Category: VOLUME VII, No. 2

THE VISEGRÁD COUNTRIES AND THE MIGRANTS

A New East–West Divide in Sight? Hosted by the King of Hungary, Caroberto of Anjou, in October 1335, the kings of Poland and Bohemia (today’s Czech lands), Kazimierz the Great and John of Luxemburg, met at the royal palace of Visegrád to coordinate their various policies. After the collapse of

THE POPULISM OF THE ELITES

Recent issues of Hungarian Review have been heavily preoccupied with the migrant crisis as it affects Hungary and Europe. We wish it had been otherwise. Some days the editors feel as if they were wrestling to escape its coils and move towards more inspiring and lighter topics, but as with

THE POPULISM OF THE ELITES

Recent issues of HungarianReviewhave been heavily preoccupied with the migrant crisis as it affects Hungary and Europe. We wish it had been otherwise. Some days the editors feel as if they were wrestling to escape its coils and move towards more inspiring and lighter topics, but as with the father and his two sons in the Laocoon statue, the coils wrap themselves around us and refuse to let us go. This issue is hardly an

UKRAINE’S TURBULENT PATH OF REFORMS

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.

THE ROOTS OF ISLAMIC RADICALISM

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

MIGRATIONS IN HUNGARIAN HISTORY – PART II

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

LIVING OUR VALUES, PRESERVING OUR VALUES: HUNGARY’S RESPONSE TO THE 2015 EUROPEAN MIGRANT CRISIS – PART I

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

VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM

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

‘PROGRESSIVE POLITICS’: THE ALCHEMY OF A SLOGAN

The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him.The unreasonable man adapts conditions to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw A Conservative is a statesman enamoured of existing evils,as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Ambrose Bierce, The