1 00:00:00,780 --> 00:00:05,160 Thank you very much. MCQUAY And thank you for the invitation. 2 00:00:05,700 --> 00:00:10,529 I start my watch in order to keep the timeframe. 3 00:00:10,530 --> 00:00:24,149 I would try to do that. So basically I will talk about the Hungarian transition, the almost mirabilis of 1989. 4 00:00:24,150 --> 00:00:30,120 But I think in in on in this conference, in this context in this context, 5 00:00:30,120 --> 00:00:36,300 it's fair to start with the policy impact on the Hungarian dissident opposition movement, 6 00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:43,770 which goes back to the, uh, uh, at least to the mid seventies. 7 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:53,940 Uh, I don't. Who was the founder of this periodical best seller of governance in Donetsk is the Hungarian philosopher 8 00:00:53,940 --> 00:00:59,489 and who was the spiritual leader of the democratic opposition in Hungary in the late seventies. 9 00:00:59,490 --> 00:01:08,700 And while the this he wrote several times that the Hungarian opposition received the most important inspirations from that Polish counterpart. 10 00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:15,840 After the moment of the great disappointment of 1968, 11 00:01:16,380 --> 00:01:26,370 those Hungarians who decided to turn against the regime and give up hopes of uh, uh, the possibility to meaningful reforms of the, 12 00:01:26,370 --> 00:01:37,980 of the party state, uh, still believe that the resistance potential in Hungary is very weak, the society is completely indifferent and apathetic. 13 00:01:38,340 --> 00:01:49,220 So their choice is rather a kind of moral, intellectual choice, a kind of private business, a personal one that they could not expect. 14 00:01:49,230 --> 00:01:55,760 And they did not expect that a mass social movement, uh, lined up behind them. 15 00:01:57,240 --> 00:02:08,069 These attitudes have been significantly changed after the consequences of the revolt or the uprising, 16 00:02:08,070 --> 00:02:13,590 and also centralism and the foundation of the Workers Defence Committee. 17 00:02:13,590 --> 00:02:24,989 The committee set up on the draft board, uh and uh, and also by the ices of domestic and sexual violence. 18 00:02:24,990 --> 00:02:30,630 We heard a lot of sex in the last two days. 19 00:02:31,470 --> 00:02:39,930 Other meetings, new evolution is a new evolution, as this has seen was really according to the relative, 20 00:02:40,110 --> 00:02:47,880 uh, account of the potential ways of dissidents, political dissidents or also in Hungary. 21 00:02:49,230 --> 00:02:55,860 He said that the basic lesson in both mistake and cry for them was that although a revolution from 22 00:02:55,860 --> 00:03:03,360 below is unfeasible and unexpected and it was worthless to apply for important reforms from above. 23 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:08,970 But still there is a room, a latitude for meaningful dissident politics. 24 00:03:09,300 --> 00:03:16,170 We do not bargain. We do not negotiate on concessions with the, uh, with the power holders, 25 00:03:16,530 --> 00:03:23,670 but try to impose a pressure on the power from outside the essence of this third wave of statutory laws. 26 00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:24,870 I mean, 27 00:03:24,870 --> 00:03:36,480 the dissidents damn self limiting social movements that do not challenge directly the political regime do not provoke Soviet military intervention. 28 00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:42,510 But the strategy game of it is to create a civil society that is capable to organise and 29 00:03:42,510 --> 00:03:48,569 maintain itself outside the framework of the regime and can push back step by step, 30 00:03:48,570 --> 00:03:50,940 the control of the party state. 31 00:03:51,990 --> 00:04:03,450 Uh, it is not accidental that in the late seventies Garnett speech and some of his Twitter followers, George Benson and others, started to run Polish. 32 00:04:03,870 --> 00:04:08,609 And it is quite strange that in Budapest, the Polish Solidarnosc literature, 33 00:04:08,610 --> 00:04:13,890 at least until the martial law was available in the Polish cultural history to its SO 34 00:04:13,910 --> 00:04:21,390 event seven votes and subscribe to magazines and the texts and and the periodicals. 