Category: Essay

If you are an Englishman living on the European mainland, you will no doubt have come across the idea that England is a conservative relic; an impression that either charms or infuriates the continental observer. But while there is some veracity contained in this concept, its truth may belie the

“That is a lesson that has been largely forgotten in the present global crisis occasioned by the spread of COVID-19. Individually and collectively, we seem to have put what Aristotle called “mere life” above the “good life” which is the crown of human temporal existence. By all means, we must

ALLIED SUPERVISION OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION By the summer of 1946, eighteen months after the provisional Hungarian government had signed the armistice with the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States, the two Western powers on the Allied Control Commission (ACC) had long established a pattern of credulity, passivity and

“We still do not know precisely how many people were taken from Hungary to the Soviet Union. Some of the people taken into captivity died in the holding camps in Hungary or Romania. We know from recollections that the bodies of people who died while being loaded into the railway

The gaze is struck by a church spire on practically every corner, not just downtown but in the shabbiest outskirts, where the tiny wooden houses squat low, almost submerged in the mud. High above the battered roofs, the innumerable gilded globes glisten in the sun with a purplish glint like

A Background to Gyula Illyés’s Russia1 Part I From 17 August to 1 September 1934 the first Congress of Soviet Writers was convened in Moscow – the first writers’ congress in the history of world literature. In addition to the 600 Soviet delegates, 40 foreign writers also participated. Though there

In 2019, remembering the 30th anniversary of the events of summer 1989, the Hungarian and German press made frequent references to the role of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta (MMSZ). It was thanks to the political courage and enterprising spirit of two of its founding members,

Both [Antonio] Gramsci and [Rudi] Dutschke argued that radical social change in highly developed societies would be the result of long, patient organising inside and outside of key institutions, and not simply or primarily a quick, frontal assault through mass actions. This is Dutschke’s long march through the institutions, what

A Book Review* The term conservatism appears with an increasing frequency in the European political rhetoric and media discourse; and this is equally true of the public life of those nations with or without conservative parties. But the term is often used incorrectly. It is not enough that sometimes speakers

When last year I was interviewed by Radio Kossuth about Ferenc Békássy, one of the questions concerned the chances of finding any still unknown manuscripts by the young Anglo-Hungarian poet who died at the age of 22 in the First World War. At the time I said I thought this