On the warm and sunny Saturday evening after the recent Hungarian election, I was crossing the square in front of Parliament on my return from a trip to our local grocery when I ran into a large political demonstration. I do not think it was quite as large as the
How much do we learn about people and places from diplomatic communiqués, political speeches, and government white papers? And how much from novels, plays, poems, travel writing and memoirs (those of actresses rather than of statesmen, of course)? Any answer to this enquiry must differ not only according to the
Culture is a word that in recent times has increased its meanings to a remarkable degree. Not long ago it was largely restricted to Matthew Arnold’s definition of “the best which has been thought and said in the world” or, slightly more broadly, to the arts of painting, music, sculpture,
One of the more striking changes in the democratic politics of recent decades has been the blurring of the line, once sharply distinct, between foreign policy and domestic politics. Not long ago it was common for political parties that had passionate differences on a wide range of domestic politics to
1956 is the pivotal event in modern Hungarian history, and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The world recognises that as it relates to the world’s own history. Everyone can see that 1956 was the moment when the Soviet Union lost whatever small shred of decency and idealism it had retained after the Nazi–Soviet Pact,
One of the oddities of the modern world is that the same people will greet the same statement with either applause or excoriation depending on who is making it. If Viktor Orbán (for instance) were to say: “in the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via
There is a long list of gloomy quotations that writers on national and international politics keep handy for those occasions when nations and empires are suffering from sharp systemic upheavals. My own favourite is a line from the play, Juno and the Paycock, which Irish playwright Sean O’Casey puts into the mouth of an amiable Dublin wastrel, “Captain Jack” Boyle, in
Of all the bonds that combine to sustain a nation, memory is perhaps the most essential. It ensures that most of the other bonds – language, loyalties, poetry and songs, shared sacrifices – are extended through time. They continue to live when the present moment fades. It may even be that the memory of a shared past unites people far more deeply than the experiences it preserves did at the time. A wedding
Remembrance is the theme of this Hungarian Review, and it is so to a degree we deeply regret. It was always our intention to make this issue part one of a two-part series on recollections of – and reflections on – the Hungarian Revolution. 1956 is one of the most
Marshal Foch once remarked of the graduates of France’s Saint-Cyr military academy: “They know everything. Unfortunately they don’t know anything else.” We can be fairly certain this was not meant as praise. Foch probably thought of the graduates as apprentice intellectuals rather than as future generals. He was noting a
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