35 00:04:21,810 --> 00:04:32,780 It is also not accidental that at the moment of the last martial law he sent, his colleagues started this, 36 00:04:33,130 --> 00:04:44,250 his bestseller, which became the most influential samizdat periodical throughout the eighties in its third volume. 37 00:04:45,300 --> 00:04:52,980 And in January 1982, the final speech wrote about the Polish situation. 38 00:04:53,640 --> 00:05:05,340 It seems that history repeating itself after 1956 and 1968, again, the democratic movement was oppressed brutally by military force. 39 00:05:05,970 --> 00:05:09,930 However, he continued, this case was completely different. 40 00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:15,510 That was the first time in the history of communist regimes when a resistance movement could not be. 41 00:05:15,610 --> 00:05:18,520 Completely eliminated by force. 42 00:05:19,030 --> 00:05:28,870 What happened in Poland was not another example of an of an aborted revolt against communist regime in the region, but the start of a new phase. 43 00:05:29,170 --> 00:05:37,989 And this was the and this was the idea that gave them encouragement for the for the rest of the decade. 44 00:05:37,990 --> 00:05:44,890 And it's led to the peaceful transition in Hungary. 45 00:05:45,910 --> 00:05:49,330 Just another example of today's Polish impact. 46 00:05:49,720 --> 00:06:04,300 When Bestseller published its political program in 1987, which was a radical program on the one side in in in the Hungarian context at that moment, 47 00:06:04,690 --> 00:06:13,630 because it exactly declared that God must leave power, he must go, and the whole political system had to be rearranged. 48 00:06:14,410 --> 00:06:23,530 This proclamation, which had applied to a social contract, still remained within the framework of this strategy. 49 00:06:23,530 --> 00:06:39,010 Of what new abolitionism and the late sixties, early and late seventies, early eighties, uh, uh, uh, Hungarian dissident movement, uh, had in mind. 50 00:06:39,310 --> 00:06:49,090 It is quite strange that within two years this political program, the social contract, had become suddenly completely obsolete. 51 00:06:50,740 --> 00:06:58,570 Now, let me turn to the to the events of 1989. 52 00:06:59,110 --> 00:07:04,600 And let me introduce very briefly the main participants of the game. 53 00:07:06,310 --> 00:07:11,560 Of course, we must start with the ruling party, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party. 54 00:07:13,150 --> 00:07:20,080 This party went through a rapid change from May 1988 when the court that the former chief 55 00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:30,309 secretary of the party who ruled the party since 1956 had been replaced by the party in 1989, 56 00:07:30,310 --> 00:07:34,030 still had more than 700,000 members. 57 00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:45,580 Of course, those members was not all and chooses the communist activist, but more or less people who joined the party for various reasons. 58 00:07:46,960 --> 00:07:59,140 But also, despite of this high number, this number decreased more and more rapidly and in the previous years, 59 00:07:59,770 --> 00:08:03,160 as many people did not renew their expired membership. 60 00:08:04,570 --> 00:08:20,170 The main reason of this erosion of the party was was the uncovering of the original sin of the Cabal regime and indeed the issue of 56, 61 00:08:20,170 --> 00:08:26,829 which came to the surface and came to the centre of the political discourse in 1988, 62 00:08:26,830 --> 00:08:38,200 after contact left power by still the party was very strong and although on the other hand they were 63 00:08:38,200 --> 00:08:44,410 also aware of the fact that they are facing tool they were facing to avoid an economic bankruptcy. 64 00:08:45,350 --> 00:08:50,139 They knew that in case of an economic collapse, all the consequences would fall on them, 65 00:08:50,140 --> 00:08:55,060 which the party would not be able to survive the threat of their strength. 66 00:08:55,540 --> 00:09:02,199 Their strategy at that moment was three fold by the half of tomorrow's political reforms. 67 00:09:02,200 --> 00:09:06,110 We are still talking about 1988, uh, 68 00:09:06,910 --> 00:09:16,450 by the help of some political reforms that give space for a kind of limited pluralism they may import lawyer, non-communist, political groups, 69 00:09:16,900 --> 00:09:23,530 circles or personalities that make the rule more acceptable, gives them more legitimacy, 70 00:09:23,980 --> 00:09:29,020 and may makes it more presentable for the Hungarian and for the Western public. 