The Hungarian parliament last week passed a law banning denial of the Holocaust. But the parties in Hungary are conducting a false historical discourse, writes political scientist Rafael Labanino in the left-liberal daily Népszabadság: "The political debates on the past in fact relate to the present. We see that as regards contentious issues like the Holocaust and the crimes of communism, the Socialists and the Conservatives are trying to deny each other's political correctness, democratic convictions and loyalty to the nation. The two largest political camps in Hungary do not see each other as part of the whole. They see each other as a threat to the community. The inability of the parties to reach a consensus on certain important events of our past hinders us from finding a solution to the problems of the present. This won't change as long as the way we think about our own history adheres to false schemas." (05/03/2010)
» full article (external link, Hungarian)
More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » History, » Remembrance culture, » Hungary
Showing posts with label Central Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Central Europe. Show all posts
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
An Article in this week's Economist about the End of History in Central Europe
The end of history, revisited
From Economist.com
The ex-communist states of eastern Europe are leaving their pasts behind
WHERE would they be without their past, the ex-captive nations? (Or "ex-communist countries", "former Soviet satellite states", "the old Eastern block": so much history even in the category). The region between the Baltic and the Black Sea is so shaped by history that at first sight the question seems absurd. Trianon, Yalta, Molotov-Ribbentrop, Munich—the gloomy echoes of past betrayals and atrocities are inescapable.
For the past 20 years, the countries of this region have been involved in what might be called "therapeutic historiography": tearing up old communist propaganda versions of history, and writing new ones. That has been an exhilarating, messy and sometimes disconcerting process. For Estonians and Latvians, for example, it meant the chance to honour those (heroes or victims, but not villains) who fought against the impending Soviet occupation in 1944-45. Yet many outsiders see these men as no more than Nazi collaborators: they wore uniforms of the SS, the epitome of wartime evil, and served alongside some war criminals. Context and comparison (far more Russians than Balts fought on Hitler's side) become irrelevant.
Slovaks and Croats want to de-demonise their wartime republics (Nazi puppet states from one viewpoint, a snatched breath of national regeneration from another). Germans and Jews, once seemingly vanished from the region, have emerged from the shadows (and from abroad), with their own unhappy memories that undermine the self-righteousness of both Communist and ethno-nationalist versions of history.
Yet re-examining taboos is a self-limiting process: you run out of them after a bit. And historical inquiry inevitably bogs down in complexity. The communist version of history may have been mostly lies, but the western version has holes in it too. If you like closely reasoned historical monographs, you may spend your evenings examining the interplay between the Munich agreement (when Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia) and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (when Hitler and Stalin carved up Europe). For most people, it is enough that the latter deal is no longer secret or glorified.
In the luckier half of the continent, history has a much shorter half-life. Who worries about the Schleswig-Holstein question when looking at Danish-German relations? Who cares that Norway was once part of Sweden, or that Finland used to be a Grand Duchy of Czarist Russia?
Now central and eastern Europe may be joining the club of the ahistorical and apathetic. Historical rows are already the exception, not the rule. Poland is the signal example. In recent years it has successfully pursued reconciliation with Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Germany and even (albeit in limited terms) with Russia. The picture is marred only by a recent flare-up with Belarus, and a tiresome squabble with Lithuania about spelling. The recent ripple of protest in Poland when Ukraine's outgoing president, Viktor Yushchenko, made the wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera a "Hero of Ukraine" was interesting not because it exemplified the two countries' rows over history, but because it came after years in which they had sorted out so much.
Hungary's neighbourhood is transformed too. Relations with Slovakia are tense, thanks to a badly drafted language law there and some silly politicking. But Hungarians' real animosity is directed towards the Austrians, who have (they feel) betrayed them by selling shares in MOL, the Hungarian energy company, to Russians against their will. The historically difficult relationships with Serbia, Romania and Ukraine, all home to Magyar minorities, look chummy in comparison.
That reflects a big shift. As western Europe flounders, the old patronising and unfair treatment of the "east Europeans" is no longer sustainable. Change is in the wind. Power is up for grabs. And it is more fun than history.
