11 - A Thousand Years in Common

Italy and Hungary continue centuries of acquaintance and similarities

Yesterday - some 15 years ago, to be precise - stalls on Kigyo UTCA were selling some strange sealed tin cans. They contained "the last breath of Communism", according to their labels. Not far from there, in the pedestrian centre of Vaci UTCA, among newspapers and guides to Budapest one could easily find also chunks of barbed wire. "They are from the Iron Curtain running between Austria and Hungary," explained the sellers, who swore that the pieces were authentic, even offering certificates of warranty with signatures and stamps. Even seals in wax. Imagine that.
Nowadays, the same stalls display some strange matrioskas: instead of the usual peasant women, they portray Silvio Berlusconi, George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin, Bill Clinton, and even John Kerry. In their smiling parody, Hungarians did not leave anyone behind. They managed to survive the Habsburg, the Soviets, and the collapse of Communism because of their unchanging light-hearted approach to life. If one compliments them for joining the European Union, they reply, "We've been in Europe for the past thousand years."
For them, the 40 years of Communism were a parenthesis, and one which they dealt with admirably. Brilliant social life, boutiques and supermarkets, food in abundance, and newspapers that respected the authorities but never submitted to them. One only needed to visit Prague, Bucharest, or Sofia, to see the difference. There, people could end up in jail for a mere whiff of dissension; newspapers were government loudspeakers, stores were empty as cemeteries, and the Party won every election with majorities of 96 to 99 percent. Any contact with the Capitalist West could bring a charge of espionage. In Budapest, on the other hand, a career in the Party required at least a couple of years in the West, understanding how our societies worked. The Party itself sent its most promising leaders to London, Rome, or New York. After returning home, those leaders brought about the great reform of the 80s that introduced private property and bank accounts. Moscow was not overjoyed, but took no action: Hungary's economy propelled the Comecon (the common market of Eastern Europe), and Budapest was the relay that allowed communications between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War. For a while, Hungarians accepted this role, but when the going got tough because neither side recognized them as intermediaries, they had enough. "If they want to talk, they can talk directly," once declared Janos Kadar, Hungary's farsighted and enlightened dictator, "but we shall not be anybody's postmen, because sooner or later postmen get bitten by guard dogs." He was able to say so because his authoritativeness, both in Hungary and abroad, was enormous, and because Hungary was enormously different from any other satellite of the USSR.
Hungarians were aware of all this, and took advantage of it. For instance, with jokes. "At the frontier between Hungary and Ukraine, two soldiers are standing guard: a Hungarian and a Soviet. Suddenly, they spot a hare; the Hungarian soldier takes aim and shoots it. "Good shot, comrade!" the Soviet tells him. "Now we can share like true Communist brothers." "No, no," responds the Hungarian; "let's cut it in half instead."
At the time, some Western journalists called Hungary "the happiest shack in the gulag". A rather tasteless label, but quite true.
Then the Curtain came down. The very first breach was in Hungary: they opened their border to East Germans who wanted to flee to Austria and the West.
Moscow did not react, and Budapest insisted: the Party (officially, but only officially, Marxist-Leninist in inspiration) declared itself Socialist and European, renounced all privileges and called free elections. It lost them, but nobody can deny it the merit of ensuring a peaceful transition. No riots and no killings, unlike in Bucharest where the Ceausescus were shot.
In that period I was often in Budapest, so I witnessed the most delicate moments in its recent history. After that, for a decade I didn't return: first of all because I couldn't (I had moved to Toronto), but also because I imagined that I would find a city stunned by the change, precariously balancing between an old reality that could not dissolve overnight and a new reality that advanced without scruples. I was afraid I would see the dissolution of the Central European rhythm that had ennobled the city even under the regime; I was afraid that the West, steamrolling in, would erase the specific character of this country in the name of an unbridled globalization. It had happened elsewhere. It also happened that, in the name of novelty, age-old cultural interests had shrivelled. What else could explain the massive expansion of English, which in the course of a few years replaced the German, for centuries the lingua franca of Eastern Europe? There is also the asphyxiating presence of McDonalds, KFC, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, U.S. music, U.S. movies, U.S. models, U.S. t-shirts, cowboy hats and cowboy swagger: they are defacing many eastern European capitals. Is this neocolonialism accepted or suffered? "This is just an intoxication," my friend Laszlo Urda told me, for years the cultural attaché at the Hungarian Embassy in Rome. "It will go away like every other, you'll see. However, we Hungarians have not gotten drunk."
