Category: Current

Hungarians used to love poetry. In Budapest there are well-known statues of Hungarian poets, such as Ady, Petőfi, Vörösmarty, Arany, József and Radnóti. But in 1950s Hungary, the most famous poet was the little-known 15th-century French vagabond poet François Villon. György Faludy had translated, or re-imagined, Villon’s poetry into 20th

III. THE DEBATE ON HUNGARY’S RESPONSE Hungary’s response to the 2014–2015 surge of asylum-seekers has been widely criticised in international forums. The criticism focused mainly on five points: 1) The Hungarian Government consciously tried to create a refugee-hostile environment within the country, by means of a manipulative “national consultation process”

In Kiev, another very turbulent month has just ended, bringing more political uncertainty and public distrust than concrete answers. Among other factors, the Ukrainian president’s call on the Prime Minister to step down, due to his inability to proceed with the reform agenda, has exposed a very fragile political environment.

On the Fatal Consequences of Broken Traditions In the Arab world the most often repeated slogan of our age is Al-Islam din wa dawla: Islam is state and religion. It means religion and politics cannot be separated, they go hand in hand. The slogan suggests that Islamic radicalism too has

EARLY EMIGRATION FROM HUNGARY Early Hungarian migration history has a remarkable and well-documented chapter known as peregrination: the story of Hungarian students studying at foreign universities. Before Péter Cardinal Pázmány founded his university in Nagyszombat (now Trnava in Slovakia) in 1635, medieval beginnings of institutional higher education had discontinued in

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE CURRENT MIGRATION AND REFUGEE CRISIS According to the OECD, “Europe will record in 2015 an unprecedented number of asylum seekers and refugees with up to one million asylum applications; an estimated 350,000 to 450,000 people could be granted refugee or similar status, more than in any

It is still early days for writing about the mass migration phenomenon that dominated European headlines in 2015, and is likely to continue dominating them this year. The discourse is still largely on the journalistic and political level, steeped in the different ideologies of the moment. There is a deep polarisation between those who – in the name of European values – advocate openness and integration, and those whose priority is security

What is communism? Is it a beautiful idea, a utopian dream of bright future? Is it a coherent ideology of “historical materialism”, one that will abolish exploitation, eradicate inequality and injustice, abuses, estrangement, alienation, or Entfremdung, as it was called in the mid-nineteenth century by a young German philosopher, Karl

What comes as recognition out of the blue is often mistaken for a major juncture. The shock of revelation can usually be dampened if it is possible to say that one lacked the requisite historical experience to understand the moment. With the phenomenon we are going to look at, however,

In late September I visited Thuringia on an official trip to attend a conference on regional planning. I took a train to Bad Blankenburg, an enchanting small town tucked away in a valley of the Thuringian Forest and regarded as an iconic place by educators. It was here that Friedrich