Copyright © 2010 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
From Economist.com
The ex-communist states of eastern Europe are leaving their pasts behind
WHERE would they be without their past, the ex-captive nations? (Or "ex-communist countries", "former Soviet satellite states", "the old Eastern block": so much history even in the category). The region between the Baltic and the Black Sea is so shaped by history that at first sight the question seems absurd. Trianon, Yalta, Molotov-Ribbentrop, Munich—the gloomy echoes of past betrayals and atrocities are inescapable.
For the past 20 years, the countries of this region have been involved in what might be called "therapeutic historiography": tearing up old communist propaganda versions of history, and writing new ones. That has been an exhilarating, messy and sometimes disconcerting process. For Estonians and Latvians, for example, it meant the chance to honour those (heroes or victims, but not villains) who fought against the impending Soviet occupation in 1944-45. Yet many outsiders see these men as no more than Nazi collaborators: they wore uniforms of the SS, the epitome of wartime evil, and served alongside some war criminals. Context and comparison (far more Russians than Balts fought on Hitler's side) become irrelevant.
Slovaks and Croats want to de-demonise their wartime republics (Nazi puppet states from one viewpoint, a snatched breath of national regeneration from another). Germans and Jews, once seemingly vanished from the region, have emerged from the shadows (and from abroad), with their own unhappy memories that undermine the self-righteousness of both Communist and ethno-nationalist versions of history.
Yet re-examining taboos is a self-limiting process: you run out of them after a bit. And historical inquiry inevitably bogs down in complexity. The communist version of history may have been mostly lies, but the western version has holes in it too. If you like closely reasoned historical monographs, you may spend your evenings examining the interplay between the Munich agreement (when Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia) and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (when Hitler and Stalin carved up Europe). For most people, it is enough that the latter deal is no longer secret or glorified.
In the luckier half of the continent, history has a much shorter half-life. Who worries about the Schleswig-Holstein question when looking at Danish-German relations? Who cares that Norway was once part of Sweden, or that Finland used to be a Grand Duchy of Czarist Russia?
Now central and eastern Europe may be joining the club of the ahistorical and apathetic. Historical rows are already the exception, not the rule. Poland is the signal example. In recent years it has successfully pursued reconciliation with Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Germany and even (albeit in limited terms) with Russia. The picture is marred only by a recent flare-up with Belarus, and a tiresome squabble with Lithuania about spelling. The recent ripple of protest in Poland when Ukraine's outgoing president, Viktor Yushchenko, made the wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera a "Hero of Ukraine" was interesting not because it exemplified the two countries' rows over history, but because it came after years in which they had sorted out so much.
Hungary's neighbourhood is transformed too. Relations with Slovakia are tense, thanks to a badly drafted language law there and some silly politicking. But Hungarians' real animosity is directed towards the Austrians, who have (they feel) betrayed them by selling shares in MOL, the Hungarian energy company, to Russians against their will. The historically difficult relationships with Serbia, Romania and Ukraine, all home to Magyar minorities, look chummy in comparison.
That reflects a big shift. As western Europe flounders, the old patronising and unfair treatment of the "east Europeans" is no longer sustainable. Change is in the wind. Power is up for grabs. And it is more fun than history.
Copyright © 2010 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
the gypsy question
As long as we have citizens of the EU living in circumstances like in the pictures (yes, this lady and her falily live in this cart), I think the gypsy question will remain very accute.
Gypsies (fashionably/ politically correct nowadays: Roma) in Central Europe have the same status and the same problems as the North African minorities in Belgium: not integrated, not schooled, not accepted, source of problems...
Friday, August 7, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Coffee in Central European Life
Have you ever stopped and thought how a seemingly everyday consumable like coffee shows a lot about who you are and where you are from?
Coffee has a long and important tradition, also in Central Europe. Turks introduced it during their centuries long dominance, it was introduced via a back door into popular and highbrow culture. In Central European cities like Wien and Budapest, coffee houses played an important role in meeting, creation and (in Budapest, 1848) in revolutionary processes.