71 00:09:29,740 --> 00:09:37,240 This enables them to share responsibility for the upcoming difficulties parallel to this with economic reforms, 72 00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:41,470 changes in the legal system, reforming the Constitution, and so on. 73 00:09:41,770 --> 00:09:51,250 They create a legal and political environment that might be attractive for further capital and technological investments from the West. 74 00:09:52,090 --> 00:10:00,850 At that moment, the Hungarian economy was very much depended on on the loans of Western states and Western private banks, 75 00:10:01,320 --> 00:10:07,900 and the survival of the of the country was depended depended on it. 76 00:10:08,920 --> 00:10:15,430 And they also knew that a modest evaluation of the recent past, namely that we. 77 00:10:15,780 --> 00:10:23,250 The ships. The 56 revolution, most importantly, was also inevitable that for in 1988, 78 00:10:23,850 --> 00:10:31,290 they sent out various committees in order to prepare for the next party Congress to work on the concept of the new constitution, 79 00:10:31,380 --> 00:10:44,130 the new electoral law. And they also sent out a committee, a subcommittee of historians, to come up with a new narrative of the post 1945 era. 80 00:10:45,330 --> 00:10:53,549 But for us, for the other side, all this was indicated that at this moment, 81 00:10:53,550 --> 00:11:03,630 the party wanted to speed up the development and create a fait accompli situation before the conference slips through the fingers. 82 00:11:04,350 --> 00:11:06,780 The main strategic purpose, in my view, 83 00:11:06,810 --> 00:11:17,820 was that this this program for not addressing but to moderate change was the following by giving up the hegemony of the total hegemony of the party. 84 00:11:20,700 --> 00:11:29,879 The party still preserves dominance in politics and remains in control of the resource of the resources of the economy and their hopes for the future. 85 00:11:29,880 --> 00:11:30,660 Prosperity, 86 00:11:31,230 --> 00:11:41,850 prosperity and economy by the system becomes more adaptive and flexible and more acceptable for the best and populist governments and investors. 87 00:11:42,540 --> 00:11:48,480 I think this is the strategy of what the Chinese Communist Party leadership successfully accomplished. 88 00:11:50,050 --> 00:11:55,710 Indeed, in the previous two decades. 89 00:11:56,160 --> 00:12:06,389 And forgive me to this analogy, but I see a parallel tendencies in and indeed in the aims of the recent Orban Orban government, 90 00:12:06,390 --> 00:12:13,140 which tries to create a centrifugal force to control all matters of political, 91 00:12:13,140 --> 00:12:25,710 economic and other and other issues in Hungary with some limited control and opposition from the other side. 92 00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:38,850 This strategy failed, but I think it had good perspectives at the moment of January 1989. 93 00:12:39,870 --> 00:12:43,260 Let's see the other other participants. 94 00:12:44,250 --> 00:12:49,950 Politically, the most important one was the Hungarian Democratic Forum, 95 00:12:50,310 --> 00:13:03,330 which originated from the from the tradition of the thirties of the populist nationalist Hungarian writers and intellectual circles. 96 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:14,700 Politically, it was the most important because quite rapidly it was the only movement which was able to, 97 00:13:15,970 --> 00:13:25,950 uh, which was able to recruit thousands and thousands of supporters after their formation in 1987. 98 00:13:26,310 --> 00:13:38,220 So this was the most, in a social sense, the most influential non-Communist political movement in the country at the moment in 1989. 99 00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:45,240 The problem was that they defined themselves not as an opposition party, not as a dissident movement, 100 00:13:45,690 --> 00:13:52,560 but a kind of intellectual forum in between the power and the opposition. 101 00:13:53,070 --> 00:14:04,470 It is quite interesting that when it was founded in a small village in La Quinta in Hungary in 1985, 102 00:14:05,250 --> 00:14:10,320 what the most prominent Hungarian party leaders even that fortunately was president, 103 00:14:10,620 --> 00:14:21,450 who the a who who brought with him some of the greetings of the prime minister, the communist prime minister. 