Hungary

H

3

The Revolt of 1956

Popular discontent mounted throughout 1956 (see Hungarian Revolt of 1956). Students demonstrated against compulsory courses in the Russian language and in Marxism-Leninism. Along with the Writers’ Union, they expressed their sympathy with the anti-Soviet movement that was taking place in Poland. Workers joined these groups in demanding the reinstatement of Nagy as premier. On October 23 Premier Hegedüs, unable to control the demonstrations, called for help from Soviet troops. The Workers’ Party stepped in and replaced Hegedüs with Nagy, and Gerö with János Kádár, who had previously been jailed for treason.

Nagy sided with the demonstrators, announcing that the one-party system would be discontinued and free elections held. He promised economic reforms, freed Cardinal Mindszenty, demanded the withdrawal of Soviet forces, and, denouncing the Warsaw Pact, proclaimed Hungary a neutral state. The USSR promised concessions, but demonstrations continued. In early November Soviet troops and tanks arrived. Nagy announced the withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact and asked the West and the United Nations for help. No help came, and the revolt was crushed. Hundreds of Hungarians were executed, thousands more were imprisoned, and about 200,000 fled the country.

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4

The Kádár Regime

A new Communist dictatorship was set up, with János Kádár as premier and head of the renamed Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP). The Soviet government promptly promised $250 million in aid and full support. Punishment of insurgents continued through 1957 and 1958, and thousands were deported to the USSR. Nagy and many of his associates were executed. Cardinal Mindszenty took refuge in the U.S. legation (now the U.S. Embassy) in Budapest, where he remained until he was permitted to leave the country in 1971. Nagy’s promise of free elections was repudiated.

Kádár remained firmly in control for more than three decades, serving mainly as the head of the Communist Party, although he held the premier’s office intermittently. The strict controls imposed after the 1956 uprising were relaxed somewhat beginning in 1967. In general elections held in March 1967 opposing candidates were permitted to run in certain parliamentary and local contests, although they had to be approved by the regime. The Hungarian government remained committed to the USSR, and participated in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia (see Prague Spring).

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In 1968 the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) was introduced. An important new departure, the NEM was designed to increase efficiency and productivity, make Hungary more competitive in world markets, and help ensure political stability. To achieve these goals, the NEM called for much less central control of the economy and greater freedom for individual business managers. After five years the NEM appeared to be a success, although the country’s industrial growth rate had slowed somewhat.

In the early 1970s Hungary increased its trade and cultural contacts with non-Communist countries. In 1972 Hungary signed a consular convention (agreement) with the United States, and in 1973 it began negotiations with West Germany aimed at establishing normal diplomatic relations. Relations with the Roman Catholic Church also improved.

Hungary’s contacts with the West continued to increase throughout the 1970s. The economy was allowed to operate partly according to free-market forces, and the standard of living improved. The Kádár regime remained careful not to antagonize the USSR, however, and fully supported the Soviet hard line against liberalization in Poland in 1981 and 1982. An economic downturn and rising inflation in Hungary in the mid-1980s led to the imposition of an austerity program, mass demonstrations for freedom of speech and government reforms, and in May 1988 to the replacement of Kádár.

Károly Grósz, who had become prime minister in 1987, succeeded Kádár in 1988 as general secretary of Hungary’s Communist Party. As prime minister, Grósz initiated a tough economic program that included levying new taxes, cutting subsidies, and encouraging the growth of the private sector. As further signs of liberalization, the government relaxed censorship laws, allowed the formation of independent political groups, and legalized the right to strike and to demonstrate.

In 1989 the Hungarian government provided a state burial for Imre Nagy, by then revered as a national hero for standing up to the Soviets. It also enacted a series of reforms. It eased restrictions on emigration, revised the constitution to provide for a democratic multiparty system, and changed the country’s name from the People’s Republic of Hungary to the Republic of Hungary. In the summer of 1989 thousands of East Germans took advantage of the newly opened Austro-Hungarian border to immigrate to West Germany. This action set off a chain reaction that quickly led to the collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

I

Post-Communist Hungary

In March and April 1990 Hungary held its first free legislative elections in 45 years. A coalition of center-right parties, led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), won a parliamentary majority. The new government took office in May, with József Antall, leader of the MDF, as prime minister. After a referendum providing for direct presidential elections failed because of a low voter turnout, the National Assembly chose a writer, Árpád Göncz, as head of state. In November 1990 Hungary became the first Eastern European nation to join the Council of Europe.

Antall died in late 1993 and was replaced by Péter Boross, another MDF leader. By early 1994 the governing coalition had lost considerable public support as a result of falling living standards. In May elections the Hungarian Socialist Party (formerly the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party) regained a majority in parliament. The Socialists named Gyula Horn, a member of the former Communist government, as their choice for prime minister. Although it had a majority, the party formed a coalition with the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats, which had taken second place in the elections. The coalition commanded the two-thirds majority required to pass certain legislation.

The government introduced economic austerity measures in 1994 aimed at reducing Hungary’s budget deficit and making the country’s exports more competitive. Further austerity measures were introduced the following year. In 1995 the National Assembly reelected Göncz for a second five-year term as president. Göncz was succeeded as president in 2000 by Ferenc Mádl, a former law professor.

