary’s “inland sea,” to rolling vineyards in Tokaj and the apricot orchards flowering across the great central plain—once loud with the clomping of warrior horses—the door is swinging open for Magyarorszád. Europe’s airlines are bringing in hordes who marvel at domed and spired Budapest, the city along the Danube that glitters with imperial architecture and boasts hundreds of museums; others set off to soothe aches in castle-baths and island spas in this country, which has nearly 1,000 hot springs—more than anywhere except Iceland.

  TAKING THE WATERS

  Thanks to the thin crust of the Carpathian Basin, Hungary is rich in thermal waters that bubble up at around 90°F; Budapest alone has over 100 springs, and many are loaded with minerals and lauded for their therapeutic effects. Hungarians (and the millions of visitors who come for the spas) highly regard the ritual, claiming that “taking the waters” might cure everything from arthritis to neurological conditions. Not all thermal baths are the same—some contain iodine, fluoride, or sulphuric acid; others are radioactive or have a slight electric charge running through them. The settings are equally diverse, ranging from Roman baths and tiled Turkish baths to the cave spa at Tapolca. One of the most stunning environments: Budapest’s Hotel Gellert, which served as Nazi headquarters during World War II, and where one now soaks amid marble columns as sunlight streams through stained glass.

  Glorious old-world cafés where revolutions brewed up are swinging open their doors yet again, the arts are celebrated in weeklong festivals, and music floats down the streets, escaping from opera houses and restaurants where gypsy bands play. Fish-rich rivers thread across this fertile land, where food is plentiful, soups are hearty, and everything is washed down with abundant, and tasty, Hungarian wine.

  Hungary has twenty wine regions, and a wine industry that could boom. Tokaj wine, heralded by France’s Louis XIV as “king of wines, and the wine of kings,” questionably steals all the press (the white wine is an acquired taste), but many of the reds range from easy-drinking to elegant, and all can be tasted in Budapest’s House of Hungarian Wines, in the castle complex. One sign of the potential: foreigners are buying up vineyards by the handful.

  So why is the country known for cheerful fiddlers, fruit brandies, and zesty food the most melancholy in Europe, a land where the trademark posture is looking down at one’s shoe and the national hobby is lamenting the past? Hungarians are haunted by history and a popular belief that they are cursed. What else but a hex (which they believe was put on them by retreating Turks) could explain Hungary’s fall from greatness? What else could explain her chronic battles to hold on to her language, people, and land? What other European country is so jinxed, Hungarians will ask you, that it was invaded and occupied five times during the last century alone?4

  “We know what it is to be losers. We have all been losers for centuries.”—Hungarian psychologist Margot Honti5

  HUNGARY: SUICIDE EPICENTER

  Is it the weather—the long winters and frequent gray skies? Is it something emitted from the ancient volcanoes in the west or the dreariness of the central terrain that’s Ohio-like flat? Perhaps the culprit is a lard-happy diet or too much cream, or maybe it’s a normal reaction to the sight of McDonald’s overtaking the cities. Whatever the reason, Hungarians are a gloomy bunch whose leaders and writers have often done themselves in. Hungarian suicide rates are often the world’s highest,6 and they remain abnormally high. Among the middle-aged, for instance, only the Japanese kill themselves more. Sociologists attribute the self-destructiveness to pent-up rage; Hungarians say it’s genetic—they just feel too much. And they always feel lousy when they think of their past.

  Given that they ditched Communism, and the Soviets who once pummeled them down are long gone, and given that the standard of living is rising (or so the government claims) and more opportunity is on the horizon since Hungary joined the European Union, why are so many Hungarians utterly glum? The black hole of sadness, say many, stems from a feeling that their heritage was ripped away. Some point to 1526—often evoked as though it was yesterday—the year of the Battle of Mohács, when Turks from the Ottoman Empire captured two-thirds of the Hungarian Kingdom in two hours, a defeat that led to a 160-year occupation and dependence on the Austrian Empire to beat the Ottomans back. They finally did, in 1686, which ultimately led to Austrian domination. Five hundred years before the Turks took over, the Mongols invaded, an event that causes grumbles and loud sighs. But a much more recent event—having happened merely eighty-six years ago—was the Treaty of Trianon, the signing of a paper that for Hungarians was as significant as nailing Jesus to the cross. The Treaty of Trianon ended the Austro-Hungarian Empire and shredded Hungary’s claim to greatness; that agreement, foisted upon the defeated Hungarians at the end of World War I, ripped Greater Hungary apart. She lost half of her people and two-thirds of her land; most of her timber, iron ore, and national wealth went with it.