104 00:14:22,590 --> 00:14:29,210 GROSS Uh, uh, the power at that moment in 1987, 105 00:14:29,220 --> 00:14:43,470 1988 and in early 1989 regarded the Hungarian Democratic Forum as one of the potential royal satellite in their purposes and in their strategy. 106 00:14:43,470 --> 00:14:51,030 And this idea was not alien to many prominent leaders of the Hungarian Democratic Forum as well. 107 00:14:51,660 --> 00:14:56,520 Let me call your attention that the president of the movement was a very close 108 00:14:56,520 --> 00:15:02,700 associate of him in a possibly for decades in the cultural ministry in the seventies. 109 00:15:02,700 --> 00:15:12,890 And they had very close ties, personal and political ties to all the eighties and throughout the political transition. 110 00:15:12,900 --> 00:15:25,030 His name is old time Beatle novelist Norman. As the director of the New Historical Institute for doing research on regime change in Hungary. 111 00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:27,400 The best candidate for that purpose. 112 00:15:32,130 --> 00:15:42,210 Of course, the this this character of the Hungarian Democratic Forum changed fundamentally as the times as times speeds up. 113 00:15:43,470 --> 00:15:53,670 It is not accidental that you would have possibly could count on them in his president's presidential ambitions until late 1989. 114 00:15:55,620 --> 00:15:59,520 So this was the the biggest opposition movement in Hungary, 115 00:15:59,940 --> 00:16:07,380 and that was the areas of free Democrats came from the tradition of the Democratic opposition. 116 00:16:07,770 --> 00:16:17,430 This was the this was the political movement that had the most experience in anti-regime political strategy and tactics, 117 00:16:17,940 --> 00:16:24,330 and they had the most analytical skills as they seriously analysed throughout the eighties. 118 00:16:25,560 --> 00:16:34,260 The the mechanism of the Communist Party state, they trained themselves through, to some extent, literature. 119 00:16:34,260 --> 00:16:44,070 And by these activities they also accumulated a great, great kind of moral credit for themselves. 120 00:16:44,100 --> 00:16:50,219 But this was still this movement, although it was very efficient in a political sense, 121 00:16:50,220 --> 00:16:56,250 in the analytical sense, it has just a tiny influence on Hungarian society. 122 00:16:56,550 --> 00:17:04,440 A couple of hundred people believed or thought that they were they had ties to this democratic opposition. 123 00:17:05,190 --> 00:17:11,430 In 1988, when the areas of free Democrats in November was established. 124 00:17:11,670 --> 00:17:24,270 The membership was not more than a couple of hundred people, and it did not increase to more than 5000 until the end of 1989. 125 00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:32,940 And the third, I think, a very important participant of the game was the areas of young Democrats. 126 00:17:33,270 --> 00:17:45,750 I'm talking about the party of the recent ideas of young Democrats, the threat assessor of it, which was an alternative youth movement. 127 00:17:48,690 --> 00:17:54,719 And since they were younger, they came from the special colleges of Budapest universities, 128 00:17:54,720 --> 00:18:02,880 from the university, far from the economic university, and from the legal faculty of the Budapest University. 129 00:18:03,270 --> 00:18:11,850 And so they were very much involved in social sciences, economic sciences and and legal studies. 130 00:18:14,340 --> 00:18:21,060 And for their age, they were not touched ever in their life by Marxist ideas. 131 00:18:21,330 --> 00:18:30,290 So this was one of the small but also very effective group that uh, uh, 132 00:18:31,770 --> 00:18:41,400 had more or less clear visions of the upcoming nature of liberal democracy and free market capitalism. 133 00:18:42,450 --> 00:18:51,910 So by this very short, not short time for change, uh, 134 00:18:53,640 --> 00:19:04,140 I think it was not superfluous because this really illustrates the initial difficulties of this transition here in Hungary. 135 00:19:04,470 --> 00:19:10,780 We have a pretty strong party with all the control of, 136 00:19:10,800 --> 00:19:19,350 of power and the army and the police and the economy and the resources of the state and so on and so on. 137 00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:31,800 And on the other side, we have a divided camp of political movements full of mutual distrust and previous injuries against each other. 