I intended to verify that, so I went and visited other friends of mine at the Institute of History of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences on Uri UTCA, in the old city, near the castle. Here, the study of Italian language and of the thousand-years-old relations between Italy and Hungary have not been replaced by new interests and new models. In the learned silence of these halls, histories and people that brought these two countries together come to light. For instance, Saint Gerardo Sagredo (locally known as Szent Gellért), a Benedictine monk from Venice, who became the right-hand man (around the year 1000) of Saint Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary, in the evangelization of the Magyar tribes. They were not motivated exclusively by missionary zeal: by becoming Christians, those tribes could call themselves European.
Gerardo is no second-rate saint, either: the Hungarians dedicated him an imposing statue over the hill that bears his name, as does Budapest's most fascinating hotel - marbles, Art Deco, Turkish baths, and a pool amidst columns and mosaics - where Orient Express passengers used to stay.
Saint Gerardo wasn't the only noteworthy Italian in medieval Hungary: an Italian - Pietro Orseolo - succeeded Saint Stephen on the throne of Obuda (how Budapest was called at the time); and an Italian - Andras III - was the last sovereign of the Arpad dynasty. He was the son of a Venetian noblewoman and ruled from 1290 to 1301. A few years later, in 1308, the King of Naples, Charles Robert of Anjou, was crowned King of Hungary in Obuda; under him, Hungary dominated the Balkans and contained the expansionism of the Habsburg. Then came Mathias Corvin, I offered my historian friends. "Of course," they smile. Mathias - an enlightened king, a humanist, and a great strategist, who consolidated the bond between Italy and Hungary and laid the foundations for its further development. This he accomplished also by marrying, in 1475, Beatrice of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand I king of Naples; she brought him a large dowry and a solid military alliance, but also large numbers of Neapolitan men of letters, artists, and bankers. They stayed even after the death of Mathias Corvin and Beatrice's second marriage to King Ladislas Jagellon of Bohemia, thus establishing an Italian enclave in Obuda around Olasz UTCA (which means "Italy Street").
The Institute studies recent and remote events, which include many people that lived and acted between Italy and Hungary. There's a lot of them, and research and dissertations on them are constantly being produced. Clearly, the new models have not supplanted the 1,000 years of common history.
It was not only Naples who established links with Hungary, but so did Venice and Florence. Not out of charity, since nobody ever lost sight of their interests; but they allowed the country to expand its cultural and political horizons and to avoid the interested attention of the German States.
Florentine Filippo Scolari was the most trusted advisor of king Sigismund, and on his behalf in 1411 he wrestled Bosnia and Serbia from the Turks; and Venetian Alvise Gritti ruled Hungary under king Janos Zápolya. Modenese Raimondo Montecuccoli defeated the Turks at Szentgotthárd in 1663; Bolognese Ferdinando Marsili saved the precious tomes kept in Budapest's libraries just before the Turkish invasion of 1686; to say nothing of Eugene of Savoy, who gave a decisive contribution to the liberation of Hungary from the Ottoman domination.
My historian friends at the Institute mention these names and these events to confirm that nothing has changed in the relations between Italy and Hungary. "Nothing could change, even if we wanted it to: we've been acquaintances for 10 centuries now." They also mention studies and dissertations on Dante and Pasolini, the Renaissance and the Verism, Italian cinema, Italian architecture. They recount the deeds of Piedmontese colonnel Alessandro Monti, whose legionnaires fought heroically against the Austrians at Temesvár in August 1849 alongside the Hungarian army; 11 years later Istvan Türr and a handful of Hungarian patriots enlisted with Garibaldi's 1000 and participated in the campaign that gave rise to the Kingdom of Italy. There was also Guzstav Frigyesy, who fought with Garibaldi in his two unsuccessful attempts to take Rome, in 1862 and then in 1867, and later wrote a precious history book, Italy in 1867. In the same years, the great Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth worked with Giuseppe Mazzini and with him founded a committee for the spreading of the revolutionary movement in Europe. "Our common history is not limited to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but reaches the present. There is no gap between yesterday and today," says university professor Zsuzsanna Teke, soon before departing for Florence where she will carry out research on "the Medicis and Hungary".
I left the Institute after sunset. The Danube was flowing solemnly, reflecting the lights of the city. Budapest has not turned into Las Vegas, after all. Its lights have nothing aggressive about them: just like 20, 50, 100 years ago. Novelties tiptoed in without trampling the past.
I found "my Budapest" as easy going and wise, as joking and respectful, as joyful and sad, as Mediterranean and Habsburgic as ever. This is Europe. McDonald's do not rule unopposed here: they have to coexist with many restaurants big and small, where goulash and palacsinka still embody the good life and good eating, and where hammering music cannot enter. Violins still play Blue Danube. Despite the fact that Danube, except in Staruss' imagination, has never been blue.

This is number 11 in a series of articles written on The Newest Europe.

Publication Date: 2004-08-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4328