Coffee became an inseparable part of daily life, daily work, of protocol and shared feelings.
In Hungary, as in Italy, coffee is often prepared in a percolator. I have not encountered this method anywhere else, unless we count the “espresso machine” system (the ones the latter day baristas use and abuse).
As of Transylvania, the “ibrik” serves us Turkish coffee: the kind that we have to sweeten while brewing, as it is served with the grinds in a tiny cup.
Since the fall of the Wall and the change of the system, filter coffee has made headways into the more labor-intensive but much tastier domain of the percolator and the ibrik. I remember introducing Hungarians to what they called “American” or “German” coffee in the beginning of the 90s and watching them pull faces and calling the liquid I served out of the freshly brewed filter coffee pot “weak tea”.
Central Europeans used to drink maximum 2 cups of coffee per day: in the morning to wake up, after lunch with a cigarette to digest. In Belgium, I grew up in a working culture that served coffee in massive quantities all day long. Liters and liters of the intoxicant were ingested in the course of a working day.
Real coffee had to brewed at home, preferably by some one taking their time and lovingly handling the percolator. Coffee was meant to sooth the spirit, to help in awakening, to break the ice in conversations.
Hotel coffee was the exact and horrible opposite: nescafé left to burn and cook for hours, leaving it tasting like asphalt.
The culture of coffee still thrives in Central Europe, next to the “Seattle” wave of coffee shops, the real kávéház, cukrázda, cofetarie, kavarna or Konditorei still has its place in local communities, folklore and in tourist’s hearts.
Coffee has a long and important tradition, also in Central Europe. Turks introduced it during their centuries long dominance, it was introduced via a back door into popular and highbrow culture. In Central European cities like Wien and Budapest, coffee houses played an important role in meeting, creation and (in Budapest, 1848) in revolutionary processes.
Coffee became an inseparable part of daily life, daily work, of protocol and shared feelings.
In Hungary, as in Italy, coffee is often prepared in a percolator. I have not encountered this method anywhere else, unless we count the “espresso machine” system (the ones the latter day baristas use and abuse).
As of Transylvania, the “ibrik” serves us Turkish coffee: the kind that we have to sweeten while brewing, as it is served with the grinds in a tiny cup.
Since the fall of the Wall and the change of the system, filter coffee has made headways into the more labor-intensive but much tastier domain of the percolator and the ibrik. I remember introducing Hungarians to what they called “American” or “German” coffee in the beginning of the 90s and watching them pull faces and calling the liquid I served out of the freshly brewed filter coffee pot “weak tea”.
Central Europeans used to drink maximum 2 cups of coffee per day: in the morning to wake up, after lunch with a cigarette to digest. In Belgium, I grew up in a working culture that served coffee in massive quantities all day long. Liters and liters of the intoxicant were ingested in the course of a working day.
Real coffee had to brewed at home, preferably by some one taking their time and lovingly handling the percolator. Coffee was meant to sooth the spirit, to help in awakening, to break the ice in conversations.
Hotel coffee was the exact and horrible opposite: nescafé left to burn and cook for hours, leaving it tasting like asphalt.
The culture of coffee still thrives in Central Europe, next to the “Seattle” wave of coffee shops, the real kávéház, cukrázda, cofetarie, kavarna or Konditorei still has its place in local communities, folklore and in tourist’s hearts.
De Standaard - 'Kijk naar de hele kameel'
De Standaard - 'Kijk naar de hele kameel'
An excellent interview in the Flemish De Standaard with Prof Wim Moesen about the regained role of government in regulating both the financial ecomony as the real economy. The key words of Prof Moesen's ideas are TRUST and EFFICIENCY.
To function correctly and to ensure transactions, the economy needs trust between the different players. Government can, through correct regulation, ensure this trust.
Efficiency means that the regulation provided by the government is accountable, measureable and stimulates initiative.
Both factors are very essential in any steps that governments in Central Europe will have to take in the comings period.