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1

Relations with Neighbors

In 1991 and 1992 Hungary signed declarations of cooperation with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Ukraine. Relations with neighboring Romania and Czechoslovakia were strained during the early 1990s over the treatment of ethnic Hungarian minorities in those countries, including some 1.7 million in Romania. Wars in the former Yugoslavia sent thousands of refugees fleeing to Hungary, and by mid-1992 the number of refugees had reached about 100,000 (see Wars of Yugoslav Succession). The Hungarian government appealed to Western European nations for assistance in dealing with the refugees.

In 1994 Horn took a step toward reconciliation with Romania and Slovakia when he offered to drop Hungarian claims on Slovakian and Romanian territory in return for a guarantee of safety for ethnic Hungarians living in those countries. Later that year Hungary and other member-nations of the Council of Europe approved a Convention on the Protection of National Minorities; the convention provided for linguistic rights and the right to freedom of religion, among others. Also in 1994 Horn issued an official apology for Hungary’s role in the deaths of 600,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. The following year, the Hungarian government adopted a law to compensate Jewish groups for their persecution during World War II.

Another dispute between Hungary and Slovakia was less easily resolved. It concerned the massive Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros hydroelectric project on the Danube and continued through the late 1990s and into the 2000s. The dispute stemmed from Hungary’s decision in 1989 to back out of a joint construction plan, which had been authorized by a 1977 treaty. Hungary’s decision stemmed from concerns over the negative environmental impacts of the project, completed in 1992. In 1993 the countries referred the dispute to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, for arbitration. In 1997 the court ruled that both countries had violated the 1977 agreement and ordered them to continue negotiations to resolve the conflict. An intergovernmental commission established in 2003 was charged with coordinating the ongoing negotiations.

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2

Recent Events

In May 1998 parliamentary elections, the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party defeated the Hungarian Socialist Party, and Gyula Horn lost his position as prime minister. Fidesz leader Viktor Orbán took over as prime minister in July and formed a center-right coalition government with the Independent Smallholders’ Party and the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Orbán pledged to reduce crime, increase economic growth, and maintain continuity in Hungary’s foreign relations, including building closer ties to Western Europe. In March 1999 Hungary joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the biggest expansion of the organization’s 50-year history. Hungary’s participation in NATO was almost immediate: Within a month of joining NATO its airspace was being used by alliance planes taking part in air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In 2001 Orbán’s government passed a law granting ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries education, health, and employment rights in Hungary. The measure drew protests from Romania and Slovakia on the grounds that it violated their sovereignty and discriminated against their nonethnic Hungarian populations. The controversy over ethnic rights remained a policy issue. The ethnic Hungarians lived in areas taken away from Hungary by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon following World War I.

Political, social, and economic strategies in the early 2000s were designed to facilitate Hungary’s prospective membership in the EU. Hungary was admitted to the EU as an associate member in 1994 and that year became the first Eastern European country to apply for full membership. Hungary formally joined the EU as a full member, along with nine other countries, on May 1, 2004.

In April 2002 parliamentary elections, the Hungarian Socialist Party and its ally, the Alliance of Free Democrats, narrowly defeated Orbán’s coalition. Péter Medgyessy, an official in the former Communist government and a finance minister under Horn, was sworn in as prime minister in May, leading a center-left coalition government with the Free Democrats. The Socialists selected Medgyessy as their candidate, even though he was not a party member. Medgyessy pledged to raise the minimum wage and to increase pay for public-sector workers. He also reaffirmed Hungary’s aim to join the EU in May 2004.

The government faced a serious test in 2002 amid revelations that Medgyessy had served as a counterintelligence officer in the late 1970s and early 1980s while working in the finance ministry. Medgyessy sought to defend his past, explaining that he had worked to prevent foreign intelligence organizations from obtaining Hungarian secrets. Opposition conservatives rejected Medgyessy’s explanation and called for his immediate resignation. Some government critics accused Medgyessy of informing on other finance ministry officials, a serious charge that Medgyessy strongly denied. The Socialists and Free Democrats quickly threw their support behind Medgyessy, and his government announced plans for legislation that would grant the public greater access to Communist-era secret files.

Medgyessy lost the confidence of the Free Democrats in 2004, after he reshuffled his cabinet and dismissed the economy minister, despite the Free Democrats’ opposition. In August, Medgyessy tendered his resignation, preempting a no-confidence vote in the parliament. The move capped weeks of disagreement within the government over how best to limit government spending and reduce Hungary’s large budget deficit, a course of action required by Hungary’s membership in the EU and its hopes of adopting the EU’s single currency, the euro, by 2010. The Socialists chose Ferenc Gyurcsány, the government’s sports minister, to replace Medgyessy. In August 2005 the country’s new president, László Sólyom, was sworn in.

The Socialists and Free Democrats captured an important victory in the April 2006 general elections, solidifying their hold on parliament by a margin of 210-176. Gyurcsány and his ruling coalition became the first Hungarian government to win reelection since the fall of Communism in 1989. However, as Hungary faced its worst economic crisis in 20 years, many Hungarians blamed Gyurcsány for the economy’s failure. After it was disclosed that Gyurcsány had deliberately concealed the depth of the crisis to win the 2006 elections, riots ensued. In March 2009 Gyurcsány announced that he would step down since he was widely seen as an impediment to resolving the country’s economic problems. Gyurcsány named Gordon Bajnai, the economy minister, as his successor, and Bajnai took office in April 2009.

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