138 00:19:32,280 --> 00:19:41,590 We looked very different political and cultural background and contradictory visions of the political community. 139 00:19:41,640 --> 00:19:46,020 They had a very weak legitimacy. There was no mass movement behind them. 140 00:19:46,560 --> 00:19:58,800 None of them could refer to a massive public support that had been manifested by street demonstrations or strikes or whatever they happened in, 141 00:19:59,250 --> 00:20:11,370 in, in, in in Poland. And the largest of them with the greatest is publicly for us had close ties to the the ruling party and had been continuous. 142 00:20:12,180 --> 00:20:18,540 This discussion we have on all of this that involved that prominent leader and there were others, 143 00:20:18,540 --> 00:20:24,809 some smaller, I would say, parties and corporate parties. 144 00:20:24,810 --> 00:20:30,060 Partly it had some historical origins like the. 145 00:20:30,140 --> 00:20:36,080 Christian Democrats tend to smallholders. Some of them were planted by the security forces. 146 00:20:37,940 --> 00:20:47,390 And so this was the camp from which a kind of opposition rooted or had to be shaped that could stand up against the regime. 147 00:20:49,100 --> 00:20:58,549 Despite all of these difficulties, the roundtable negotiations started and came up with the results, 148 00:20:58,550 --> 00:21:10,610 and I think there were four or five factors that played a role in this, and I would like to run through these factors very shortly. 149 00:21:12,140 --> 00:21:15,379 The first is that in the final moment, 150 00:21:15,380 --> 00:21:25,820 these are very different political parties on the opposition's side could come up with an agreement that they stand up and together. 151 00:21:26,870 --> 00:21:38,330 Of course, the strategy of the Communist Party at the beginning was to divide one by one first versus then the parties separately. 152 00:21:39,170 --> 00:21:48,230 The Communist Party wanted to maintain the discretion to define who he was willing to negotiate. 153 00:21:48,810 --> 00:21:57,560 And it was a real danger because in January, the Hungarian Democratic Forum leadership decided that in case of an invitation, they would accept it. 154 00:21:58,130 --> 00:22:11,060 And they changed their mind. And there was two things which which led them to to this conclusion. 155 00:22:12,290 --> 00:22:23,870 The first that even first, they proclaimed on radio in late January that 1956 was not a counter-revolution, but a popular uprising. 156 00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:47,360 And then came some weak messages from Moscow that A in if it's inevitable, the Moscow leadership can accept Hungary as a natural multi-party state. 157 00:22:48,050 --> 00:23:01,940 So then came the March 15 demonstration, when that was the first occasion where a real crowd appeared on the streets of Budapest 1000, 100,000 people. 158 00:23:02,780 --> 00:23:08,899 And these factors led to that led the Democratic Forum to accept the idea that the 159 00:23:08,900 --> 00:23:17,360 opposition forces had to go to negotiate with the party together after two days of March 15, 160 00:23:17,660 --> 00:23:24,410 where the leaders of the forum declared that we either we go together or we do not go alone. 161 00:23:24,740 --> 00:23:36,890 So this was a major breakthrough which made possible the cooperation of the opposition forces and to create an opposition roundtable. 162 00:23:39,530 --> 00:23:54,200 The second factor was the memory of 1956, which I said came to the surface in 1988 by the foundation of the Historical Justice, 163 00:23:54,200 --> 00:24:07,970 making a committee which really governs the rehabilitation of the victims of communist terror and the soap drivers and tortures of the past 56 era. 164 00:24:08,360 --> 00:24:14,089 This really raised the issue of the original crime of the regime, 165 00:24:14,090 --> 00:24:21,079 and they demanded that every barrier of imminent night at the 56 issue was not important. 166 00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:31,190 Only for this was one of the most effective ways to mobilise the Hungarian people most directly to to 167 00:24:31,190 --> 00:24:38,180 call their attention that there is a moral symbol behind this regime which cannot be maintained anymore. 