No bloody revolution

A young Viktor Orbán addressing the crowd as a representative of the youth during the funeral and reinterment of Imre Nagy on June 16th 1989. Photo via Elekes Andor (CC) www.flickr.com

What is important is that rendszerváltás is a way to avoid using the word “revolution”, as there was no such focal event in Hungary of masses of people going on the streets and toppling the government. Neither does it mean “transition” in the scholarly sense, which often refers to three aspects: dictatorship to democracy; command economy to market economy; and East to West. For some reason, the rule of law (or in Hungarian usage, jogállamiság, which is a literal translation for German Rechtsstaatlichkeit) began to supplant democracy, to the extent that the pre-1989 regime is called “the non-rule-of-law system” in the Constitutional Court’s documents. The transition of the economy and international policy – involving company law, the two-tier banking system, the opening of the stock exchange, and the “trade and co-operation treaty” with the European Community – initiated by the reformed communist government actually preceded the first steps towards political transformation.

Messy transition

Even the political transition looks messy for most people. As opposed to all other countries within the Eastern bloc, the new political system was designed in advance – “in the womb of the old society,” as Marx would say. The forum where it was designed was called the National Round Table (official name Trilateral Coordinating Talks) from June to September 1989, with the governing Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (HSWP) on one side, the opposition (itself organised in a round table) on the second side, and a selection of pro-communist civil organisations on the third side (to make things more cumbersome).

Right until the very end, the wider public had only a vague idea of what the talks were about, and although all the protocols and transcripts were published around the millennium, only a few experts can say they are familiar with the real proceedings. There were also only a few people whose words mattered. At the Opposition Round Table, there was József Antall, a centre-right politician who became the first prime minister after the transition; Péter Tölgyessy, a young legal scholar from the liberal party SZDSZ (Free Democrats Alliance); Viktor Orbán of Fidesz, who at the time was a centrist liberal whiz-kid; and, maybe, Imre Boross, a lawyer, who represented the historically important Smallholders Party, but was expelled some months later as his party began to slide into demagoguery and anti-intellectualism.

Originally, these people and their friends only wanted to deal with one challenge, namely, fixing the conditions for a free election. But soon they realised they can and must co-operate with the reform-minded legal experts of the government (officially not subordinated to the HSWP anymore) in shaping the new, democratic constitution. However there was a problem with legitimacy and authority as the negotiators were not democratically elected, nor had they the mass support of Solidarity or the Polish Roman Catholic Church; on top of that, any agreement had to be passed through the non-democratic rubber-stamp parliament in order to achieve legal status.

The outcome was an overwrought compromise between democrats who were still wary of each other’s intentions. The constitution, which was formally an amendment of the 1949 constitution of the People’s Republic, was originally intended as not much more than a manual for the transition and was defined as temporary in its own preamble, but remained in force until 2011. One of its most prominent features was the multitude of “two-thirds acts”, that is, clauses about which acts must be passed or amended with a qualified majority, which for the first two decades of the new republic meant the mandatory consensus between the government and the opposition. This not just prevented adjusting the law to changing requirements, but was an obstacle to effective governance, as the opposition was prone to resist for resistance’s sake. The Fundamental Law of 2011 was not a remedy to this problem; on the contrary, victorious Fidesz used its own two-thirds majority to extend the same rule to matters of the economy, such as taxation.

Mandatory consensus was paired with probably the world’s most complicated electoral system (which was based on the German law, except without the federal checks) which meant to create an artificial balance between two large blocs. This resulted in the consolidation of two large blocs more or less in balance, but politically more and more polarised as the easiest way to define one was as the antithesis, or the enemy, of the other. In this way, Hungarian democracy from the very beginning was doomed for self-destruction. All the same, this was not obvious during those years, as we enjoyed our newly gained freedoms – freedom of movement, being able to enter into the West whenever we like, freedom of speech, and a free press. Actually, all these preceded the constitutional process of 1989; they were perceived as the results of the dictatorship’s gradual self-dismantling.