  Five million ethnic Hungarians—Magyars—now reside in neighboring countries.

  GREATER HUNGARY

  Never mind that the land in question was carved up at the end of World War I, and that most alive at the time are long dead. And never mind that Hungarians willingly went along with their corulers, the Austrians, in starting World War I, and that their shared empire was lost by defeat. The peace treaty the victorious Allies drew up on June 4, 1920, shrank Hungary’s physical map—Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria all picked up pieces—and millions of Hungarians ended up on the other side of the new borders. A gnawing sense of injustice still hangs in the air, and you can sense it in the hilltop bar where Gabor, a college student, is drawing the outline of Old Hungary and saying he wants that land back; you notice it in the national museums that proudly sell Treaty of Trianon badges and postcards, with the lost lands in black, chastising “Don’t Forget!” and you can feel it when tens of thousands march every June 4 in loud protest. You can even see it on the TV weather map, which shows the Hungarian Empire as she was in the days before being hacked up. And the idea that Hungary deserves those lands back is not only a source of chronic frustration to many Hungarians, including quite a few of the young, it’s a reason that the country is dividing between those who think the reunification idea should be dropped, and those who think Hungary should pursue it. The latter group typically supports Viktor Orbán, helping him rise as prime minister of the country a few years ago, when he nearly drove Hungary back to her recent totalitarian past.

  Master manipulator Viktor Orbán knew exactly what buttons to push, but he didn’t start his career as a politician with a promise to somehow unite ethnic Hungarians. Ruggedly handsome, secretly wealthy, and obsessively driven, brash Viktor Orbán rose to fame in the late 1980s by hitting yet another of Hungary’s national quirks: the 1956 Revolution. Even Americans old enough to remember may not recall the ten days when Hungarians, urged by Americans to rise up against Communists (and assured that the West would back them), did just that—only to find themselves all alone. Tens of thousands were killed while the West looked the other way, and Warsaw Pact forces—soldiers from Soviet bloc countries—stormed in. Even if the event is just hazy history to Americans—whose attention was diverted by a simultaneous crisis when Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egpyt over the Suez Canal—it’s still a lingering wound to Hungarians.

  THE 1956 HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION

  No period of the past fifty years better exemplified the Hungarian plight under Communism than the autumn of 1956, when Hungary—pushed by hunger, stirred up by Radio Free Europe, and believing that Western powers would come to her aid—stood up to the Soviet Union, alone as it turned out. Suffering under Moscow’s economic policies, which dictated life in the Communist state that was a Soviet satellite, Hungarians were already unhappy that year, wh
en winter hit early along with drastic shortages of fuel and food. On October 23, hundreds of thousands of students and workers revolted, toppling statues of Stalin and Lenin, smashing out windows, and issuing a sixteen-point proclamation demanding that the Soviets cut loose their hold, end the secret police, and send in more food. Moscow (in the form of Premier Khrushchev) answered by rolling in tanks, and Warsaw Pact soldiers killed hundreds of demonstrators, inciting even more violence. Moscow finally caved in to one protest demand and allowed Imre Nagy, a Communist and former prime minister whom Moscow had previously forced out because of his reforms, to return to power. Nagy released political prisoners and ordered the Soviet troops out of Hungary—and they retreated. Emboldened, Nagy went further and announced that Hungary was pulling out of the Warsaw Pact and would become neutral on the world stage; Nagy also notified the United Nations of the desperate situation, but the UN, like the U.S. and the UK, did nothing. Panicked, Khrushchev unleashed more Warsaw Pact troops, who killed over 20,000 during ten savage days when tanks dragged corpses through the streets as a warning to protesters.7 Brave Nagy lasted as prime minister only those ten days: he was kidnapped and hauled off to Romania, where he was imprisoned, found guilty in a secret trial, and executed in 1958. Buried in an unmarked grave, his remains were exhumed in 1989, and Hungarians reburied him as a hero. Hungarians are still upset that the U.S. and Western European powers so loudly opposed to Communism did not help in the 1956 Revolution; some believe that the West’s lack of support was the result of a secret deal with the Soviet Union—that Moscow would not interfere in the 1956 Suez Canal crisis if the West ignored Hungary’s plight.8 They could be right.

