History of Hungary

A Passionate Fight For Freedom

Hungary has long been an integral part of Europe -- first as a monarchy for nearly 1,000 years, then as a Communist state, and finally a democracy. Its constitutional system preceded by several centuries the establishment of Western-style governments in other European countries.

The region that now comprises Hungary was once part of the ancient Roman province of Pannonia. Situated on the periphery of the Roman Empire, the region was among the first to fall to the Germanic tribes that began to seize the Roman dominions in the closing years of the 2nd century AD. The Germanic tribes were later driven from the region by the Huns.

Numerous warring tribes occupied the region for hundreds of years until a new era began with the first millennium and Stephen I, the founder of the Arpad dynasty, who was granted formal recognition as king of Hungary by Pope Sylvester II in 1001 or 1002. Christianity became the official religion, paganism was suppressed, royal authority was centralized, and the country was divided into counties for administrative purposes. The non-Magyar sections of the population were treated as inferior and were forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of labor and taxation for many centuries. When Stephen died in 1038 the country was left without a direct heir to the throne.

Struggles for the throne and pagan revolts bred instability in the country for another stretch of several hundred years leading to the French Revolution, during which period Hungary was ruled by Austria. In 1703, a Hungarian landowner named Ferenc II Rákóczy united peasants and nobles in an uprising against Austrian rule. Rákóczy, who received substantial help from the French, organized a provisional government and held the Austrians at bay until his defeat in 1708. Throughout the tumultuous period following the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian population remained loyal to Austria.

However, years later, the progressive political groups of Hungary won a decisive victory in the legislative election of 1847. At first the Austrian government ignored the voters' mandate, but when threatened by revolution in Vienna the following year, it yielded to Hungarian nationalist demands and authorized the formation of a Hungarian ministry. A nationalistic struggle followed until World War I, when Hungarian political leaders supported the Austrian war effort largely because they feared that a Russian victory would lead to the defection of Hungary's Slavic minorities and the dismemberment of the country. On June 4, 1920, the Hungarian government accepted the Treaty of Trianon, which was part of the World War I peace settlements. The treaty stripped about two-thirds of Hungary's territory, including Transylvania, Croatia, and Slovakia.

Although Hungary fought in most of World War II as a German ally, it fell under German military occupation following an unsuccessful attempt to switch sides on October 15,1944. In January 1945, a provisional government concluded an armistice with the Soviet Union and established the Allied Control Commission, under which Soviet, American, and British representatives held complete sovereignty over the country. The Commission's chairman was a member of Stalin's inner circle and exercised absolute control.

Communist Takeover

The provisional government, dominated by the Hungarian communist party (MKP), was replaced in November 1945 after elections giving majority control of a coalition government to the Independent Smallholders' Party. The government instituted a radical land reform, and gradually nationalized mines, electric plants, heavy industries, and some large banks. The communists ultimately undermined the coalition regime by discrediting leaders of rival parties and through terror, blackmail, and framed trials. In elections tainted by fraud in 1947, the leftist bloc gained control of the government. Postwar cooperation between the U.S.S.R. and the West collapsed, and the Cold War began.

Forced industrialization and land collectivization soon led to serious economic difficulties, which reached crisis proportions by mid-1953, the year Stalin died. Hungary joined the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact Treaty Organization in 1955, but pressure for change reached a climax on October 23, 1956, when security forces fired on Budapest students marching in support of Poland's confrontation with the Soviet Union. The ensuing battle quickly grew into a massive popular uprising.

The Beginning of a Movement for Independence

Faced with reports of new Soviet troops pouring into Hungary despite the Soviets' assurances to the contrary, on November 1, 1955 Hungary declared neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The UN and the West failed to respond, and the Soviet Union launched a massive military attack on Hungary on November 3. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled to the West. Imre Nagy, Hungary's communist leader at the time, and his colleagues took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. Despite a guarantee of safety, Nagy was arrested and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the government announced that Nagy and other former officials had been executed. Over the next two decades, relative domestic quiet reigned, as the new government responded to pressure for political and economic reform. By the early 1980s, it had achieved limited political liberalization and pursued a foreign policy which encouraged more trade with the West. Nevertheless, the "New Economic Mechanism" led to mounting foreign debt incurred to share up unprofitable industries.

A Bold Transition to Democracy

Hungary's transition to a Western-style parliamentary democracy was the first and the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc, inspired by a nationalism that long had encouraged Hungarians to control their own destiny. By 1987, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change. Civic activism intensified to a level not seen since the 1956 revolution.

In 1988, reform communist leader Imre Pozsgay was admitted to the Politburo. That same year, the Parliament adopted a "democracy package," which included trade union pluralism; freedom of association, assembly, and the press; a new electoral law; and a radical revision of the constitution, among others. A Central Committee plenum in February 1989 endorsed in principle the multiparty political system and the characterization of the October 1956 revolution as a "popular uprising," in the words of Pozsgay, whose reform movement had been gathering strength as communist party membership declined dramatically. Kadar's major political rivals then cooperated to move the country gradually to democracy. The Soviet Union reduced its involvement by signing an agreement in April 1989 to withdraw Soviet forces by June 1991.

National unity culminated in June 1989 as the country reburied Imre Nagy, his associates, and, symbolically, all other victims of the 1956 revolution. A national roundtable, comprising representatives of the new parties and some recreated old parties - such as the Smallholders and Social Democrats - the communist party, and different social groups, met in the late summer of 1989 to discuss major changes to the Hungarian constitution in preparation for free elections and the transition to a fully free and democratic political system.

In October 1989, the communist party convened its last congress and re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). In a historic session an October 16-20, 1989, the Parliament adopted legislation providing for multiparty parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a people's republic into the Republic of Hungary; guaranteed human and civil rights; and created an institutional structure that ensures separation of powers among the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government. But because the national roundtable agreement was the result of a compromise between communist and noncommunist parties and societal forces, the revised constitution still retained vestiges of the old order. It championed the "values of bourgeois democracy and democratic socialism" and gave equal status to public and private property. Such provisions were erased in 1990 as the need for compromise solutions was obviated by the poor performance of the MSZP in the first free elections.

Free Elections and a Democratic Hungary

The first free parliamentary election, held in May 1990, was a plebiscite of sorts on the communist past. The revitalized and reformed communists performed poorly despite having more than the usual advantages of an "incumbent" party. Populist, center-right, and liberal parties fared best and laid the foundation for a free market economy. The new government, headed by 35-year-old Prime Minister Viktor Organ, promised to stimulate faster growth, curb inflation, and lower taxes. Although the Orban administration also pledged continuity in foreign policy, and continued to pursue Euro-Atlantic integration as its first priority, it was a more vocal advocate of minority rights for ethnic Hungarians abroad than the previous government. In April 2002, the country voted to return the MSZP-Free Democrat coalition back into power. The new government, led by Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, has a very slim majority in Parliament following the closest elections of the post-communist era.