|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
A Visit to Hungary
| Article
# : |
16323 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1989 |
5,824 Words |
| Author
: |
Peter Stanlis
Peter Stanlis is a retired humanities professor at Rockford
College and author of Edmund Burke and the Natural Law. |
In the summer of 1987 my wife and I visited West Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. I was particularly interested in visiting communist Hungary, so that might compare everyday life there with life in the United States. I also wished to observe the nature and extent of changes and historical continuities in the institutions, character, and temperament of the Hungarian people, to note whether historical traditions and customs persisted into the present despite the communist dictatorship. Since the first object of every modern ideological totalitarian system, such as nazism and communism, is to destroy or expropriate the free corporate institutions in civil society, thereby replacing community with collectivism, it is a matter of great interest to know whether revolutionary changes deliberately pursued can efface the essential nature and spirit of a people, or whether a nation's inheritance can endure and triumph over such changes. Communist Hungary provides an excellent case study of this vital and complex subject.
We entered Hungary from Graz, Austria, at the border town of Szentgotthard, aboard a train bound for Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Once a central European political power ruling over sixteen million people, after World War II, Hungary was reduced to a country about the size of Indiana, with fewer than eleven million inhabitants. Wholly landlocked, it is situated squarely in the middle of Europe. The Czechoslovakian and the Carpathian foothills lie near its northern borders, along low mountain ranges called the Matra, Bukk, and Tokaj. To the west is Austria. Yugoslavia borders it on the south, and on the plains to the east is Romania. Hungary's northeast corner barely touches Russia. The broad Danube River, called the Duna by Hungarians, flows from north to south through Budapest and across the heart of the great Hungarian plain.
Ninety percent of the Hungarian people are Magyars, and the official name for the country is "Magyar Nepkoztarasag." The Magyars are descendants of the Finno-Ugric tribes who invaded the Danube River plain in A.D. 896, coming out of the Kiev region in southern Russia. Over the centuries, the Magyars mingled with the original Slavic and Avar tribes living along the Danube. Later the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Hungary in 1526, also contributed to its genealogy. Late in the seventeenth century, the Hungarian nobility, assisted by Austria's Hapsburg kings, finally drove the Ottoman Turks out of their country. Today, about 10 percent of the people consist of minority enclaves--Germans, Slovaks, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, and Gypsies. The Hungarian language, which developed in central Asia and is related to Turkish, is totally different
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