  “To every writer in the world, to all scientists, to all science academies and associations, to the intelligentsia of the world: HELP HUNGARY!”—Message from the Hungarian Writers’ Union to the free press during Hungary’s 1956 Revolution.9

  “To all those suffering under Communist slavery, let us say you can count on us.”10—U.S. Secretary of State J. F. Dulles in November 1956; his words rang hollow considering the U.S. had done nothing but watch while the Soviets regained control.

  Straight from law school, where he and other poli-sci students put together their own political party—the Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz)—Orbán made his first dramatic display at the 1989 reburial of Hungarian hero Imre Nagy. The event was already rife with emotion, but Orbán made it more so with a dramatic speech demanding that Soviet troops leave Hungary, the first to be brazen enough to say so publicly since Nagy.

  Orbán quickly commandeered Fidesz. Radically liberal and decidedly young—the party at first wouldn’t allow members older than thirty-five—Fidesz swerved to the hard right when Orbán took over the wheel and began talking about uniting ethnic Hungarians wherever they lived. Within nine years, he’d climbed to the top of the political mountain—becoming prime minister in 1998 at age thirty-six. Orbán blocked opposition voices; he shut down newspapers and weakened public broadcasting, triggering outrage from international media watchdogs. The man who claimed to hate Communist totalitarianism—and who set up the House of Terror in the mansion that once served as an interrogation center and torture chamber for Soviet secret police—nevertheless did a fine imitation of autocratic leadership, continually stomping out dissent and trying to increase powers for himself. Orbán also stirred up the neighbors, passing a law that gave work, health care, and education benefits to the 5 million Hungarians living in surrounding countries. His moves were seen as an attempt to kick off a pan-Hungarian movement, fears not allayed when he spoke of the “spiritual and cultural reunification of the Hungarian people”11 and referred to Transylvania—part of Romania—as “part of Hungary’s living space.”12

  Victor Orbán wants to glue Old Hungary back together

  Throughout his term, he continued to cause a fiery split in Hungarians—most obvious in the days after the 2002 elections between Orbán and the Socialists, when the air was so charged that some feared Hungary was peering at civil war.

  Seventy-one percent of Hungarians voted in the 2002 parliamentary election—the country’s highest turnout—and the race was close, with Orbán’s party actually winning more votes. However, due to a proportional voting system that weights votes from less populated areas, Socialists took the election. It was an emotional day: Orbán cried during his concession speech and so did his supporters. Fights broke out and street protests turned so violent that police teargassed the crowds. At least seven Hungarians missed the postelection fireworks; they’d died of heart attacks while casting their votes.13

  Many were surprised when Orbán was not reelected in 2002—and they were shocked again in May 2006, when Orbán lost again in another close race. Though he announced that he was stepping down from the party, it’s hard to believe that Hungarians are done with him. Then again, maybe Hungary is changing. Recent polls indicate that she’s no longer home to the saddest, most suicidal people in the EU. That role is now taken by Lithuania.14

  But while many have been following Orbán’s steps and missteps, they’ve been missing the background maneuvering of Russia, which hasn’t fully receded from the Hungarian picture. Hungary became a NATO member in 1999, but she’d been the biggest purchaser of Russian arms throughout the 1990s. Known for her lax banking system, which all but encourages money laundering, Budapest is such a haven for the Russian mob that the FBI set up a bureau here. Moscow provides most of Hungary’s natural gas, and kicks her a hefty wad from transit fees for a pipeline that runs under the country. What’s more, Hungary needs an economic life—and Russian president Vladimir Putin in February 2006 dangled a multibillion-dollar package that entails Russia buying everything, from more Hungarian food to buying Hungarian energy companies, including petroleum and gas wholesaler MOL.15 It’s unclear whether Hungary’s Socialist prime minister, millionaire Ferenc Gyurcsany, will bite.

