Category: VOLUME V, No. 5

EDITORIAL NOTE

There is more than a touch of the political science seminar about this issue of Hungarian Review. We discuss the protean nature of “human rights”, as currently understood in international relations; the upsurge of “populism” across not merely Central Europe but the whole of it; the emerging dispute over the

ORBÁN’S HUNGARY: IMAGE AND REALITY – WHOSE DEMOCRACY? WHICH LIBERALISM?

Hungary faces an epistemological problem that all medium-size and small countries face in international politics. Most people – including most journalists and most opinion-formers – know very little about them. Among open societies only a very few are known and understood abroad to any degree of depth and complication. The

HUNGARY, NATO AND THE WAR IN UKRAINE

It is a risky business these days to write about Ukraine in a periodical; by the time the piece appears the situation has changed dramatically, as happened after the shooting down of the Malaysian aircraft on 17 July. But misunderstandings about the position of Hungary demand clarifications. From the outset

HUMAN RIGHTS, HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY: REORIENTING THE DEBATE

This article is based in part on two lectures given for the “Engagements in Catholic Social Thought and Practice Series” organised by The Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University in cooperation with the International Theological Institute on 22 and 23 October 2013 at Durham University and the University of

WHY THERE WAS NO MARSHALL AID AFTER 1990

The new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have been massive beneficiaries of financial arrangements since their accession to the European Union (EU). Net official inflows amount up to two or three per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – comparable in relative size to those

POPULISM AND THE FAILURES OF DEMOCRACY

The people, says  Burke, should not be trusted as advisers on policy or even necessarily as true reckoners of their interests in the short run, but they are always the best judges of their own oppression – so much so that we ought to fear any power on earth that

SOCKS ON THE CHANDELIER, LIVES BY A THREAD – FILE NO. 12 198

After putting things off time and time again, it was about three years ago that I started reading the files in the archives of my father and my grandfather. My grandfather finished legal studies in Budapest in 1889, and opened his law office in Becskerek in 1893. The office has

FIVE POEMS FROM UNDER WORLD ARREST (1994)

NOTES “I awake at 5 AM seeing a Serbian bayonet…”: An attempt to “stew” in my consternation over reading of this hideous desecration of intercourse. The porcupine imagery acknowledges the poem’s attempt to enact some sort of retribution, to pierce the reader with its unfolding distress. The last line –