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Dec.26/04 - Jan.2, 2005 |
11 - A Thousand Years in Common
Italy and Hungary continue centuries of acquaintance and similarities
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2004-08-22
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.
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