An excellent interview in the Flemish De Standaard with Prof Wim Moesen about the regained role of government in regulating both the financial ecomony as the real economy. The key words of Prof Moesen's ideas are TRUST and EFFICIENCY.
To function correctly and to ensure transactions, the economy needs trust between the different players. Government can, through correct regulation, ensure this trust.
Efficiency means that the regulation provided by the government is accountable, measureable and stimulates initiative.
Both factors are very essential in any steps that governments in Central Europe will have to take in the comings period.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Cultural Crossing Point
one of the crossing point of cultures.jpg)
in Central Europe: mosque in Babadag, East Romania, in the area of the Danube delta. Turkish people have been living since centuries in this area. 
.jpg)
in Central Europe: mosque in Babadag, East Romania, in the area of the Danube delta. Turkish people have been living since centuries in this area. Sunday, June 14, 2009
A recent article from The Economist, covering the EU parliament elections, gives more content to the direction that Central (or maybe South-Central) Europe has taken:
Time to start fretting
Jun 11th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Boring centre-right parties did well—but so did quite a few nasties
INTERPRETERS in the European Parliament trying to translate the remarks of George “Gigi” Becali may struggle. Even in his native Romanian, his puzzling syntax and coarse slang make him a butt of satirists. The interpreters may also blench at what he says, especially about Jews, gays, Roma (Gypsies) and women. But they may be spared this for the time being because a court has banned the newly elected Mr Becali from leaving Romania pending a criminal trial for kidnapping.
Getty Images
Nutters? Us?
Xenophobes and populists have been elected in old European Union members such as the Netherlands too. But their east European counterparts make the westerners seem tame. Mr Becali’s fellow victor on the Greater Romania list is Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a vituperative nationalist who was once court poet to Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Communist dictator.
Yet international co-operation among politicians who hate foreigners is inherently tricky. Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, which won three seats, may join its Balkan counterparts (including two members of Bulgaria’s explicitly racist Ataka party) in Roma-bashing. But they will have little in common when it comes to minority rights for Hungarians in neighbouring countries such as Slovakia and Romania, where Magyar irredentism is a convenient bogeyman for local chauvinists.
There were shocks at the far-left end of the spectrum too. One winner in Latvia was Alfreds Rubiks, a hardline former Communist who was jailed for backing a Kremlin-inspired coup against Latvian independence in 1991. Most Latvians see him as a pariah. His victory highlights the ominous rise of Soviet nostalgia among the country’s increasingly alienated Russians. In Estonia, by contrast, ethnic Russian parties flopped. The soft-left Centre Party got their votes, and more besides. The most striking Estonian result was the election of Indrek Tarand, a popular ex-diplomat who ran as an independent to protest against rules stopping voters from choosing among candidates on party lists.
As in western Europe, the main stories in the east were thumping wins by centre-right parties. Poland’s ruling Civic Platform did strikingly well, with 25 seats to 15 for the main opposition, the more populist Law and Justice party. In the Czech Republic the centre-right Civic Democrats won nine of the 22 seats, against seven for the Social Democrats and four for the Communists. In Hungary the ruling Socialists (ex-communists) did very badly, with only four seats to 14 for the conservative Fidesz party. That augurs well for the right in next year’s general election.
The exception was Slovakia, where the ruling centre-left Smer (Direction) party led by the prime minister, Robert Fico, did well on a paltry 19.6 % turnout, the lowest in the EU. His party won five out of 13 seats, with the fragmented conservative opposition polling poorly, as did two nationalist fringe parties in the coalition government. Both had featured in a string of recent corruption scandals.
The real significance of the elections may lie less in the composition of the new European Parliament than in pointers to the future course of national politics. Mr Fico, for example, will need to find new allies after next year’s general election if his present coalition partners continue to flop. Poland’s Civic Platform is on track to win the presidency next year.