  Many of Hungary’s former Communist leaders are now politically active Socialists.

  History Review

  If Hungary’s pessimistic streak shows through, it’s understandable: in Hungary, change typically means a downturn in standards of living. Look what happened when the Mongols showed up in the twelfth century: they slaughtered half the Magyar population. Look what happened when the Turks showed up and won the 1526 Battle of Mohács: for a century and a half, Ottoman Turks ran most of the country, taking over beloved capital, Budapest, embarking on a depopulation plan, and requiring that non-Muslims pay steep taxes. And then when Austrians helped finally push the Turks out in 1699, the Habsburg clan frowned on Hungarian culture and suppressed the language that so defines the Hungarian people.

  During the Ottoman Occupation, many wealthy Hungarians fled to today’s Slovakia, where they built up the capital Bratislava, attempting to create Budapest Jr.

  LANGUAGE LESSON

  The Hungarian (Magyar) language is a mystery with its forty-four letters, a dozen of them vowels. Officially, Hungarian is part of the Finno-Ugric group, which would make it similar to Finnish, but Hungarians point to the East as a more important influence, and indeed this land was routinely taken over from invaders coming from that direction, starting with Attila the Hun; even Hungary’s official founder, Chief Arpad, rode in from Asia. Hungarians put surnames first—Orbán Viktor, for example—a custom shared with Asian cultures, and villagers in the Himalayan Mountains near Tibet are said to speak a language similar to Hungarian. Wherever it hails from, they love their language with a fierce pride; even in international Budapest, Hungarian often seems the only language spoken anywhere outside hotels, although some young people are fluent in English. If you don’t speak Magyar (pronounced “Mawdyar”), you can often see ice come into a Hungarian’s eyes as prices quickly rise. If you speak even a word or two, the price increases aren’t quite as steep.

  Despite Austrian disapproval, Hungarians clung to their language and revived it as the language of literature. The rebirth of Magyar, and an accompanying nationalistic spirit, fueled the H
ungarian Revolution of 1848, led largely by writers who pushed independence from the Austrian Empire with demands called the Twelve Points—starting with freedom of the press and lifting of censorship, and going on to call for emancipation of serfs. That uprising against Habsburg rule did bring a brief taste of freedom—after concessions from Austria’s emperor Ferdinand, Hungary ran independently for a whopping six months. However, the move was so unpopular in Vienna that Ferdinand was shoved off the throne; his nephew Franz Joseph succeeded him and unleashed Austrian wrath on Hungary. The plucky Hungarians fought fiercely, and Austrians had to bring in Croatians and Russian Cossacks to successfully return the wayward territory to Austrian rule. In 1867, however, the Magyars rose up against the Austrians again and demanded the eastern chunk of the weakening Habsburg Empire. This time they got it, and the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with Magyars controlling lands to the north (today’s Slovakia), to the east (today’s Romania), and to the south (today’s Serbia and Croatia).

  The Hungarian spirit and landscape were remarkably transformed during the so-called Dual Monarchy. Much of the most spectacular architecture in Hungary—from the lacy towers of the parliament building to the ornately decorated town halls in small towns like Kecskemet—is a testimony to that opulent era, when Budapest rivaled Vienna as the grande dame of central Europe. With her hill-perched castle, thermal springs, and fabulous tile-wrapped buildings designed by the likes of Eiffel, the stunning metropolis on the Danube River was marked by fine music, high literature, provocative theater, and the many intellectual societies that met in grand cafés. The political machine was filled with visionaries: so thoroughly modern and avant-garde was the Budapest of the Belle Europe era, that one of Europe’s first subway systems was unveiled here in 1896.