Rehabilitating 1956

We tend to only remember the good things, but the Hungarian dictatorship was also the most liveable during its last couple of years, so one could easily get the impression it was not toppled but evolved into a free political system. This may even be partly true. Antall was famous for mocking his ministers who complained about how “commie” strongholds prevailed: “You should have made a bloody revolution, gentlemen,” meaning, “but you didn’t”. As I said, there was no revolution as we know it. But why, after all, is 1989 such a memorable year? What was there to fight for, and to win?

One of the peculiarities of rendszerváltás was the large demonstrations were started with some surrogate targets in mind rather than demanding the fall of the dictatorship itself. For instance, showing solidarity with the oppressed Hungarian minority in Ceauşescu’s Romania; protesting against the building of a hydroelectric plant on the Danube that would destroy one of the country’s most beautiful landscapes; and, most of all, rehabilitating the memory of 1956. For most people who lived through 1989, the crucial moment was the funeral and reinterment of Imre Nagy, prime minister of the 1956 revolution, and his fellow martyrs on June 16th 1989 – the anniversary of their execution in 1958.

The rehabilitation of 1956 and revealing the truth about the horrible retribution – the execution of hundreds and imprisonment of thousands – were, of course, opposition territory. By early 1989, however, the politicians of the HSWP who wanted to reap the rewards of recent and earlier reform policies, but wanted to distance themselves from the dictator, János Kádár, caught the opportunity offered by the now-legal cult of 1956.

One should not forget that these were the days following Solidarity’s victory in the Polish elections (June 4th), and HSWP realised that, although it was by far the most popular party, it must secure its advantage. So the funeral was attended by Prime Minister Miklós Németh and Speaker of the Parliament Mátyás Szűrös, and broadcasted on the state television, showing the government’s support. Everybody from the head of the government through the Round Table Opposition to non-incorporated radicals were interested in framing the event as a system changing moment. It might have been – but at a heavy price. They suggested that the regime named “the Kádár System” must fall because of the original moral sin of its founder, that is, Kádár’s reign of terror after the Soviet suppression of the revolution, rather than the general basic defects of the communist system, the lack of liberty and the economic cul-de-sac.

The funeral was originally organised by an NGO of 1956ers called the Historic Justice Committee, and political parties were not to be represented among the speakers. However there was one exception – Viktor Orbán, who was asked to speak in the name of “the Hungarian youth” rather than Fidesz. Public memory has preserved his speech as a courageous call “for the Russians to leave”, but what he actually demanded was free elections, where “we can elect a government that would immediately start negotiations about the withdrawal of Russian troops without any delay”. This implied that the current Németh government would not do that, although by then an artillery division had already left Hungary. Early the following year the same government started and signed negotiations about the complete withdrawal of troops before the free elections.

Interpretation

Thirty years have passed since then and the today’s Orbán government has removed Imre Nagy’s monument from the Martyrs’ Square near parliament. The pro-government media tries to destroy Nagy’s image, arguing that he was really a communist and citing historians who say he was an NKVD informant. The evidence may be real, or it may be fake (not an uncommon Russian secret service tool), but the campaign clearly shows that the aim of today’s government is to nationalise a left-wing and liberal narrative which was central to the rendszerváltás.

The government has announced intentions to commemorate the 30th anniversary of those events. The period of remembrance began on March 15th 2019 (on that day in 1989, there was a large joint opposition demonstration remembering the 1848 revolution) and will end on June 19th 2021, 30 years after the last Soviet troops left Hungary. The government has declared, “Western Europe left Central Europe to its own fate after the Second World War, but the national communities of Central Europe grabbed the chance and achieved their freedom and independence on their own.”

This reveals a few things about how Orbán and his government see 1989. For them, it was a revolt of the victims of Western Europe. It was a cluster of national collectivist events and freedom should be understood here only in the national sense. It remains to be seen if government propagandists in Hungary will recognise the role of Miklós Németh and the then Foreign Minister Gyula Horn in the withdrawal of the Soviet troops. Most likely they will emphasise Orbán’s heroic achievements – a much less complex storyline.

János Széky is the editor of Élet és Irodalom (“Life and Literature”), a weekly Hungarian newspaper about literature and politics.

1989, Hungary