Scandal-strewn Bulgaria is holding a parliamentary election on July 5th. If the European contest is any guide, the vote should be lively but nasty. Mafia-linked parties did alarmingly well in the European poll, though they did not win any seats. Vote-buying was common, as were other lurches towards rule-bending and ballot-rigging. In what looks like a blatant attempt to penalise minor parties, the authorities tried (but failed) to raise the election threshold to 8%, the highest in Europe. Legal chicanery meant that an opposition coalition had great difficulty even registering. Sadly, EU officials monitoring Bulgaria’s shaky progress towards clean government will have plenty to put in their next report. It is bad enough when dodgy characters win votes, but even worse when they count them.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Time to start fretting
Jun 11th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Boring centre-right parties did well—but so did quite a few nasties
INTERPRETERS in the European Parliament trying to translate the remarks of George “Gigi” Becali may struggle. Even in his native Romanian, his puzzling syntax and coarse slang make him a butt of satirists. The interpreters may also blench at what he says, especially about Jews, gays, Roma (Gypsies) and women. But they may be spared this for the time being because a court has banned the newly elected Mr Becali from leaving Romania pending a criminal trial for kidnapping.
Getty Images
Nutters? Us?
Xenophobes and populists have been elected in old European Union members such as the Netherlands too. But their east European counterparts make the westerners seem tame. Mr Becali’s fellow victor on the Greater Romania list is Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a vituperative nationalist who was once court poet to Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Communist dictator.
Yet international co-operation among politicians who hate foreigners is inherently tricky. Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, which won three seats, may join its Balkan counterparts (including two members of Bulgaria’s explicitly racist Ataka party) in Roma-bashing. But they will have little in common when it comes to minority rights for Hungarians in neighbouring countries such as Slovakia and Romania, where Magyar irredentism is a convenient bogeyman for local chauvinists.
There were shocks at the far-left end of the spectrum too. One winner in Latvia was Alfreds Rubiks, a hardline former Communist who was jailed for backing a Kremlin-inspired coup against Latvian independence in 1991. Most Latvians see him as a pariah. His victory highlights the ominous rise of Soviet nostalgia among the country’s increasingly alienated Russians. In Estonia, by contrast, ethnic Russian parties flopped. The soft-left Centre Party got their votes, and more besides. The most striking Estonian result was the election of Indrek Tarand, a popular ex-diplomat who ran as an independent to protest against rules stopping voters from choosing among candidates on party lists.
As in western Europe, the main stories in the east were thumping wins by centre-right parties. Poland’s ruling Civic Platform did strikingly well, with 25 seats to 15 for the main opposition, the more populist Law and Justice party. In the Czech Republic the centre-right Civic Democrats won nine of the 22 seats, against seven for the Social Democrats and four for the Communists. In Hungary the ruling Socialists (ex-communists) did very badly, with only four seats to 14 for the conservative Fidesz party. That augurs well for the right in next year’s general election.
The exception was Slovakia, where the ruling centre-left Smer (Direction) party led by the prime minister, Robert Fico, did well on a paltry 19.6 % turnout, the lowest in the EU. His party won five out of 13 seats, with the fragmented conservative opposition polling poorly, as did two nationalist fringe parties in the coalition government. Both had featured in a string of recent corruption scandals.
The real significance of the elections may lie less in the composition of the new European Parliament than in pointers to the future course of national politics. Mr Fico, for example, will need to find new allies after next year’s general election if his present coalition partners continue to flop. Poland’s Civic Platform is on track to win the presidency next year.
Scandal-strewn Bulgaria is holding a parliamentary election on July 5th. If the European contest is any guide, the vote should be lively but nasty. Mafia-linked parties did alarmingly well in the European poll, though they did not win any seats. Vote-buying was common, as were other lurches towards rule-bending and ballot-rigging. In what looks like a blatant attempt to penalise minor parties, the authorities tried (but failed) to raise the election threshold to 8%, the highest in Europe. Legal chicanery meant that an opposition coalition had great difficulty even registering. Sadly, EU officials monitoring Bulgaria’s shaky progress towards clean government will have plenty to put in their next report. It is bad enough when dodgy characters win votes, but even worse when they count them.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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