168 00:24:38,540 --> 00:24:46,850 But it was also a kind of test case for both the Hungarians and both the outside observers and Western governments. 169 00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:52,490 It was unable to maintain from the side of the Communist Party that they are 170 00:24:54,290 --> 00:25:00,560 and they are really honest supporters of democratic changes in the country. 171 00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:13,610 While they also maintained that the policy of human at large was was high treason and counterrevolutionary policy. 172 00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:17,120 So these two things could not be maintained. 173 00:25:17,510 --> 00:25:29,960 And the communist leadership time to time received questions from from inside and from outside as well that what to do with the memory of. 174 00:25:30,090 --> 00:25:34,110 In a nod with the memory of 1956. 175 00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:47,810 So in this for this reason, the Hungarian communist leaders had had to continuously retreat from their standpoint in 1988. 176 00:25:48,870 --> 00:25:58,500 The chief secretary of the party said that the legal and political rehabilitation of human rights is impossible. 177 00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:03,620 The family can be bearing the victims for humanitarian reasons. 178 00:26:04,260 --> 00:26:16,890 From that point, they arrived within one year to the great location of the poverty barrier of knowledge and the rehabilitation in front of the court. 179 00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:20,610 Let me just very briefly say two other things. 180 00:26:21,550 --> 00:26:28,620 The one is the Soviet factor, and we discussed about that a lot yesterday. 181 00:26:29,130 --> 00:26:39,690 And I agree that perhaps the Polish policymakers, either on our side or on the opposition side, was not. 182 00:26:42,150 --> 00:26:48,750 They didn't have the sure knowledge, certain knowledge about the Soviet intentions. 183 00:26:48,990 --> 00:27:02,340 But it was not the case with the Hungarian communists. In February, a former model who was one of the chief advisers of Gorbachev, uh, as I said, 184 00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:11,250 proclaimed that in principle, the Soviet leadership cannot accept Hungary as a noble state. 185 00:27:11,580 --> 00:27:22,110 And this statement was reinforced for the Hungarian communist politicians when they visited Moscow in March, and they had negotiations with Gorbachev. 186 00:27:22,110 --> 00:27:29,610 And Gorbachev clearly told them that the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Hungary is a final 187 00:27:29,610 --> 00:27:36,210 decision and they cannot rely upon any military and political support from the Soviet side. 188 00:27:36,510 --> 00:27:45,840 The problem was that the Hungarian communist leaders knew it, but nobody else had a clear knowledge about that. 189 00:27:46,260 --> 00:27:51,130 So it was it was a factor. On on the communist side. 190 00:27:51,150 --> 00:27:59,220 But it but the kind of uncertainty about this issue remained for for the for the rest of the year. 191 00:27:59,820 --> 00:28:09,090 And and the major breakthrough and in the Hungarian attitudes which finally led to the, 192 00:28:09,270 --> 00:28:16,860 uh, to the success of, uh, of the most important act of regime change in Hungary. 193 00:28:16,860 --> 00:28:25,910 The referendum in November 1989 was due to the rapid changes in, in the region. 194 00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:33,360 Most importantly, what happened in Czechoslovakia, what happened in Poland, the outcome of the Polish elections, 195 00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:43,920 and the inability of making a Polish government on the basis of the initial arrangement, 196 00:28:44,220 --> 00:28:56,070 and then the uprise and then the formation of the Mazowiecki government and also the events in eastern Germany. 197 00:28:56,190 --> 00:29:09,210 These were the three, four major events that convinced the Hungarian public that the horizon is much wider than they than they previously believed. 198 00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:13,260 And I'm afraid I have to stop here. 199 00:29:14,700 --> 00:29:18,660 So that was all I wanted to say to a much.